Chapter 20
TWENTY
CURRENT DAY
Mys?owice, Poland
How far away are they taking us? How will I find my way back here?
“I don’t know where we’re going,” Elias whispers. “Do you?”
A displacement shelter down the road. That’s what Igor said. Down the road. That must mean not far away.
All I can focus on is the thought of Noah, beaten to a pulp.
The ride isn’t long. Tires are grinding against ice before I can come to terms with seeing Noah amid those awful soldiers.
We climb out of the truck to dark trees, snow covered branches, and a carved path leading to the door of a one-story stone building with tall, narrow windows and a heavy wooden door along the front.
A soldier walks ahead of us, steps inside the building, then exits before we even reach the door. “Go on,” he says.
We walk inside, greeted by the smell of ink and body odor. A sign hangs haphazardly along the side wall, half of it blacked out with paint. The word “hall” is all I can make out. Town hall, I presume by the looks of it.
“I’m with the Red Cross,” a woman says, her Polish accent an unexpected relief. Her dark hair neatly curled beneath a crisp, creased cap, the rest of her clad in fatigues. She hands Avi a clipboard first. “It’s important we have correct information notated for you. Please be as clear as possible.”
Avi shakes her head and hands the clipboard to me. “No,” she says.
“I—I understand,” the woman says, peering at me then back at Avi. “We can keep your information private, but we’re under instruction to account for everyone we can with so many dead or missing.”
“Who has access to these records?” I ask.
“Civilians searching for family or loved ones.”
“The Soviets will have these lists in their hands in no time,” Avi mutters.
My husband is being held hostage in a German uniform.
Why…why would he be dressed like that? What reason could there be?
“Do you know which direction the train depot is from here?” I ask the woman.
“Train depot?” she replies, confusion weighing through her eyes.
“Where they’re holding the German prisoners,” I say.
Avi shoves her elbow into my arm. “What are you doing?” she grunts.
“Oh goodness. I wouldn’t know such a thing. I’m not from the area and those locations aren’t public information.”
I don’t even know how far they drove us, or from which direction. The road behind me is gone now.
The woman hands me the clipboard and I haphazardly scribble out my information, and hand the clipboard to Elias. “There’s a box to check if you don’t want your information released,” Elias tells Avi.
“No. Still,” she says.
The woman takes the clipboard from Elias and holds her smile firmly as if she’s afraid she’ll lose it. “Let me hand this off to the ladies filling paperwork and I’ll return to bring you to the registry table then get you dry clothes, a warm meal, and a cot.”
She leaves through a door in the corner but returns just as quickly to guide us down a long corridor with evenly distributed doors to what must have once been opened into offices.
The narrow space is lit with hanging bulbs every ten or twelve steps.
The wooden soles of our shoes echo between the concrete walls that feel like they’re shrinking in on us the farther we walk.
We finally turn a corner into a larger open space with doors opening off it—a view of occupants within each room.
There are many more people here than I expected.
Between the open doors is a table, occupied by two women with large ledgers sprawled in front of them.
“Right here is the registry table. These nice women will help you search for names of loved ones.”
The women study us for a moment, both with tired eyes and pinched smiles as they gently greet us. The woman on the left hands me a piece of paper and a pencil.
“Please write the names of who you are looking for.”
I press the tip of the pencil to the paper, but my hand won’t move. I know where Noah is and where he’ll be going in ten days from now, according to Igor. Instead, I scroll out my parents’ names, unsure if I’m prepared to hear the truth about them.
One of the women takes the paper from my hand and flips through the ledger and runs her fingertip down the length of the page. She stares at my piece of paper then back to the list, twice. “There’s no record of them, dear, but that doesn’t mean one won’t come in soon.”
“What does a record mean? That they’re dead or alive?” I ask, my voice monotone, lifeless.
“Both,” she says flatly.
* * *
The woman with the pinned smile who greeted us at the front door is escorting us down another corridor now. “We’ve just opened another room with cots. We have separate spaces for both male and female—”
“Could we stay together?” Avi asks, knowing Elias wouldn’t want to be separated from us.
“We aren’t supposed to—” She looks between the three of us, stopping herself from finishing what she was going to say.
“But if you’re most comfortable together that’s fine.
Other mixed families will arrive too, and we’ll add them to your room.
For now, you’ll be the first three.” She sweeps her arm toward door number twenty-four.
“Nurses will come by to check on you regularly. Food is available in the large hall to the left of where you entered the building.”
We walk into the small room; writing desks pushed to the walls with cots filling the remaining space.
Room for about twenty people. Each cot has a wool blanket, and a wrapped linen bundle tied with twine at the foot.
The windows are sealed by blankets but parted just enough to allow in some sunlight.
“Toilets and a washroom are two doors down on your right.”
“We aren’t staying long,” Avi says, not so much to the woman kind enough to show us to a place to sleep, but to herself. A mumble—a self-made promise to keep herself calm.
The Red Cross woman steps between the three of us.
“I understand you don’t want to be held anywhere else, but it’s in your best interest to allow our nurses to evaluate you.
You’ve been traveling without identification or papers, and while we all would like to say Poland is secure and safe, the war has yet to end. You are safe here for the time being.”
Safe. I’m sure that means something different for everyone who passes through this schoolhouse.
For me, it means waiting. I can’t keep moving forward, knowing Noah is alive and at that train depot, being kept there for the week until they’re moved to a train transport. The train could go anywhere, and it could leave without me ever finding out.
I won’t just be waiting. I’ll be thinking—wondering how it’s possible that Noah is alive, and not just alive, but being held captive as a German soldier in a German uniform. All this time, he’s been alive…
How could I not know?
What has he been doing?
Elias chooses the last cot in the first row closest to the windows, wasting no time in untying the twine around the linen bundle.
“If there’s anything I can help you with, I’ll be by the front door to help others as they arrive,” the woman says before leaving.
Avi takes the cot two down from Elias and places the linen bundle beneath. “I’m not changing my clothes.” Her huff of exasperation says enough. I think we’ve all learned not to argue with Avi.
Elias has already torn his shirt off and switched to the large pea-green linen shirt as he continues rifling through the rest of the pile.
I take the cot between the two of them and untie my bundle, eager to shed the wet smock I’ve been wearing for so long I wonder how the fabric hasn’t evaporated.
Elias wraps himself in his blanket and lowers himself to the cot, his back to Avi and me.
I change into the dry shirt, large enough to wear as a smock, then find a pair of men’s underwear and thick wool socks.
After discarding my wet clothes into a pile on the ground, I want nothing more than to lie down on the cot beneath the blanket and rest with my thoughts, questions, confusion, and…
relief. Whatever he’s done, he’s alive. Noah is alive.
Avi remains standing, unsettled, her thoughts weighing heavily on top of my own. She doesn’t even know I’ve seen Noah. That I’ve confirmed he hasn’t been some feverish illusion.
Was he sent to Auschwitz after I thought he was the one shot in the street? I was sure that was him. Maybe it was, and he somehow survived it… That image haunts me every time I’m in the dark. And I have done nothing more than grieve since that day three years ago.
Maybe he didn’t arrive at Auschwitz as a Jewish man. Maybe the Nazis believed his papers and conscripted him to join them.
Noah wouldn’t do that… But Noah also wouldn’t choose death, not if he thought he could somehow get back to me and his unborn child. Maybe he had no choice? Has he had years living in that uniform?
Before long, her cot creaks beneath her body, a sigh to follow. “Why would you want to go back to that train depot? I thought you said you wanted to survive this…” Avi mutters.
“I—I just—I feel like we’re being spun in circles and I don’t know…”
A knock on the door throttles my heart into my throat, and also saves me from explaining my reckless reason for wanting to go back to the train depot. “Hello, I’m one of the Red Cross nurses, Natalia. I’m here to examine you.” Her accent is a familiar inflection of Polish, like Avi’s.
She pushes in a small cart of medical supplies and leaves it at the foot of my cot, centered between the three of us.
“Avigal Danek,” the nurse says, questioning which of us is she.
Avigal. I didn’t know her full name and am surprised to know she listed it on the paper.
I sit up and peer at Avi’s back, her body curled into a ball. “Dear, you’re wet. Why didn’t you change into the dry shirt?”
“I’m not changing my clothes,” she says, more aggressively this time.
“I’m afraid I must insist. Staying in wet clothes for too long could lead to hypothermia among many other illnesses.”
“I’ve been wet for days. I would already be hypothermic.”