We Were the Lucky Ones Read online

  It was the soft thud of the infant’s body meeting the earth that broke Herta, causing the numbness to give way to a hate that burnt so deeply within, she wondered if her organs might catch fire.

  A third blue cap walks by with a bucket of water and a basket of bread – loaves the size of cigarette cartons, hard as bark. Genek takes one, breaks off a piece, hands the loaf to Herta. She shakes her head, too nauseated to eat.

  The door slides closed and it’s dark again inside the train car. Genek scratches at his scalp, and Herta reaches for his hand. ‘It’ll only make it worse,’ she whispers. Genek slumps, unsure of what he’s sickened by more – the fact that he’s trapped in a world of inescapable decay, or the army of lice that has proliferated on his filthy scalp. He adjusts his suitcase beneath his bent knees and breathes through his mouth to avoid the appalling, fetid smell of death and rot. After a moment there is a tap on his shoulder. The communal water tin has reached him. He sighs, dips his bread in the putrid water and passes the tin to Herta. She takes a small sip and hands it to the body to her right.

  ‘It’s disgusting,’ Herta whispers, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand.

  ‘It’s all we’ve got. We’ll die without it.’

  ‘Not the water. The rest of it. All of it.’

  Genek reaches for Herta’s hand. ‘I know. We just need to get off this train, and then we’ll manage. We’ll be okay.’ In the darkness, he can feel Herta’s eyes on him.

  ‘Will we?’

  A rush of guilt, now familiar, surges through him when Genek considers the fact that it is he who is responsible for their being here. Had he thought for a moment about the potential consequences of denying Soviet citizenship – had he willingly checked the box on the questionnaire that fateful day – things would be different. They would in all likelihood still be in Lvov. He rests his head against the wall of the train car behind him. It seemed so obvious at the time. It would have felt like a betrayal to give up his Polish citizenship. Herta swears that she wouldn’t have declared allegiance to the Soviets either, that she’d have done the same had she been in his shoes, but oh, if he could only turn back time.

  ‘We will,’ Genek nods, swallowing his remorse. Wherever they are headed, it has to be better than the train. ‘We will,’ he repeats, wishing for some fresh air. Some clarity. He closes his eyes, tormented by the sense of powerlessness that has settled inside him like a fistful of rocks since they boarded the train. He hates it. But what is there to do? His wit, his charm, his looks – the things he’s relied upon all of his life to talk his way out of trouble – what good will they do him now? The one time he’d smiled at a guard, thinking he might win him over with niceties, the louse had threatened to punch in his pretty-boy face.

  There has to be a way out. Genek’s stomach turns and he is struck suddenly by an impulse to pray. He’s not a pious person, certainly hasn’t spent much time in prayer, hasn’t seen the point of it, really. But he’s also not used to feeling so vulnerable. If there were ever a time to ask for help, he decides, it’s now. It can’t hurt.

  And so, Genek prays. He prays for their month-long exodus to reach its end; for a livable situation once they are allowed off the train; for his health and for Herta’s; for his parents’ safety, for his siblings’ safety, especially his brother Addy’s, whom he hasn’t seen in well over a year. He prays for the day when he can be together again with his family. If the war is over soon, he fantasises, perhaps he’ll see them in October, for Rosh Hashanah. How sweet it would be to start the Jewish New Year together.

  Genek silently repeats his pleas, over and over again, until someone in the car begins to sing. An anthem: ‘Boże, coś Polskę’. God save Poland. Others join, and the singing grows louder. As the words reverberate through the dark, dank car, Genek sings along quietly. Please, God, protect Poland. Protect us. Protect our families. Please.

  NOVEMBER 1939–JUNE 1941: Over one million Polish men, women, and children are deported by the Red Army to Siberia, Kazakhstan, and Soviet Asia, where they face hard physical labour, squalid living conditions, harsh climate extremes, disease, and starvation. They die by the thousands.

  SEPTEMBER 7, 1940: The London Blitz. For fifty-seven consecutive nights, German planes drop bombs on the British capital. The Luftwaffe’s aerial attacks extend to fifteen other British cities over thirty-seven weeks. Refusing to capitulate, Churchill orders the Royal Air Force to maintain a relentless counter-attack.

  SEPTEMBER 27, 1940: Germany, Italy, and Japan sign the Tripartite Pact, forming an Axis alliance.

  OCTOBER 3, 1940: The Vichy government of France issues a law, the Statut des Juifs, abolishing the civil rights of Jews living in France.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Addy

  Vichy, France ~ December 1940

  Addy paces along the sidewalk before the stepped entranceway of the Hôtel du Parc. It’s not yet eight in the morning but he is charged, every fibre of his body alive with nervous energy. He should have eaten something, he realises, shaking off the cold as he walks. It has already begun to feel like one of the coldest winters ever in France.

  A suited man with close-cropped blonde hair emerges from the hotel and Addy pauses for a moment, recalling the most recent photo of Souza Dantas he’d seen in the paper. Not him. Luis Martins de Souza Dantas, Brazil’s ambassador to France, is dark haired with broad features. He’s heavier set. Addy has spent the past month learning everything he can about him. From what he’s gleaned, the ambassador is a popular man. He is especially adored in Paris, where his name carries somewhat of a celebrity status in the city’s elite social and political circles. Souza Dantas was relocated from Paris to Vichy when France fell to Germany in June – he and a handful of other ambassadors from Axis-friendly powers: the Soviet Union, Italy, Japan, Hungary, Romania, Slovakia. His new office is on the Boulevard des États-Unis, but Addy has heard rumours that he sleeps at the Hôtel du Parc – and that he’s been quietly, and illegally, issuing Jews visas to Brazil.

  Addy checks his watch; it’s almost eight. The embassy will open soon. He exhales through the corners of his mouth as he contemplates the consequence of his plan not working. What then? As much as it pains him to admit it, returning to Poland is out of the question. With France in the hands of the Nazis, not only is a transit visa impossible to acquire, the idea of staying put seems impossible, too. There is no safe future for him in Axis-controlled Europe.

  Addy had thought twice about applying for a Brazilian visa, as Brazil’s quasi-fascist dictator, Getúlio Vargas, was said to be sympathetic to the Nazi regime. But he had already been denied visas to Venezuela, to Argentina, and, after waiting for two days in a line that stretched around the American embassy’s block, to the United States. He is running out of options.

  Of course, fleeing to Brazil would mean putting the distance of an ocean between Addy and his family – the thought of which torments him to no end. It’s been thirteen months since he last heard from his mother in Radom. He wonders often if any of his letters have reached her, if she would feel hurt or betrayed to learn of his plan to leave Europe. No. Of course not, he assures himself. His mother would want him to get out while he can. And anyway, he will be no less reachable in Brazil than he has been for the past several months in France. Still, to leave without the peace of mind of knowing that his parents and siblings are safe, without their knowing of his plan or how to contact him, feels wrong. To quiet his conscience, Addy reminds himself that if he’s able to secure a visa – and thanks to it, a more permanent address – he can put all of his energy into tracking down the family once he’s settled somewhere safe.

  If only procuring a Brazilian visa were an easier task. His first attempt was a failure. He’d waited at the Brazilian embassy for ten hours in the freezing rain, he and dozens of others desperately seeking permission to sail for Rio, only to be told apologetically by one of Souza Dantas’s staffers that there were no visas left to issue. He’d returned to his hostel and spent the n
ext several evenings lying awake, mulling over how he might convince the young woman to make an exception, but he could see it in her eyes – nothing could make her break the rules. He would have to appeal to the person above her, to the ambassador himself.

  Addy rehearses his plea, feeling in his pocket for his paperwork – a certificate from the Polish Embassy in Toulouse allowing him permission to emigrate to Brazil, if Brazil deemed him worthy of a visa. ‘Monsieur Souza Dantas, je m’appelle Addy Kurc,’ he recites under his breath, wishing he could converse in the ambassador’s native Portuguese. ‘Plaisir de vous rencontrer. You are an extremely busy man, but if you would allow me a moment of your time, I’d like to tell you why it is in your best interest to grant me a visa to your beautiful country.’ Too forward? No, he must be forward. Otherwise, why would Souza Dantas offer him the time of day? If he could just explain his degree, his experience in electrical engineering, the ambassador would take him seriously. Brazil was a developing country – they must need engineers.

  Adjusting his scarf between the lapels of his overcoat, Addy catches his reflection in one of the hotel’s ground-floor windows, his trepidation momentarily quelled as he studies himself as if through the ambassador’s eyes. He looks sharp, put together, professional. The suit was the right call, he decides. Addy had thought about wearing his army uniform, which he carries with him wherever he goes. Bearing the respectable triple stripes of a sergent-chef, a promotion he’d earned shortly after arriving in Colombey-les-Belles, his military attire often comes in handy – he wears it sometimes beneath his civilian attire, on the chance that he might need to change quickly. But he is himself, and more confident, in his suit. Besides, if he’d worn his uniform, he’d have risked Souza Dantas asking how and when he’d been demobilised. And technically, he hadn’t been.

  For Addy, the process of leaving the army transpired quickly and unconventionally. He got out shortly after France capitulated and Germany ordered all but a few units of the French Army discharged. Those that remained fell under German rule. He would have waited for his official demobilisation papers but discovered that, with the implementation of Hitler’s recent Statut des Juifs, France’s Jews were being stripped of their rights, arrested, and deported by the thousands. And so, rather than await arrest, Addy had borrowed a typewriter and a friend’s demobilisation papers as reference and forged a document for himself – a dangerous move, but he’d sensed he was running low on time. So far, thankfully, his papers have worked. No one has taken much care in looking at them – not his platoon leader, not the agent at the Bureau Polonais in Toulouse where he’d requested permission to emigrate from Poland, not the driver of the French military truck aboard which he’d hitched a ride to Vichy. Still, he doesn’t have any interest in pressing his luck with Souza Dantas.

  Addy snaps to attention at the sound of footsteps on the stairs above him. He turns to see a broad-faced and even broader-shouldered gentleman approaching and can tell in an instant – it’s him. Souza Dantas. Everything about the man is straightforward and unassuming: his pressed navy slacks and wool overcoat, his leather briefcase, even his stride is efficient, businesslike. Addy’s heart floods with adrenaline. He clears his throat. ‘Senhor Souza Dantas,’ he calls, greeting the ambassador at the bottom of the stairs with a strong handshake and silencing the voice in his head reminding him that his request for a Brazilian visa has already been turned down. That no one else will take him. That this plan, it has to work; it’s his only option. Stay calm, Addy reminds himself. This man may be the most important person in your life at the moment, but you mustn’t seem desperate. Just be yourself.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Halina

  The Bug River,

  Between German- and Soviet-Occupied Poland ~ January 1941

  Halina gathers up the tail of her woollen overcoat and plunges a stick into the water, inching toward the Bug River’s opposite bank. The frigid water purls around her knees and tugs at her trousers. Pausing, she glances over her shoulder. It’s past midnight, but the moon, full and round as a szarlotka pie, might as well be a spotlight in the cloudless night sky; she can see her cousin Franka perfectly. ‘Are you sure you’re all right?’ she asks, shivering. Franka’s freckled face is pinched with concentration. She moves slowly, one arm outstretched for balance, the other hooked through the willow handle of a wicker basket held snug to her side.

  ‘I’m fine.’

  Halina had offered to carry the basket, but Franka insisted. ‘You go ahead,’ she’d said, ‘feel for holes.’

  It’s not the basket itself Halina is worried about. It’s the money inside. They’d wrapped their fifty zloty in a panel of waxed canvas and slipped it through a small hole in the basket’s lining where they hoped it would remain safe, and hidden, should they be searched. Leaning into the current, Halina thinks about how, before the war, fifty zloty was nothing. A new silk scarf, perhaps. An evening at the Grand Theatre in Warsaw. Now, it’s a week’s worth of meals, a train ticket, a way out of jail. Now, it’s a lifeline. Halina stamps her stick into the riverbed and takes another tentative step, the blue-white reflection of the moon pooling and dancing around her.

  In his letters, Adam continued to promise she’d be better off in Lvov, that life under the Soviets wasn’t nearly as bad as life in Radom under the Germans as she’d described it. Halina knew he was right. She hated living in the cramped little flat in the Old Quarter, where Mila and Felicia slept in one bedroom, her parents in the other, and she on a too-small settee in the living room. She loathed the fact that there was no icebox, and that they often went days without running water. They were constantly stepping on each other’s toes. And to make matters worse, the Wehrmacht had begun roping off sections of the neighbourhood. They hadn’t come out and said it yet, but they were building a ghetto. A prison. Soon, the city’s Jews would be completely segregated from the non-Jews. According to Isaac, a friend in the Jewish Police, they’d already done the same in Lublin, Kraków, and Łódź. Radom’s Jews were still allowed to come and go from the Old Quarter, but everyone knew it was only a matter of time before the ropes would be replaced with walls, and the neighbourhood would be sealed.

  ‘Come to Lvov and we’ll start over,’ Adam wrote. ‘Bella found a way. You will too. And then we’ll bring your parents, and Mila.’ Start over. It sounded promising, even romantic, despite the circumstances. Halina was sure now that she and Adam would soon be married. She was also certain, however, that her conscience wouldn’t let her desert her parents and sister in Radom, however uncomfortable the living conditions might be.

  For weeks Halina told herself that Lvov was out of the question. But that changed when she received a letter from Adam, asking her to meet a colleague at the steps of Radom Czachowski Mausoleum at a particular time on a particular day. She’d gone with a quiver in her gut, and it was then that she learnt that Adam had been recruited to the Underground. ‘He’s already earned a reputation as the best counterfeiter in Lvov,’ his colleague said – he hadn’t offered his name, and Halina never asked. ‘He wanted you to know, and asked that you come to Lvov. I think the trip would be worth your while,’ he’d added, before disappearing down Kościelna Street. This must have been the ‘news’ Adam mentioned, which of course he couldn’t share in writing. It didn’t surprise Halina. Adam was the most meticulous person she’d ever met. Flawless, she remembered thinking, when he first showed her one of his architectural drawings – a rendering of a railroad station lobby. His lines were clean and modern, his aesthetic perfectly practical. ‘I try to design “free of untruths”,’ he’d said, quoting the famed modernist, and his idol, Walter Gropius.

  With this news, Halina decided she would go to Lvov. She would have made the journey alone, but her cousin Franka wouldn’t allow it. ‘I’m coming with you,’ she declared, ‘whether you want me to or not.’ Their parents were fearful about the journey, understandably so. According to Jakob’s letters, her brother Genek had disappeared from Lvov one night at the
end of June. Selim was still nowhere to be found. Radom was miserable, her parents admitted, but at least they were together, and accounted for. And anyway, with Jewish civilian travel illegal – punishable by death according to the decree – it seemed far too risky. But Halina vowed to find a way to get to Lvov safely, and promised she wouldn’t stay long. ‘Adam says he can get me a job,’ she said. ‘I’ll return to Radom in a few months with enough cash and ID cards to help us breathe a little easier. And with Adam’s help,’ she added, ‘I might be able to find some answers about what’s happened to Genek and Herta, and to Selim.’ Once Halina had made up her mind to go, Sol and Nechuma acquiesced; there wasn’t any point in trying to sway her otherwise.