Chapter 6 Dorotha #2
Had she said it, or Anne? Or maybe she had only thought it?
The cart turned a corner, and they were gone.
Dorotha doubled over and vomited onto the floor.
In that moment, she wanted to die. She could not live in this world any longer.
For there was not enough room in the world for her grief and pain.
The third anniversary of the war had brought its most savage, sadistic blow yet.
Her thoughts travelled to Joyce and the Secret Society of Librarians.
Would they ever believe that human beings could be capable of doing such things to other humans?
The round-ups went on for another seven days, until 12 September 1942. All week long, the ghetto was filled with the sound of screams, gunshots, barking and the knock of rifle butts battering doors, always with the same order. ‘Alle Juden raus!’ All Jews out.
Neither Ruth, nor her mother, could stop Dorotha from breaking curfew every night to slip out and observe the catastrophes.
Selection. Such a bland, dry word for the visceral horrors she witnessed with her own eyes.
The fifteen-year-old boy caught hiding in a dustbin in Zgierska Street, dragged out and executed.
An old rheumatic woman, stumbling on swollen legs, gunned down.
A stampede when the Kripo opened fire on a crowd.
It seemed that, aside from the young and the old, outward appearance was the deciding factor on whether someone was selected.
When dusk finally fell on the eighth day, Dorotha guessed that many thousands of Jewish souls had been stolen from the ghetto, leaving behind a shrieking vacuum of grief and pain.
On the morning the curfew ended and they were ordered back to work, Ruth and her mother could hardly hide their dismay. Dorotha’s dark hair had turned white overnight.
‘It’s shock,’ said Mrs Mordkowicz, tying her headscarf around Dorotha’s head and knotting it under her chin.
‘I don’t care,’ she said, unknotting the headscarf and looking down with bland detachment at the dry white hair that fell over her shoulders. For truly, she didn’t. With Mama and Papa gone, what did anything matter any more?
‘Come,’ said Ruth gently, ‘we’d better leave for work.’
‘I’ll catch you up,’ she murmured, needing to be alone.
Ten minutes later, Dorotha walked to the footbridge.
She didn’t look into anyone’s eyes on the way.
But then no one looked at her either. The soul had been sucked from the ghetto.
There was no one left under ten years old or over sixty-five.
Apart from the chairman, she thought bitterly.
With all the children and elderly gone, who was there to care for?
What reason did any of them have to live?
It was six a.m., and the loudspeakers were blaring in the squares, directing them to work. The Nazi work machine would surely be ramped up even more with all the ‘useless mouths’ gone.
Pale shadow-people trudged past her. Eyes sunken. Backs hunched. Faces withered. No one was ever really alone in the ghetto. They all walked with ghosts. The souls of the departed were at every turning and window.
At the top of the bridge, Dorotha stopped and scanned the horizon. All the chimneys of ?ód? rose up through the early morning mist, pumping plumes of smoke into the ghetto cauldron. The sky was a bilious, greasy grey.
Another day of remorseless Nazi industry. Where was the rest of the world? What had happened to civilisation? Was the free world aware of their suffering?
The ghetto was sealed by barbed wire and guarded by Germans with machine guns, but yet, the Polish population could see in, past the wire and up at the footbridges that crossed their side of the city.
They were like animals in a cage, their suffering on show, so where was the resistance?
Perhaps the Allies had brokered peace with Hitler?
If so, what would happen to the Jews in Britain? Her sister?
Dorotha’s mind took her cruelly to her life before the invasion.
She remembered the weekly book club she had hosted at the library with Ruth, not five kilometres from here.
The delicious dark chocolate cake her Mama baked so Dorotha could bring it for colleagues’ birthdays.
Sharing platters of pierogi and cups of lemon tea in smoky cafés after work with friends, picking mushrooms and berries with Adela in the woods.
Dorotha longed for food, books, newspapers, music, birdsong, hiking in the woods, laughter and the sanctuary of the library, for the chance to say goodbye and thank you to Joyce and the Secret Society of Librarians. But most of all, she wished she could have one last hug from her mother.
Out of a morbid sense of curiosity, Dorotha placed a foot up on the wooden rail of the footbridge and tried to harness what little strength she had left.
All she had to do was hoist one leg over.
What would it feel like? It was a cleaner, neater ending than going to the wire.
She had seen a woman only yesterday touching the forbidden perimeter fence, begging to be shot.
The soldier had crossed his arms and laughed.
‘Please don’t . . .’ The voice was soft but determined. Dorotha knew without turning.
‘I told you to go to work,’ she said. ‘They’ll arrest you if you don’t show up soon.’
‘I don’t care. I’m not leaving this bridge without you.’
‘You’re a stubborn mule, Ruth Mordkowicz,’ she replied angrily.
‘Yes, well, I learnt from the best.’ A strange noise sounded, and to her surprise, Dorotha realised Ruth was laughing.
‘Remember that time old Mr Levine complained that children’s story times were too noisy, so you bought him a pair of earmuffs?’
Dorotha sifted through the rubble of her memories for the glimmer of gold.
‘Or the time you got a petition up to allow Mrs Kotwinski back into the library?’ Ruth added, throwing her another lifeline.
‘I know what you’re doing, and it won’t work. I have nothing to live for now.’
She felt Ruth’s hand on her shoulder, and she flinched.
‘Just try one more day.’
‘What for? I don’t even know who I am any more.’
Ruth said nothing, but Dorotha felt her arm snake around her waist, gently pulling her back from the edge.
Tears finally formed, hot and painful, sliding down her cheeks, choking her throat. ‘I’m no longer a daughter,’ she wept. ‘Or a granddaughter. I’ll probably never be a wife or a mother. I don’t even know if I’m a sister any more. I’m certainly not a librarian any longer. So again, who am I?’
Ruth turned her around, and she didn’t resist. Gently, she cupped her face in her cold hands.
‘My dear friend. You are all of those things now,’ she whispered. ‘You carry the memory of your family now. You are the keeper of their memories.’
She groped into her pocket and pulled out a tattered black rag.
‘This is the bottom of your mother’s dress which she wrapped round my mother’s skirt to prevent it from falling down.
It likely saved her life.’ She tucked the rag in Dorotha’s pocket.
‘It is sacred to us. The physical embodiment of her strength. Take it. Draw on your mama’s strength. ’
Dorotha shook her head, but Ruth went on, her soft caramel eyes beseeching her.
‘Don’t you see? You have to survive in order to keep the Berkowicz name in existence. It’s what your mother asked of you.’
‘I don’t have the strength.’
‘I think you do. If you don’t survive, who will speak of them, who will say their names and tell their stories? They will die twice. And that is precisely what the Nazis want.’
Silence fell over the footbridge, and Dorotha reached into her pocket and felt the fabric brush her fingers.
‘Mama and I love you like you are our own,’ Ruth implored. ‘And you have friends waiting for you. The Secret Society of Librarians. I peeked over your shoulder once and saw you writing to them.’
‘You’re as nosy as you are stubborn, Ruth Mordkowicz,’ Dorotha scolded.
‘Perhaps. What would this Secret Society say to you?’
Dorotha allowed her mind to travel to the women she loved so much. Their heated debates down the pub after summer school, the way they could disagree but always respect one another’s opinion. Evelyn’s homemade gin and fiery orations. Joyce’s unwavering belief in her.
‘They would tell me that hate and bigotry must never be allowed to win.’
‘There now. That’s the woman I love. Come. Or else we’ll be even later.’
A sudden flame of sunlight broke through the morning mist, illuminating Dorotha’s white hair like a silver halo. Ruth knew a sliver of hope, no matter how fragile, was all that was needed to keep her friend alive another day.
She took Dorotha’s hand, laced her fingers through hers, and led her off the bridge.
The two friends walked down the steps slowly, arm in arm.
‘Just one more day,’ Dorotha muttered.
After arriving at the Department of Vital Statistics, Mr Weiss took one look at Dorotha and folded her in his arms. No words were needed. They had both suffered unimaginable losses.
When they pulled apart, Dorotha asked, ‘Where have they been taken?’
‘No one can say for sure.’
‘But you have an idea. Come on. Don’t treat me like a fool.’
Dorotha suspected that Mr Weiss was connected to the resistance in the ghetto. If there was any information, he would know.
‘You’re a long way from that,’ he sighed, pushing back a strand of his hair. He can’t have been much older than Dorotha, and like her, his hair was now turning grey.
‘There are rumours . . .’ He broke off, and she could see him struggling to find the right words.
‘Don’t sugar-coat it!’
‘There’s a camp in Che?mno on the River Ner, thirty-five miles north from here. The Germans have renamed it Kulmhof. They have hermetically sealed, specially adapted trucks, which they fill with gas fumes.’
‘Gas,’ she breathed, and he nodded.
‘So that is how they are killing our people,’ she said.
‘That and mass shootings.’
She held on to the side of his desk for support. ‘So that is our fate.’
‘Not yet,’ Mr Weiss replied. ‘Hitler might want to make Europe judenfrei, free of Jews.’ He shuddered at the hateful word. ‘But for now, we who are left behind are too valuable to them.’
‘How? she murmured.
‘There are close to two hundred factories in the ghetto now,’ he explained. ‘Ninety per cent of production is for the Wehrmacht. German department stores place most of the rest of the orders.’
His face twisted. ‘Our slave labour is making a fortune for the Reich. They’re bringing in cranes, new machinery, large-scale orders are flooding in from military administration.
They want one million more pairs of straw boots for the Wehrmacht.
Working hours are to be extended from seven a.m. to eight p.m.’
‘So, our deaths have been suspended!’ she surmised.
Mr Weiss nodded. ‘That’s what I believe. But, as always, we are ignorant to the world outside our cage.’
‘Thank you, Mr Weiss,’ she replied. ‘Like I used to say to my patrons in the library, “knowledge is power”.’
He reached over his desk for a piece of paper and handed it to her.
‘Talking of the library. This is a list of vacant properties in the ghetto. Administration have demanded a typed list. They’re doing inspections in the coming days to make sure nothing is left behind.’
Mr Weiss let the words hang in the air, and Dorotha knew exactly what he meant. The Nazis would be turning these places over to make sure no one was hiding in basements or attics.
His voice was casually light. ‘If you wanted to make a duplicate copy and perhaps clear out any books left behind, then I’m sure you can put them to good use. There’s a small stationery cupboard. And it just so happens, very few people know of its existence.’
Dorotha opened her mouth to try and understand what he was asking of her, but he shook his head imperceptibly.
‘If anyone asks, I shall deny knowledge,’ he whispered. ‘I can’t risk the work of the Chronicle.’
Dorotha nodded. ‘I see. Thank you, Mr Weiss.’
She turned to leave his office, but he touched her hand, pulling her back for a moment. Just long enough to slip a small key into her hand.
‘You’re a librarian, Dorotha, not a prisoner. Do what you can to keep hope alive.’
At her desk, she felt altered. Still broken-hearted, but now with a heat building inside her.
Her cold, brittle heart was burning red-hot, like a sword that had been tempered to its toughest point.
She reached into her pocket, pulled out the length of fabric and used it to tie back her hair, as if embroidering her mother’s strength, dignity and grace into her very being.
Dorotha glanced down at the list of addresses in front of her. She knew what she must do. It was audacious and seditious, to say nothing of utterly reckless to even contemplate such a thing right under the noses of the Nazis. But with all her family gone, it was a risk she was prepared to take.
The Secret Society’s vow whispered urgently in her ear. If people can’t get to the books, we take books to the people.
In that moment, she felt her sisterhood of librarians, as close as if they were standing next to her.
‘Very well, my friends,’ she thought to herself. ‘I will do it. I will start my underground library.’