Chapter 18
Dorotha
‘Libertatem per Lectio’
It’s over. The ghetto’s been liquidated.
Friends, this is my last bulletin. I now have to hide my letters to you.
It remains my best hope that they’ll survive the war and live to tell my story, if I do not.
There is so much to say and yet I do not have the strength to write more.
I must save my energy for the fight that lies ahead.
Aside from my ghetto library, your friendships are amongst my proudest achievements.
I consign my notebook to the secret room behind my library and hope that whoever finds it will treat it with care.
Our aim was to deliver books to people, when people could no longer get to the books.
At least I can say I delivered on that promise.
Freedom through reading.
Forever, your Dorotha x
The ghetto’s days were numbered. Dorotha had the most profound sensation of being alone on the cusp of an apocalypse. Twelve days after Ruth, her mother and Oscar left, announcements were posted around the ghetto, signed by the chairman.
JEWS OF THE GHETTO
COME TO YOUR SENSES!!
VOLUNTEER FOR THE TRANSPORTS.
ONLY THOSE WHO REPORT VOLUNTARILY HAVE THE ASSURANCE THAT THEY WILL GO WITH THEIR FAMILIES AND BE ABLE TO TAKE LUGGAGE.
I ADVISE YOU TO REPORT TONIGHT TO THE CENTRAL PRISON OR AT THE ASSEMBLY CENTRE ON 3 KRAWIECKA STREET.
MORDECHAI CHAIM RUMKOWSKI
ELDEST OF THE JEWS
15 AUGUST 1944
And so, day by day, person by person, the once overcrowded ghetto city emptied.
It was an eerie feeling being more or less alone in a deserted city, the streets so still it was as if the plague or cholera had struck.
The ghetto had always been such a polyglot of tongues, but now there were no more Hebrew, Polish, Yiddish or German voices drifting up the narrow streets. It was deeply unsettling.
Dorotha saw the faces of Ruth and Oscar at every empty window, intensifying her loneliness.
On 20 August, she reported for her work duty as part of the Raumungskommando. She was terrified leaving Gabriele every morning, but what could she do? Her only hope was that – as she was officially on the register to remain, or rather Ruth’s name was – her room would be left alone.
The sun beat down relentlessly as the group of remaining prisoners were marched through the streets under armed guard. Dorotha had given her bread ration to Gabriele that morning and her empty stomach ached.
Suddenly, she was hit by a wave of hunger and exhaustion so powerful she stumbled sideways.
Panic stabbed as what little strength she had left drained from her body.
She could have happily lain down in the street and given up, were it not for the thought of that little girl, sitting alone in that miserable room, waiting for her to come home.
A gentle voice sounded. ‘Just breathe. I have you.’ The prisoner next to her gripped her arm and held her steady.
‘Thank you,’ she whispered.
‘Nathan Rosenthal,’ said her saviour, holding out his hand. ‘I was a book binder from Kraków in my previous life.’
‘Dorotha . . . I mean Ruth Mordkowicz,’ she said, clumsily stumbling over her identity.
‘You have nothing to fear from me,’ he whispered. ‘I know you’re that girl with the books. You loaned my fiancée her favourite Vicki Baum books.’ He smiled and Dorotha felt her fogginess recede.
‘A trip to see you was always a good news day. And now I can repay the favour.’ He glanced around as they continued walking, before lowering his voice further.
‘Word on the street is that Paris has fallen. The Germans are finished in France, and soon, please God, Poland and Germany. We must stay strong for the final victory.’
As the news spread up the line of a dozen other prisoners, it had an astonishing effect. Dorotha clutched at the Allies’ progress, trying to hide her joy at such encouraging news, the first in a long time.
The August sun was ferocious and, by the time they arrived at Radegast station, a miasma of heat and fear shimmered over the tracks.
There were two trains idling at the station, one heading out and being loaded with the last transports, and one that had just returned.
The Kripo thug guarding them pointed to the platform with the empty train, where pails of water and scrubbing brushes sat inside the doors to the wagons.
‘What are you waiting for, verfluchter Juden!’ he screamed, unleashing his whip. It sliced into the side of Nathan’s cheek, causing him to stagger back. ‘Clean!’
Unsteadily, they climbed up inside the fetid heat of the empty wagons. Dorotha helped Nathan inside. ‘Are you all right?’ she whispered, seeing the blood trickling down his cheek.
‘I’ll get my revenge for this,’ he muttered, wiping the blood away with his sleeve. ‘On Biebow and every Nazi who has ever tormented us.’
Their eyes adjusted to the gloom, and then the stench assailed them.
Faeces, urine and the darker smell of fear was engrained into every nook and cranny of the wagon.
There were no windows, only tiny slats in the sides which let in a puff of hot air.
She could scarcely imagine the fear when those steel doors slid shut, trapping prisoners inside.
Was this the wagon that had transported Oscar, Ruth and her mother on their journey, and perhaps her parents?
Where did these wagons go to? Was it a work camp in the Reich with better conditions?
How desperately she wanted to believe it.
But her instincts were screaming otherwise.
For the next hour, they scrubbed, trying to ignore the blistering heat and the cries and commotion on the other side of the platform, as the Germans loaded prisoners onto the wagons.
‘Look,’ said Nathan, his face pressed to the slit in the side of the cart.
She and the other prisoners stopped what they were doing and looked out.
On the other side of the tracks, Dorotha made out the shock of white hair. The chairman was being loaded into a wagon with the rest of his family. A whistle sounded and the wagon started rolling, armed guards stationed on the roof.
‘So the king has fallen,’ Nathan breathed. ‘He imagined himself as some sort of hero in Jewish history.’
‘Let’s see what reception he gets when he arrives at whatever lies at the end of those tracks,’ another prisoner muttered ominously.
Back and forth the prisoners went, with opposing opinions on whether Rumkowski was a saint or a sinner, but Dorotha wasn’t listening. While gripping the side of the cart, her fingers had brushed against something.
‘What’s this?’ she murmured, pulling out a rolled-up piece of paper from a crack and unfolding it.
The grubby piece of paper was no bigger than an envelope and the writing was small.
‘Read it out loud,’ Nathan demanded.
‘Piekary, Barkenheim, Gross Dombrowka, Krolewska-Huta . . . It’s a list of stations, I think.’
‘Keep reading,’ Nathan urged.
‘Auschwitz . . . Signed Rachel Bohm.’ Dorotha stated. She turned the paper over but no more was written. ‘I think that was the end of the line. Auschwitz,’ she said, looking around the group of prisoners inside the wagon. ‘Is that in Germany?’
‘Auschwitz is the German name for O?wi?cim, a town in Upper Silesia, Poland,’ Nathan replied.
‘So they lied,’ she snorted. ‘No surprise there. What is this Au . . .’ she stumbled over the name. ‘Auschwitz place?’
Nathan’s eyes fell to the floor, the livid red welt like a tear streaked down his cheek.
‘Believe me, my friend, you do not want to know what I’ve heard.’
That evening, when Dorotha got home from the day’s work, filthy, starving, and more exhausted than she had ever been in her life, she was surprised to find that Gabriele had prepared a meal for them.
‘Look. I’ve made beet soup,’ she exclaimed, stirring a small pot of soup over the tiny stove.
Dorotha stared in amazement, not just at her ingenuity but also the child’s power of recovery.
Just over three weeks on from Gabriele’s hospitalisation, she was so much stronger, and already her red hair was growing back, soft and downy.
The medication Dr Mostowicz had managed to get her was clearly doing its job.
She thanked God for the resilience of her small companion and the care of the heroic doctor.
‘And here’s me thinking I had to look after you,’ Dorotha said, managing a small smile.
This wasn’t the first occasion either. Each day, Dorotha would bring home her meagre rations and Gabriele rustled up something from nothing. Placki, pancakes made from potato peelings. Kleyselakh dumplings, made from more peelings and mixed with ground acorns and ersatz coffee.
‘You have an alchemist’s gift,’ Dorotha smiled, stifling a yawn as she sipped her soup.
‘Mrs Mordkowicz taught me to cook and keep house.’
Dorotha had been so tired she hadn’t noticed the room when she came in. Gabriele had swept it clean, made the bed, and attempted to clean the cracked windows with old newspaper.
‘One day, I’ll write a recipe book. One hundred and one things to do with a potato peel,’ Gabriele said brightly.
Dorotha burst out laughing, dribbling soup down her chin.
Gabriele joined in too, and soon the pair of them were in fits of giggles.
It was extraordinary, she thought, that they could laugh like this in the abyss.
That she could find such comfort in the company of a child.
Once their bowls and the pan had been washed in cold water and scrubbed with ash, they changed into tattered nightgowns and began their nightly ritual.
Some evenings, Dorotha would read to Gabriele.
But since she had started hard labour, Gabriele had begun to read to her instead.
The girl had read the ink off Emil and the Detectives and was now exploring more grown-up literature.
But her favourite evenings were when Gabriele made up stories.
Her creative brain was astonishing, and Dorotha often wondered whether being cooped up inside had watered an already fertile imagination.