We Were the Lucky Ones Read online

  A couple of days ago, Addy’s platoon, among the others of 2DSP, was ordered to march fifty kilometres east to Poitiers. Addy guesses they’ve about twenty more kilometres to cover. From Poitiers they’ll continue some seven hundred kilometres farther by military convoy to Belfort, on the Swiss border, and from Belfort they are to join up with the French Eighth Army in Colombey-les-Belles, a city not far from the German border that lay on France’s Maginot Line of defence. Addy has never been to Poitiers, Belfort, or Colombey-les-Belles, but he’s studied them on the map. They’re not close.

  ‘Cyrus!’ Addy yells over his shoulder, in need of a distraction. ‘A tune, please.’

  From the back of the line comes a ‘Yes, sir!’ and after a moment’s pause, a whistle. At the sound of the first notes, Addy’s ears perk up. He recognises the tune immediately. The piece is called ‘List’. It’s his. The others recognise it, too, and join in, and the whistling becomes louder.

  Addy smiles. He hasn’t told anyone about his dream of being a composer, or about the piece he wrote before the war, a big enough success, apparently, for his platoon to know it by heart. Perhaps it’s a sign, Addy thinks. Perhaps hearing it now is an indication that it’s only a matter of time before he reconnects with his family. It’s a song about a letter, after all. The knot in Addy’s chest loosens. He hums along with his men, scripting his next letter home as he marches: You won’t believe, Mother, what I heard today in the field …

  MAY 10, 1940: The Nazis invade the Netherlands, Belgium, and France. Despite Allied defences, the Netherlands and Belgium surrender within the month.

  JUNE 3, 1940: The Nazis bomb Paris.

  JUNE 22, 1940: The French and German governments reach an armistice, dividing France into a ‘free zone’ in the south under the puppet leadership of Marshal Petain, based in Vichy, and a German-controlled ‘occupied zone’ in the north and along the French Atlantic coast.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Genek and Herta

  Lvov, Soviet-Occupied Poland ~ June 28, 1940

  The knock comes in the middle of the night. Genek’s eyes snap open.

  He and Herta sit up in bed, blinking into the darkness. Another knock, and then, an order. ‘Otkroitie dveri!’

  Genek kicks himself free of the bedsheet and fumbles in the dark for the chain on his bedside lamp, squinting as his eyes adjust to the light. The air in the small room is hot, stagnant; with the blackout still in effect in Lvov, their curtains are permanently drawn. There is no such thing any more as sleeping with the windows open. He runs the back of his hand across his forehead, wiping away a film of sweat.

  ‘You don’t think …’ Herta whispers, but she’s interrupted by more shouting.

  ‘Narodnyy Komissariat Vnutrennikh Del!’ The voice outside is loud enough to wake the neighbours.

  Genek curses. Herta’s eyes are wide. It’s them. The secret police. They climb out of bed.

  In the nine months since they settled in Lvov, Genek and Herta have heard stories of these raids in the middle of the night – of men, women, and children snatched from their homes for money falsely owed, for being perceived resisters, for simply being Polish. Neighbours of the accused said they heard the knocks, the footsteps, a dog barking, and then in the morning, nothing; the homes were empty. The people, whole families, vanished. Where they were taken, no one knew.

  ‘We’d better answer it,’ Genek says, convincing himself that he has nothing to fear. What could the secret police have on him? He’s done no wrong. He clears his throat. ‘Coming,’ he calls, reaching for a robe and, at the last minute, his wallet from the dresser. He slips it into his robe pocket. Herta wraps her own robe around her nightgown and follows him down the hallway.

  The moment Genek unlocks the door, a gang of rifle-wielding soldiers explodes into the apartment, forming a semicircle around them. Genek feels Herta’s elbow loop around his as he counts the hammer-and-sickle patches, the blue and maroon peaked caps – there are eight men in total. Why so many? He stares hard at the intruders, his fingers curled into fists, the hair on the back of his neck electric. The soldiers eye him with locked jaws until one finally steps forward. Genek sizes him up. He’s short, with a squat wrestler’s build and an obvious swagger – the one in charge. A small red star over his visor bobs up and down as he nods to his men, who turn obediently on their heels and file past them, down the hallway.

  ‘Wait!’ Genek protests, scowling at the backs of their tunics. ‘What right do you –’ he nearly says cockroaches but catches himself – ‘What right do you have to search my home?’ He can feel blood begin to throb in his temples.

  The officer in charge extracts a sheet of paper from a breast pocket. He unfolds it carefully and reads.

  ‘Gerszon Kurc?’ It sounds like Gairzon Koork.

  ‘I am Gerszon.’

  ‘We have warrant to search flat.’ The officer’s Polish is broken, his accent as thick as his midline. He waves the paper in Genek’s face for an instant as if to prove its credibility, then refolds it, returning it to his pocket. Genek can hear the havoc being wreaked in the adjacent rooms – drawers pulled from a dresser, furniture slid across the hardwood floor, papers scattered.

  ‘A warrant?’ Genek narrows his eyes. ‘On what grounds?’ He glances at the officer’s rifle, hanging by his side. He had been shown photos of Soviet carbines in the army, but Genek has yet to see one up close. This one looks like an M38. Or perhaps an M91/30. He knows where to look for the safety. It’s off. ‘What the hell is going on?’

  The officer ignores the question. ‘Wait here,’ he says, tucking his fingers into his Sam Browne belt as he strides down the hall, casually, as if the place were his own.

  Left alone in the foyer, Herta frees her elbow from Genek’s and wraps her arms around her chest, flinching at the sound of something heavy colliding with the floor.

  ‘Bastards,’ Genek whispers under his breath. ‘Who do they think—’

  Herta meets his eye. ‘Don’t let them hear you,’ she whispers.

  Genek bites his tongue, breathing heavily through flared nostrils. It’s nearly impossible for him to keep quiet. He paces with his hands on his hips. The lawyer in him screams to demand to see the warrant – it can’t be real – but something tells him it will do no good.

  After a few minutes, the flock of uniformed men assembles again at the door. They stand with their feet planted at shoulder width, their chests puffed up like roosters, still gripping their weapons. The one in charge points to Genek. ‘We take you for interrogation, Koork,’ he says.

  ‘Why?’ Genek asks through his teeth. ‘I’ve done nothing wrong.’

  ‘Just some questions.’

  Genek glowers down at the Russian, relishing the fact that he is a full head taller, that the officer must look up to make eye contact. ‘And then I’ll be free to come home?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Herta steps forward. ‘I’m coming with you,’ she says. It is a statement, her tone definitive. Genek looks at her, contemplates an argument, but she’s right – it’s better if she comes. What if the NKVD return?

  ‘She comes with me,’ Genek says.

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘We need to dress,’ Herta says.

  The officer looks at his watch and then prongs his middle fingers. ‘You have three minutes.’

  In the bedroom, Genek steps into trousers and a button-down shirt. Herta zips herself into a skirt and then reaches under the bed for her suitcase. ‘Just in case,’ she says. ‘Who knows when we’ll be back.’ Genek nods and retrieves his own suitcase. As much as he is reluctant to admit it, Herta may be right to assume the worst. He packs some undergarments, his good-as-new army-issued boots, a photograph of his parents, a pocketknife, his tortoiseshell comb, a deck of cards, his address book. He reaches for his robe, tucks his wallet into his trouser pocket. Herta packs a small pile of hosiery, undergarments, a hairbrush, two pairs of slacks, a wool tunic. At the last minute they decide to bring their winter coats, then hur
ry down the hallway to the kitchen to collect what’s left of a loaf of bread, an apple, and some salted fish from the pantry.

  ‘My pocketbook,’ Herta whispers. ‘I nearly forgot.’ She ducks back into the bedroom. Genek follows, frowning as he remembers that his own wallet is nearly empty.

  ‘Let’s go!’ the officer barks from the foyer.

  ‘Find it?’ Genek asks. But Herta doesn’t answer. She stands at the closet door, hands at her head, auburn hair spilling through her fingers.

  ‘It’s gone,’ she whispers.

  Genek brings a fist to his mouth to keep from cursing. ‘What was in it?’

  ‘My ID, some money … a lot of money.’ Herta touches her left wrist. ‘My watch is gone, too. It was – on my bedside table, I think.’

  ‘Maggots,’ Genek whispers.

  The officer yells again, and Genek and Herta make their way silently back to the foyer.

  Twenty minutes later, they sit at a small desk across from an officer clad in the same royal blue and maroon peaked cap worn by the men who had brought them in. The room is bare, save for a portrait of Joseph Stalin suspended on the wall behind the desk; Genek can feel the general secretary’s thick-browed eyes bearing down on him like a vulture’s and fights the urge to rip the photo from the wall and shred it.

  ‘You say you are Polish.’ The officer opposite them makes no attempt to mask the disgust in his voice. He squints at a piece of paper in his hands. Genek wonders whether it’s the so-called warrant.

  ‘Yes. I’m Polish.’

  ‘Where were you born?’

  ‘I was born in Radom, 350 kilometres from here.’

  The officer sets the paper on the table and Genek immediately recognises the handwriting as his own. The paper, he realises, is a form – a questionnaire he was made to complete upon signing a lease with the manager of his apartment on Zielona Street, shortly after the Soviets took control of Lvov in September. The agreement was written on Soviet letterhead; Genek had thought little of it at the time.

  ‘Your family is still in Radom?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Poland surrendered nine months ago. Why haven’t you returned?’

  ‘I found a job here,’ Genek says, although it’s only half true. In all honesty, he is reluctant to return home. His mother’s letters painted an awful picture of Radom – of the armbands the Jews were forced to wear at all times, of the citywide curfew, the twelve-hour workdays, the laws banning her from using the sidewalks, from going to the cinema, from walking to the post office without special permission. Nechuma wrote about how they, like thousands of others living in the city centre, had been evicted from their home and made to pay rent for a space a fraction of the size in the Old Quarter. ‘How are we to afford rent when they’ve taken away our business, confiscated our savings, and put us to work like slaves for next to nothing?’ she fumed. She had urged him to stay. ‘You’re better off in Lvov,’ she wrote.

  ‘What kind of job?’

  ‘I work for a law firm.’

  The officer eyes him suspiciously. ‘You’re a Jew. Jews aren’t fit to be lawyers.’

  The words sizzle like drops of water on a hot pan. ‘I’m an assistant at the firm,’ Genek says.

  The officer leans forward in his wooden chair, resting his elbows on the desk. ‘You understand, Kurc, that you are now on Soviet soil?’

  Genek parts his lips, tempted to unleash – No, sir, you are wrong; you are on Polish soil – but he thinks better of it, and it’s in this moment that he understands the reason for his arrest. The questionnaire, he recalls, had a box he was meant to check in order to accept Soviet citizenship. He’d left it blank. It had seemed false, to call himself anything but Polish. How could he? The Soviet Union is – has always been – an enemy to his homeland. And besides, he’d spent every day of his life in Poland, had fought for Poland – he sure as hell wasn’t going to give up his nationality just because a border had changed. Genek feels his body temperature rise as he realises now that the questionnaire wasn’t just a formality, it was a test of sorts. A way for the Soviets to weed out the prideful from the weak. By refusing citizenship, he’d labelled himself a resister, someone who could be dangerous. Why else would they come for him? He locks his lips, refusing to admit there is truth in the officer’s statement, and instead meets the man’s eyes with a cold, stubborn stare.

  ‘And yet,’ the officer continues, pressing his forefinger to the questionnaire, ‘you still say you are Polish.’

  ‘I told you. I am from Poland.’

  The veins in the officer’s neck deepen in colour to match the purple of the piping around his collar. ‘There’s no such thing as Poland any more!’ he bellows, a ball of spit torpedoing from his mouth.

  A pair of young soldiers appears, and Genek recognises them as two of the men who searched his flat. Genek glares at them, wondering if it was one of them who had stolen Herta’s purse. Thugs. And then it’s over. The officer dismisses them with a wag of his chin, and Genek and Herta are escorted out of the police quarters, to the train station.

  It’s dark inside the cattle car, and hot, the air swampy and reeking of human waste. There must be three dozen bodies packed inside, but they can’t tell for sure – it’s hard to know – and they’ve lost track of how many have died. The prisoners sit shoulder to shoulder, their heads rocking back and forth in unison as the train clatters along on crooked rails. Genek closes his eyes, but it’s impossible to sleep sitting up, and it’ll be hours before it’s his turn to stretch out. A man squats over a hole cut in the centre of the car and Herta gags. The stench is unbearable.

  It is July 23rd. They’ve been confined to the cattle car for twenty-five days; Genek has carved a small gash in the floor with his pocketknife for each day. On some, the train rolls straight through, into the night, never slowing. On others, it stops and the doors are flung open to reveal a small station with a sign bearing an unrecognisable name. Every so often, a brave soul from a nearby village approaches the tracks, commiserating – Poor people … where are they taking them? Some come carrying a loaf of bread, a bottle of water, an apple, but the Russian guards are quick to shoo them away, swearing, their M38s cocked. At most stops, a few of the train cars peel off, veering north or south. But Genek and Herta’s car continues on its path. They haven’t been told, of course, when or where they’ll disembark, but they can tell by pressing their faces to the cracks in the train car’s walls that they are headed east.

  When they first boarded the car in Lvov, Genek and Herta made a point of getting to know the others. All are Poles, Catholics and Jews alike. Most, like themselves, were sequestered in the middle of the night, their stories similar – arrested for refusing Soviet citizenship as Genek had, or for some made-up crime they had no way of proving they didn’t commit. Some are alone, some with a brother or a wife by their side. There are several children on board. For a while, Genek and Herta found comfort in talking with the other prisoners, in sharing stories of the lives and families they’d left behind; it made them feel as if they weren’t alone. Whatever was in store for them, it helped the prisoners to know they were in it together. But after a few days, they found they had little left to talk about. The chatter ceased and a funerary silence settled upon the train car, like ash over a dying fire. Some wept, but most slept or simply sat quietly, withdrawing deeper into themselves, encumbered by the fear of the unknown, the reality that wherever they were being sent, it was far, far away from home.

  Genek’s stomach rumbles as the train screams to a stop. He can’t remember what it feels like to not be hungry. After a few minutes, a metal latch lifts, and the car’s heavy door slides open, bathing the prisoners in daylight. They rub their eyes and squint at the outside world. Framed in the door, the landscape is bleak: flat, endless tundra, and in the distance, forest. They are the only humans in sight. No one rises. They know better than to try to climb from the train until they are given the order to do so.

  A guard in a starred cap c
limbs into the car, stepping over legs and between lice-ridden bodies. In the far corner he stops, bends down, and prods the shoulder of a prisoner propped against the wall with his chin resting on his chest. The old man is oblivious. The guard nudges him again, and this time the man’s torso tips to the left, his forehead landing heavily on the shoulder of the woman next to him, who gasps.

  The guard seems annoyed. ‘Stepan!’ he yells, and soon a comrade in a matching cap appears in the doorway. ‘Another one.’

  The new guard climbs aboard. ‘Move!’ he barks, and the Poles in the corner scramble stiffly to their feet. Herta looks away as the Soviets bend to lift the limp body and shuffle toward the open door. Genek glances up as they pass by him, but the man’s face is obscured – all he can see is an arm, dangling at an awkward angle, its skin a sickly yellow, the colour of phlegm. At the doorway, the guards count to three, grunting as they heave the corpse from the train.

  Herta covers her ears, worried she might scream if she hears the sound of another dead body colliding with the ground. He’s the third to be discarded this way in three days. Tossed out like trash, left to rot beside the train tracks. For a while, she’d been able to tune it out, the hideousness of it. She’d let herself go numb. Sometimes, she pretended it was all a farce, something out of a horror film, and she’d let her mind float out of her physical body as she watched herself from above. Other times her mind took her off the train entirely, conjuring up an image of an alternate universe, usually one salvaged from her past, from growing up in Bielsko: the opulent synagogue on Maja Street with its ornate neo-Romanesque facade and its twin Moorish-style turrets; the view of the valley and of the beautiful Bielsko Castle from atop Szyndzielnia Mountain; her favourite shady park, a couple of blocks from the Biala River, where she and her family would picnic when she was little. She would stay there as long as she could, comforted by the memories. But last week, when the baby died, a little girl no older than Genek’s niece, she couldn’t take it any longer. The child had starved. The mother’s milk had gone dry; she didn’t say anything for days, just sat in silence, her torso cocooned around the lifeless parcel in her arms. One afternoon, the guards noticed. And when they pulled the infant from her mother, the others erupted in shouts – Please! It’s unfair! Let her be, please! – but the guards turned their backs and threw the tiny body out of the train as they had the others, and the prisoners’ pleas were soon drowned by the desperate howl of a woman whose heart had been severed in two, a woman who would refuse to eat, her grief too overpowering to withstand, and whose own lifeless body would be thrown from the train four days later.