But then the commander grabbed Aleksy’s upper arm and he pushed him hard and to the ground—and Aleksy’s arms were tied behind his back, so his face slammed unguarded into the granite cobblestone that lined the square. Before he could even recover, another soldier slid his hand into Aleksy’s hair and pulled him up until he was on his knees. Aleksy could not contain a cry of pain at that, and it was all I could do not to shout out in protest too.

Mama grabbed my upper arm, and when I turned to her, her gaze was locked on Emilia.

“Cover her eyes,” she said flatly.

“But why are they—” I said, even as my hands rose toward Emilia’s face. I heard the click of the handgun being cocked, and I looked up.

Aleksy’s death was somehow too simple and quick to be real, one single shot to the back of his head, and then he was gone. I wanted to protest—surely a life so big couldn’t end like that, without dignity or purpose or honor? But the soldiers tossed his body to the side as if it was nothing much at all, then they shot the mayor in the same way. I felt dizzy with the shock of it all, it was just too much to process on the fly. My own eyes had to be lying to me because what I was seeing was entirely illogical.

Aleksy Slaski was a good man, but the very things that made him so central to our township—his intelligence, his training, his natural ability to lead—also made him an immediate target. To destabilize a group of people is not at all difficult, not if you are willing to be cruel enough. You simply knock out the foundations, and a natural consequence is that the rest begins to tumble. The Nazis knew this—and that’s why one of their very first tactics in Poland was to execute or imprison those likely to lead in any uprising against them. Aleksy and our mayor were among the first of almost one hundred thousand Polish leaders and academics who would be executed under the Intelligenzaktion program during the early days of the invasion.

The shock wore off too soon for Emilia and she began shrieking at the top of her lungs. A soldier near to us turned his gun toward her, and I did the bravest and stupidest thing I’d ever done in my life, at least to that point. I pushed in front of her, and I begged the guard, “Please sir, please. My sister is distressed. Please, I will comfort her.”

And I immediately turned—not even waiting for his response. I tensed, expecting the searing pain of a bullet in my own back, but even as I did so—I locked eyes with Emilia and I pressed the palm of my hand hard over her mouth. Her eyes were wild with shock and grief, but I pressed so hard that she was struggling to breathe through her now-blocked nose. The tears poured down her little face, and when I realized I was not about to be shot myself and she was finally quiet, I bent low and I whispered to her, “Can you be silent, little sister? It is so very important.”

Her little green eyes were still glazed over. She nodded, a barely perceptible movement that I noticed, but didn’t entirely trust. Still, I loosened the seal of my hand over her mouth and she sucked in air but she didn’t shriek. The crowd began to disperse, but Emilia was catatonic—her eyes fixed on her father’s body, crumpled alone against the stone on the other side of the square. I slid my arm around her shoulders and I forced her to turn to my parents.

“We cannot take her, not permanently,” my mother whispered to me fiercely. “We are too old and too poor and you are too young and on your own. The occupation will be hard and we just don’t know how...” Her voice broke, and Mama’s gaze flicked to Emilia’s face, and then she looked back at me, for a moment visibly stricken. But she raised her chin, and she hardened her gaze as she said, “I am sorry, Alina. But you simply must find someone else.”

“I know,” I said heavily.

“Then come straight home. This is no time to be wandering the town alone, do you hear me?”

Frankly, I couldn’t believe they would leave me alone in the town at all after what we’d just seen, so I gave a shocked protest. “But Mama, surely you or Father will stay and help—”

“We have work that needs doing at home. It cannot wait,” she said. I didn’t dare protest further, because she was clearly determined. I looked around for my brothers, but both had already left with their girlfriends—and then Mama walked off too, dragging a visibly reluctant Father behind her.

I stared into the dispersing crowd as I learned for the first time the way it felt to force someone else’s welfare to a higher priority than your own instinct for safety. I wanted to crumble and sob, or better still, run after my parents like the frightened child they knew me to be. Instead, I wrapped my arm around Emilia’s shoulders, and together, we started to walk.

“Alina,” Emilia said thickly, when we were some distance from the square.

“Yes, little sister?”

“My father,” she said, then her teeth started to chatter. “My father is gone. The man put the gun on his head and—”

“He is gone, but you, my darling girl, you are still here,” I interrupted her. “But you mustn’t be afraid, Emilia. Because I am going to find a way to keep you safe until Tomasz returns.”

CHAPTER 5

Alina

As Emilia and I walked from the square, I realized with a heavy heart that if Mama wasn’t willing to take the little girl on, there was only one other option. There were other families in the town who might accommodate her—but none I trusted enough to care for her the way she deserved.

Truda was much like Mama—kind if somewhat abrupt at times—but Mateusz was gentler, quite jolly and jovial, and he had inherited a textiles factory from his father, so he provided my sister a very comfortable life in the town. They lived in a large house on the best street in town and even had electric lights in their home, something I was very jealous of because we still managed with oil lamps at home. I knew Truda and Mateusz wanted to have children, but even after years of marriage, she was yet to fall pregnant.

They had the resources and space to provide Emilia with a ready-made family, but I was nervous to ask it of them. Truda was eight years older than me, and we were hardly close.

There was just no alternative no matter how hard I racked my brain, so I walked the handful of blocks from the square to Truda’s house with a weeping Emilia in tow. We turned into her beautiful street—a narrow cobblestoned laneway lined with mature sweet chestnut trees. This neighborhood was flush with two-story homes, and flower patches were in bloom all along the sidewalk. Many of the homes in her street had cars—still a novelty to me then—and it had been the very first street in the town to get electricity. Perhaps, with such big homes and such a small roadway, that street might have felt cramped, except that the narrow street spilled into a huge parkland at the end. The park was a paradise of soft green grass and still more chestnut trees, a space centered by an immense square pond where ducks swam and children played in the summer.