The War Girls: A WW2 Novel of Sisterhood and Survival

PROLOGUE TO WAR

In their blackest dreams, none of them could have foreseen what the future held. August 1939 was like other summers, with heat that rose from the streets, late summer roses, and smoky pink and red sunsets that faded into night—except for conversations filled with dread and the rumors of war.

Stefa and Janka had passed on Krochmalna Street in Warsaw countless times, but had never spoken. Stefa was a Jew and Janka a Catholic—the two did not mix readily. They knew each other by sight, as neighbors, with little in common. They were aware but oblivious, as distant as residents of the city and farmers in the Polish countryside.

Stefa had been told little about what was happening in Nazi Germany because her father didn’t want to upset her or the rest of the family, especially her mother. Most news about the war came from her impetuous younger brother.

Janka’s husband was nearly as silent, although she could tell that some part of him would welcome an impending war. The Nazis will do what they have to do, he cautioned, telling her to be ready for a great invasion. They would be ready, he said, to take advantage of the war—the winner taking the spoils.

Stefa’s older sister, Hanna, had left Warsaw in January to live in London. Unable to bear the constraints of her traditional family, she had deserted them to live with her mother’s sister and her husband. England was on edge, but Hanna tried to shun the forces that were moving in destructive patterns far beyond her control. She was happy to be free and living a life outside Warsaw.

None of them could have known what was about to happen. Only Hitler knew.

None of them could have known they would become the War Girls.

Upper Silesia, after 8 p.m. August 31st, 1939

Shoot him.

The SS officer nodded and looked at the Pole, Franciszek Honiok, who lay sprawled near the entrance to the radio station at Gleiwitz. Tall transmitting towers thrust into the sky on either side of the modest stone building like pillars embellishing the entrance to a temple.

One shot to the back of the head and Franz, as they had come to call him, would be dispatched to the netherworld of God’s choosing. In his drugged state, the Pole wouldn’t know the difference. In the hours after Franz’s arrest the day before, the SS men had grown to like him, banter with him, kid him about his Polish sympathies despite being a German national. What a pity that Franz would end up on the wrong side in the war. With one quick action of the trigger, it would all be over, and the world would learn how the Polish Nationalists had attacked a German radio station and beaten the employees in order to spread their message of anti-German hate. This event would lead to the justifiable death of Franz at the hands of the German protectors.

Before he fired his pistol, the officer had time to reflect upon the tactical blunders committed under Operation Himmler, the National Socialist excuse to annihilate Poland. If there’s the slightest provocation, I shall shatter Poland without warning into so many pieces that there will be nothing left to pick up, the Führer had said earlier in the month.

But the operation had not gone smoothly. The station was only a transmitter relay post, not a radio station. The SS agitators couldn’t find a microphone, and only an emergency channel was available for transmission of their short anti-German message. How many people would be listening? Not the hundreds of thousands the Führer had expected. Gleiwitz, a sleepy German town on a flat plain dotted with trees in the first blush of fall, would record perhaps the first death of the upcoming war.

Shoot him! The command echoed in the SS man’s head.

Franz, still sedated, moaned, shifted his leg, and lifted his groggy head. His eyes fluttered and then closed again.

The Nazi protector pulled the trigger. Franz’s body jerked as the bullet entered his brain, blood pooling around the wound then flowing down his face.

The local police took photos of the body, but Berlin wasn’t satisfied. One death wasn’t good enough for propaganda purposes. Even a second body and more photographs failed to convince the Gestapo that enough had been done to persuade the German public that Poland must fall to the Nazi war machine.

Wielun Illustration , Poland, 5:40 a.m. September 1st, 1939

Annoyed by the buzzing overhead, Tomasz pulled the wool blanket over him, turned, and snuggled into the warm cocoon of his bed. The room was dark, the solitary light bulb hanging from the ceiling switched off for the night. Sometime after midnight, he’d wet his fingers with spit and extinguished the wick of the small candle that he often lit to keep him company while he drifted off to sleep. The talk of war exchanged by his parents at supper had jangled his nerves and kept him awake. They whispered of a German battleship near Danzig; Nazi troops and tanks amassed at the Polish border.

Now, deep into the night, his parents slept in the room next to his on the second floor.

When he was lonely—for at eleven years of age he had no brothers or sisters—he would stare at the picture of the Virgin that his mother had hung on the wall across from his bed, as a reminder to be a good boy full of devotion, piety, and dutiful works. Sin was for the wicked. Evil men and women would spend eternity in Hell; however, God would look after and protect the devout. His mother had repeated this so often he could parrot her words as if they were inscribed in one of his schoolbooks.

The Virgin’s eyes always seemed to follow him no matter where he was in his room, especially if he was thinking of girls and their curious figures, so different from his.

He often wondered if Mary’s wounded heart, pierced by a sword and wrapped in white roses, pained her. Mostly, she looked serene swathed in her blue robes, the golden halo behind her head lighting her angelic face.

The buzzing grew louder, filling his ears. He threw off the blanket and sat up, straining to see the Virgin on the dark green wall. A brilliant flash of yellow light lit her image, followed by a thunderous boom that shook the house. Plaster and billows of dust fell from the ceiling onto his head and bedclothes.

His mother and father called out from their bedroom. What he heard wasn’t normal—their voices were high-pitched and frantic, laced with fear. His father, a craftsman, was never scared. Tomasz’s father had never expressed such a feeling, not even when he’d chopped off the end of a finger with a hatchet. It’s only blood and a little meat, his father said, wrapping the bleeding stub with a handkerchief.

He shoved off the blanket and planted his feet on the braided rug. More shock waves pounded the house, and, somewhere, from a distance not too far, came the sound of rapid gunfire and screams. Wondering if what he was hearing and seeing was a nightmare, he imagined he would wake up in a sweat and be safe in bed, as he had many times before when he’d eaten too much chocolate torte for his own good.

He sensed something bearing down upon him, the weight, the pressure, slicing through the atmosphere in a monstrous wave. It zoomed over his head and exploded with a deafening roar, and the house seemed to lift from its foundation and fall back to earth with a thud. Everything in the room bounced into the air and then fell, including the picture of the Virgin, whose protective glass and wood frame shattered on the floor. Tomasz found himself facedown on the rug, covered in chunks of plaster and stone. Blood trickled down his right arm and leg, but he stretched, moving them. That was a good sign.

"Mama . . . Tata . . ." They couldn’t hear his voice over the planes and explosions.

He pushed himself up from the floor and then realized that the room was tilted at a crazy angle. Only his bed had kept him from rolling toward the window that looked out upon the roof. He crawled up the angled floor to the bedroom door, opened it, and screamed. The rest of the house had been blown apart: the stairs lay in a jumbled mass four meters below, orange flames leaped up from what had been the kitchen, from his mother’s now-buried stove. He looked left, around the door to his parents’ bedroom and saw only empty space. The sky, barely visible through the smoke and haze, lay black with a meager dusting of stars.

He lurched toward his bed, fumbling over the splintered wood and stone, sliding over the mattress, which had come to rest against the wall near the window. Wrestling with the latch, he opened the frame, taking care not to cut his hand on the broken glass, and climbed out on the sloping roof. The drop from the eave to the village road winding below in the semidarkness was a few meters.

As he descended, he spotted the silvery-black outlines of planes circling the town. To his right, the hospital burned and bodies lay jumbled in the street, patients’ gowns spattered with dark patches upon white cloth. Low on the horizon, but approaching fast, a needlelike shape spat fire from its wings. Tomasz covered his head and flattened himself against the stone tiles. The plane roared over him and he heard the thunk, thunk, thunk of bullets whizzing past him, penetrating wherever they landed.

He had never seen such a weapon of the air before. He and his father had watched one day as a Polish biplane cut through a nearly cloudless sky, but he never imagined that creations so fast and fierce could slice through the heavens.

It was unwise to be on the roof. Tomasz slid down, his pajama top catching on one of the jagged tiles. Ripping the fabric free, grasping at anything to break his fall, he tumbled into the branches of a tree that had been shredded in half by the bomb and gingerly lowered himself to the ground.

The first haze of yellow crept up from the horizon, but the emerging light offered nothing to his eyes. He could see clearly from the fires burning around him.

His home had been dissected from the force of the blast. The roof had collapsed on his parents’ crumpled bedroom. The sudden shock of seeing the jumbled timbers and debris sent a wave of fear through his body. He called out again for his mother and father, but they didn’t answer.

Tomasz, Tomasz, come inside, get out of the open, a neighbor yelled through a broken window across the street.

Another explosion rocked his body so hard he thought his bones would slice like knives through his skin. The plane streaked over him, pulled up, and disappeared into a sky now growing lighter with the dawn.

He ran in his bloody pajamas away from the town center, away from the bombs and the planes that strafed anyone in the streets, taking shelter in a grove of trees until night fell. Then, he walked back to his home to find more destruction and the men and women of Wielu Illustration mourning the dead.

His neighbor told him that two hundred townspeople had been killed by Nazi bombs during the day, and his parents were among them.

He looked up at the stars and wept.

PART 1

CHAPTER 1

September 1st, 1939

When the bombs fell near Krochmalna Street in Warsaw, Izreal Majewski called for his family to take shelter under the heavy dining room table. He worried that his wife, Perla, who often succumbed to nerves, the news of war having already preyed upon her mind, might cry out and run into the street—not a safe place to be as far as he was concerned. Aaron, his son, would do just the opposite and fly to the window to watch the bombers.

Quickly, under the table, Izreal ordered, as the air-raid sirens droned their rise-and-fall song.

It won’t protect us from Nazi bombs, Aaron said. As Izreal suspected, his son, small for his twelve years, thin and lanky, his trousers cinched at the waist, his white shirt blossoming around him, bounded for the window.

Oh, God, why is this happening to us, Perla said, shuffling around the table, massaging her temples, her fingers extending toward the kerchief that covered her black hair. Where is Stefa? Where is that girl? And on Shabbos, they come to bomb us.

She’s gone for a walk, Izreal said, beckoning Aaron to step away from the window.

Grinning, Aaron looked over his shoulder. She’s gone to see her boyfriend.

Perla stopped and pointed at him. Never dishonor your sister by saying such things. Stefa holds a place in this family as an observant girl. She obeys the laws.

Izreal bent to his own curiosity, a trait he had instilled in his son, and stood in front of the window. The clouds hung low and gray over Warsaw, with occasional patches of blue sky that succumbed to the overcast as quickly as they appeared. The normally busy street had come to a standstill: Pedestrians stopped with their eyes to the sky; coachmens’ heads tilted upwards; automobile drivers had pulled over, doors open, their faces peering out the side window. Neighbors from the many tenement buildings that stretched down Krochmalna stood on their balconies or took refuge behind the fragile protection of glass.

Aaron bolted toward the small balcony that jutted out from their apartment on the top floor of their building. Izreal caught him by the arm and pushed him toward the table.

Go, Izreal said. I will see what’s happening.

Not fair, Aaron said, as his mother pulled him under the table with her.

Life is filled with injustice, Izreal shouted back while opening the double doors to the balcony. He stepped outside and put his hands on the wrought-iron railing that rose up to his waist. Above him, the stone-carved head of a smiling man looked down from the decorative turret of the fifty-year-old structure. A warm breeze struck him, ruffling the buttoned edges of his shirt and nearly lifting his yarmulke from his head.

He could hardly believe what he was seeing and hearing. Bombs were falling on the city. The explosions seemed far away, almost dreamlike, and the faint whir of the bombers sounded more like bees buzzing over spring flowers, but even he—an untrained civilian—could tell that the cloudy conditions had inhibited a prolonged bombing. Poland should get down on its knees and beseech God for rain—days and days of water turning roads to mud, halting the tanks, the artillery, and Hitler’s Wehrmacht—shielding the city from the bombers.

The Nazis were well aware of their military limitations on this day, he thought. If September was clear and warm, and the Polish Army was ineffective at repulsing a German advance, the month ahead would be hellish. Hitler had made it clear that he intended to crush Poland. Rain or no rain, the family had better be prepared. He hated to think about such an unimaginable situation: an educated, analytical mind torn from its focus on family and tradition.

Across the Vistula River, to the east, a blast vibrated through the air, followed by a rising column of grayish white smoke. He’d not seen the black speck of a falling bomb. The unannounced, invisible, utterly random hand of Death scared him and shook his confidence. However, he knew he needed to be strong for the sake of his son and wife.

He left the balcony and returned to the table to find Perla, her face flushed and her eyes red with tears, sitting beneath it across from Aaron, both huddled against its heavy oak legs. Their faces were barely visible through the airy handiwork of the lace tablecloth. Izreal got down on his knees and slid between them.

I’m worried about Stefa, Perla said, blowing her nose into a white handkerchief.

She’ll be fine and home soon, I’m sure. Izreal said. The bombing is erratic—not much of a threat.

Daniel will protect her. Aaron smiled and leaned back against the leg that supported his back.

You know this Daniel better than we do, child that you are, Perla said. I must talk to Stefa. She’s much too interested in this man—more than she should be. Her husband should come from our arrangement or not at all. She winced, apparently thinking of her daughter who had left Warsaw for the same reason.

Another bomb fell closer to Krochmalna and a shudder rippled through the building.

Who can think of marriage at a time like this? she asked. I’m glad, at least, that Hanna is safe in London, despite how it ripped my heart out to see her go. Now I worry that she’ll have nothing to come home to.

Izreal pretended not to hear his wife, wanting to scold her for even imagining the worst, but Perla had always been sensitive. He knew that from the moment he met her, when she had dared not even steal a look at him. She was prettier than he’d expected when they gathered at her family’s farm outside Warsaw, with her skin reddened by work outside, her body lean and taut. Her shy face caught the shadows from the ash trees circling the house, along with a play of sunlight flashing on her body. Despite Perla’s display of modesty in this arranged marriage, he knew that she and her family were proud of him—a mashgiach—an educated man who supervised the kashrus of a Warsaw restaurant, a man who gave blessings to the kosher slaughter of animals.

His profession and his wife’s homemaking skills had allowed them to build a family with only a few tragedies along the way: the stillbirth of a girl between Stefa and Aaron, and the departure of his eldest daughter, Hanna, who had left nine months ago to stay with relatives in London and never returned. But he didn’t want to concern himself with Hanna as the bombs were falling in Warsaw, other than to think that she was safe as war began. His eldest daughter had ripped out his heart as well, and she had not done it as neatly as he would have done when he was a younger man, a shochet—a butcher—at the slaughterhouse.

This is silly, Aaron said. If a bomb hits, it will go through the roof and blow up the building. We might as well get out from under this table.

Hush, Perla said, shaking her head. The young have no fear of death.

Aaron sighed.

Izreal lowered his head and twisted his legs under his torso. Sitting with his neck arched against the bottom of the table was uncomfortable, but at least it offered some protection should the ceiling crack. After ten minutes of agony, he was about to agree with his son’s suggestion to leave their shelter when the apartment door opened. Stefa had returned, her sturdy legs showing beneath her calf-length gray dress, her feet in the low-heeled black shoes that Perla had purchased for her.

Aaron held a finger to his lips.

Stefa called out for her parents, her voice rising in panic with each cry.

When she stepped too close to the table, Aaron reached from under the lace and grabbed his sister’s ankle.

Stefa screamed, hopping away in terror.

Laughing, Aaron slid from the under the table, across the polished oak floor, as his sister sank into a chair.

Got you!

Izreal and Perla poked their heads out from under the table.

You little brat! Stefa fanned her red cheeks with her hands, a sprig of light brown hair protruding from her kerchief fluttering in the breeze. I’ll kill you someday. She stopped, placing her hands over her mouth, thinking better of her words as the bombs continued to fall.

Izreal, his body cramping, crawled out from under the table. He stood up and checked for dust on his trousers and jacket, but found nothing, a testament to his wife’s immaculate housekeeping.

Perla followed her husband, apprehensively inspecting the ceiling, before chastising Stefa. At last you’re home. I was worried sick.

I feel safer outside than I do in here, Stefa said. On the street, I can run away.

You could never run as fast as Hanna. Aaron rested his head on his intertwined hands, his body stretched across the floor. How was Daniel?

Stefa sniffed. I took a walk—and even if I did see him, it would be no business of yours.

We must talk about this man, Perla said.

Stefa held up her hand. I know what you’re going to say, Mother, about arrangements and marriage rites, and what a woman must do for her husband. She looked down into her lap. But I’m not ready for marriage . . . and now the war seems to have begun.

Your mother and I will make the arrangements, Izreal said, judging his daughter’s discomfort. Stefa’s words led to his own uneasiness because they reminded him of Hanna and her self-imposed break from the family. Two daughters of like mind would bring him no comfort.

She stared at him, her hazel eyes flashing. "I did see Daniel today from across the street—me on one side, he on the other. He thinks I’m beautiful, and I think he’s handsome, and we like each other. Doesn’t that count for something?"

Izreal turned and looked across the tops of the buildings that lined Krochmalna, and the gray sky above. The family should remain firm and strong. Did it matter anymore? The war was real now—he could feel it in his bones, in his soul, and there was nothing anyone could do to stop it. He had little confidence that the Polish Army could match the German soldiers. Hitler had stopped his lies about amassing a Nazi war machine: the bombers, fighter planes, the millions of troops and armaments that he had ordered, as the world offered him appeasement gifts but still prayed that Germany would come to its senses.

Such thinking had been swiftly destroyed in one day—on the eve of Shabbos.

He had looked forward to eating the Sabbath meal, had always looked forward to Friday sunset and Perla’s lighting of the candles on the sideboard. He could smell the meal that she had already prepared: the baked chicken, the potatoes, the summer squash that would be served this evening, the cholent that would simmer overnight to be eaten at lunch on Saturday after synagogue.

Izreal looked back at his daughter, still sitting in the chair. She, sixteen years old, was the second child after Hanna, more pliable than her older sister, but used to getting what she wanted. She had a temper and could be stubborn, but she also had used her fair skin and modesty to charm as well, a mystery to him at times, as if she had been born of another mother and father. Stefa had Perla’s softer, rounder, face, while Hanna favored his longer facial structure and angular lines.

In a few hours, it would be sunset and time for blessing, prayers, and songs. The drone of the bombers seemed to have drifted away, thwarted by the cloudy weather.

He wondered what Stefa saw, perhaps loved, in this man, Daniel. He wouldn’t say anything to Perla yet, but the Nazis had changed everything, including love. Would happiness last in the years ahead? Would the fighting be over quickly? Arranged marriages might be a thing of the past—like peace—in a future too terrible to behold. Maybe the time had come to be flexible—in the face of disaster.

Get up, he told Aaron, who was still sprawled at his sister’s feet. Let’s look out on Warsaw. See what we can see before the world . . .

He took in the faces of his wife and children and silently prayed for God to save them from a world consumed by war, wondering if his prayer would work.

* * *

The bombs faded and the afternoon grew long, darkening the clouds and her spirit.

Perla had a few moments alone in the bedroom before sunset, and she used the time to soothe her nerves and still her shaking hands. She sat on her bed and grasped them firmly in her lap, aware that the flesh had become more fragile, the first faint, brown spots showing irregularly between her wrist and fingers, knowing that at thirty-eight years of age these minor distractions would only get worse. The only luxury she afforded herself was a tin of petroleum jelly, which she applied lightly twice a week to keep her hands smooth. Stefa and Hanna, when they were younger, were fascinated by this routine. Her younger daughter had taken after her, secretly buying a jar of krem kosmetyczny, face cream. Perla had found the white porcelain container stashed at the back of a drawer. She hadn’t told Izreal and wouldn’t unless Stefa became too wasteful with its usage. That was unlikely to happen.

As she looked out the window at the failing gray light, she patted the bed’s coverlet and thought how wonderful it would be to fall into a deep sleep and awaken anytime before this day. The sun would shine brighter, the spring sun would be warmer, the winter snow would land lightly on her shoulders and melt on her coat before a fireplace. She tried to banish the memories of the afternoon: the sirens, the bombs, the neighbors screaming and yelling in the halls as destruction rained from the sky. How could life change so fast? Yet, what had happened was real. She hoped the Polish troops would rally—they would give their lives to save their homeland—but would it be enough?

She ran her finger along the intricate pattern of the spread, a wedding gift from her Hungarian grandmother. Flowers of yellow, red, and blue burst forth in blossom from intertwining green vines. Izreal allowed this ornamental display, the bright spot in the house, because it made her feel happy. She was not as good with the needle as her mother and grandmother, although she had crocheted the lace tablecloth that graced the Sabbath table.

She and her husband had pulled together what they could to decorate their home. Two landscapes from the Holy Land hung in the living room. The mizrach in praise of God took its place of honor on the east wall between the windows. Displayed on the sideboard and small cupboard positioned against the wall in the dining area were the precious objects of their religious life: the Shabbos candlesticks, the Seder plate, a wooden spice box, and the silver kiddush cup, all as necessary and meaningful to her as any limb of her body. And, when not in use, tucked away in the top drawer of the sideboard were Izreal’s knives, the steel gleaming, and the blades free from nicks, pits, or other obstructions that would go against the laws of slaughter. In their way, those instruments were the most precious of all because his use of them, first as a butcher, had allowed the family to thrive.

Her hands shook again at the thought of their future in Warsaw. . . their lives threatened, perhaps disappearing. Horror had been thrust upon them by a madman from Germany. If only European leaders hadn’t capitulated, if only Britain and lagging America had stood up to Hitler’s bullying, Poland might continue to enjoy pleasant summers and warm falls. Now, everything was in question. Even the radio reports had given them some hope, never once mentioning the threat of an invasion or the start of a war. The broadcasts were always about Hitler, the ravings of a man obsessed with Germany’s power.

She rose and ran a finger over the plain gray blanket covering her husband’s bed. The cotton pillowcase and the sheet that extended beyond the blanket were pressed and as white as a blinding desert sun. Everything was in its place.

It’s growing late. I must attend to my duties.

She walked, head bowed, from the bedroom to the table.

Inner peace and the spirit of joy. Holiness. My family. We are here at the table.

Izreal smiled, hoping to lift his family’s spirits. The Sabbath was supposed to be joyous, but this evening, the first of September, was different. Sabbath was a time for putting aside problems, communing with God, and contemplating the blessings given from above.

Perla kept her head bowed and eyes closed, as if tears would pour out if she looked up at her husband. Stefa looked sullen and out of sorts, bearing the world’s weight on her shoulders, probably concerned about Daniel’s well-being. Only Aaron, in the naivety and freshness of his youth, looked bright-eyed and ready for the Sabbath meal. Izreal wondered if his son might have enjoyed the first day of the war, likening it to a game played by adults instead of children.

Izreal put his hands on Aaron’s bowed head, resting his fingers on his son’s black yarmulke. May God make you like unto Ephraim and Manasseh. He walked to the other side of the table and placed his hands on Stefa’s head. May God make you like unto Sarah, Rebekah, Rachel, and Leah.

He returned to the head of the table and stood for a moment, looking out upon them, his children on either side, Perla across from him. What might he offer as a personal prayer, something that might lift the evening, hopeful words devoid of woe and despair?

I thank God for the many blessings that He has given us, he began, clasping his hands together. Even upon this day which the world will mark in future generations as a dark stain upon humanity . . . but let us not think of that now. Let us rejoice and enjoy our time together as a family, the time that God has given us. We must be strong and know that God will protect us from our enemies as He has always done in the past. That is all we can do—have faith and praise Him for our many blessings. Let us remember the light as we have through the generations.

Kerchief in place, Perla rose from her chair, and stood in front of the candles on the table. She struck a match, lit both of them, then, circling her hands three times and drawing the light toward her, she closed her eyes and recited the blessing: Blessed art thou, O Lord our God, King of the Universe, who has commanded us to light the Sabbath candles. Through the years, she and her husband had worked as two separate religious individuals, instilling the holy traditions in their children. Still shielding her eyes, Perla lit the second taper. Izreal recited, Observe the Sabbath day.

Izreal said the blessing over the wine and the bread before starting the meal. The usual chatter at the joyous table was limited to Izreal and his son. Perla and Stefa ate slowly, Perla often gazing toward the window to see if Warsaw would suffer again from the Nazi bombers.

With eyes alight, Aaron said, I wish I had seen—

Perla glared at him, her look vicious enough to cut off his words. "Don’t speak of war tonight. I know what you wish you had seen. She rested her fork on her plate. People died today—I’m sure of it . . . no one around us, but what of our relatives in the country, our cousins in Kraków, or those living on the Polish border? Were their bodies ripped apart? No one should wish they had seen the bombs explode."

The excitement in Aaron’s eyes died and he looked down at his chicken and potatoes. I’m sorry, Mother. I will pray for our relatives.

Perla nodded. And for your sister, Hanna, as well. She deserves our prayers—she is still a member of this family. She lifted her fork and positioned it in her hand so the tines pointed toward Izreal.

Hanna had driven a furious wedge between Izreal and his wife in January, the most troublesome and argumentative time of their married lives, when Hanna went to live in London with one of Perla’s five sisters, a woman who had renounced Judaism and converted to her husband’s Episcopalianism. Her other sisters were scattered throughout Poland.

Hanna had left Warsaw the day after she turned eighteen on January eighth. The plot, as Izreal called it, had been clandestine and deliberate, even down to the travel schedule arranged by Perla’s sister Lucy—her Christian name. There had been one day and one terrible night to consider the consequences of Hanna’s actions.

You will no longer be my daughter, Izreal had said while hardening his heart to her.

"I don’t love the man you’ve chosen for me. I will love my family always, but he won’t be my husband. I will not raise his children, wash his clothes, cook and clean for him. So much of life is forced on us. The world is changing. Hanna beseeched her mother. Look at your sister! Happy and carefree in London! I pleaded with her to let me come, and, after many tears, she relented. It was the most difficult decision of her life. She didn’t want to hurt either of you, after having gone through the same trouble herself when she left the family. Hanna looked at Izreal. My aunt hoped you would eventually forgive me."

Stefa and Aaron had sat silent during the argument before they were told to go to their rooms. Hanna’s argument failed to melt the icy shield that protected Izreal. Perla’s subdued sympathy for Hanna added to his irritation.

You are going? was all Perla could ask. Truly going to my sister’s?

Yes, Mama. Aunt Lucy has worked with the Immigration Service and will be my sponsor—I can work in England as long as I don’t take a job from a citizen who needs it. Hanna looked down at her dark blue dress. Look at us. Could we be any more drab?

The question set Izreal off, as if he had been personally insulted. Drab! You are a beautiful Jewish woman who we’ve raised to honor the laws and traditions set forth in the Torah. Yet, you spit in our faces.

Hanna straightened, her tall figure matching his. Papa, I would never spit in your face. You know I love you more than life itself, but if I stay here I will die, and what good would that do either of us? That I know as sure as I’m standing here. She threaded her fingers through her long black hair.

Perla gasped and Izreal looked away.

Suppressing his anger, he’d remained silent. The words tried to rise from his lungs, but they caught in his throat, a maddening combination of fury and disbelief, stopping him from speaking and forcing him to fling open the balcony doors and thrust his fists into the freezing January air. Sleet peppered his coat, but after a time, he didn’t feel the cold at all, only a quaking rage that shook his body until it finally subsided like a spent earthquake.

When he returned to the living room, all three bedroom doors were closed. Hanna had gone into the one she shared with her sister, to spend her last night in the apartment. He softly pushed the door open to his room.

Perla lay in her bed, her back turned toward him, legs curled close to her body, hands covering her face. A beam of silver light from a streetlamp fell like a knife across the blankets.

Izreal touched her shoulder.

She flinched and choked on tears. She won’t come back, she sputtered. We’ll never see her again. I’ll die and I’ll never see my daughter again . . . but I must obey my husband.

He took off his coat, placing it over a chair, sat on the edge of his bed, and sighed. She will come back. He said nothing for a time, but then chuckled. She’s a strong girl . . . I’ve always known it. She used her brain as well as her body—who ran and swam behind our backs because I would not allow it for modesty’s sake. The child who could do things neither of us could do. A sharp mind can get you into trouble.

Perla, balling a handkerchief in her hand, turned toward him, her eyes dim in the blackness.

I thought she had tamed herself—come to know her religion and herself—as only a woman can, but I was wrong, he said. As his eyes adjusted to the dark, he lay back on the bed and stared at the white speckled ceiling. "The spark was always there, but I thought she had controlled it. The arrangement—Josef must have been the feather that broke her back."

Marriage is no feather, Perla said.

It is an eternal union sanctified by God.

"Izreal . . . you don’t need to lecture me. I know the law nearly as well as you do. I’m not happy, but I want my children to be happy. If that means they must go their own way, so be it—I won’t stand in their way, no matter how painful. Eventually, they will leave us for their husbands and wives no matter what we do . . . or say. You don’t need to give her your blessing, but you need to understand."

I don’t know if I can, for what I am is all I know.

Perla turned toward the window as he undressed. He slid into bed, the cold sheets sending gooseflesh skittering over his skin. He stared at the ceiling for an hour and then at the blade of light falling across Perla’s body, watching her chest rise and fall beneath the blankets, before he fell asleep.

* * *

Izreal was up early and off to work, the house still and silent as he closed the apartment door.

He saw Hanna in his mind as he walked the dark, empty, streets: from her birth on that cold January day in 1921, through her schooling, her teachers telling him what a gifted young girl she was, how fortunate it was that she picked up languages so easily—she could speak Polish, Yiddish, and German, with ease, as well as some English—and what a lovely daughter and woman she had become . . . until yesterday.

All the time, the fuse was burning and he didn’t know it.

When he returned home that day, Hanna was gone.

* * *

Bombs fell on Warsaw, morning, afternoon, evening, and night the month of September. Stefa stood in bread lines near Daniel’s home in the Praga District across the Vistula, while Aaron remained closer to home. Both siblings felt somewhat guilty about taking two helpings of bread for the family. They weren’t starving; however, the leftovers from the restaurant where Izreal worked had become their main source of meals as food staples disappeared during the siege. We should have thought ahead, Perla lamented one day, despondent about not being prepared for the war. Shaking his head and muttering that he feared the war would grow worse, Izreal told her that women harvesting potatoes in fields around Warsaw had been strafed and killed by Nazi planes. We are lucky we have food. Those women took a chance rather than starve to death. In the end, the Nazis made sure it didn’t matter.

The Germans bombed the city on the eighth, and the fifteenth, on the eve of the Sabbath, but living in Warsaw had become a matter of survival, not of observing the holy days. Izreal tried to keep the family together as hope for an early peace faded. The Sabbath prayers, the lighting of the candles, the blessings, the songs, seemed hollow, professed to a God who didn’t care whether they lived or died.

* * *

Stefa called out to Daniel as they helped the men and women of Warsaw dig fortified barricades around the city center. "Dig harder, drogi."

Daniel smiled at the Polish word of affection, pushed the low-slung wool cap back from his head, and wiped his brow with a handkerchief. Dig harder?—I’d rather be in the army. He stabbed his shovel into a ditch and watched the line of volunteers, conscripted men who had come back from losing battles, move the earth. "My father says we are of the Jewish Nation, not Poles. I told him I was a Polish Jew, and I’d be happy to go to war." He grabbed the shovel’s shaft, pulled the blade from the dirt, and held it like a lance in front of him. A Polish army man, attired in his brown uniform jacket and brimmed field cap, rifle slung over his shoulder, shot Daniel a look of disgust.

He dug into the earth again, looking away from the man’s eyes.

Stefa knew her parents would be angry if they found them together on this Sunday, the seventeenth of September. Her father was at work. Her mother had stretched out on the bed after suffering a headache while trying to figure out how to make the most of their remaining supplies. Stefa had excused herself to take a walk, mentioning a bread line even though most of them were closed on Sunday. She thought Daniel’s parents would be angry, too, if they knew they were together. She had met them briefly once. They were courteous, but distant, making it clear to Stefa that she was not on the list of his intendeds.

Wouldn’t it be nice, if . . . Her voice trailed off.

What? Daniel asked, digging deeper, tossing the brown dirt with ferocity to the top of the ditch.

"I was just thinking it would be nice if we could go for a walk by ourselves