The Things We Cannot Say Page 14

I needed my hopes to mark me and for my dreams to become a part of my body, something tangible that could not be lost or taken.

 

* * *

 

After the generalized brutality of the early days of the occupation, the Nazi attention soon took on a narrower focus. There was a thriving Jewish community in Trzebinia, and as weeks turned into months, it was the Jewish folk who bore the brunt of the violence. There was widespread violence and theft against the Jews; both by Nazis and then, to my father’s horror, by gangs of opportunistic locals who operated openly in the daylight—their mission was at least in part to express solidarity with the occupying forces.

Once we learned that Jan Golaszewski had participated in such a gang, Father told Filipe and I that we were no longer allowed to see Justyna. I was too scared to disobey, but Filipe began sneaking out at night to meet with her in the fields. A curfew had been set by the Nazi forces and we weren’t supposed to leave the house after dark, so when Filipe refused to stop his midnight trips to see his love, Father was forced to relent.

“Justyna may visit here during the daylight hours, or you may meet her at the boundaries between the farms. It is not her fault that her father is who he is, but I won’t allow my children to step inside that bastard’s home.”

The situation in Trzebinia continued to deteriorate. Jewish businesses and then homes were confiscated altogether—then whole families were forced to shift into a “Jewish area,” and sent to work for the invaders. There were restrictions on travel and marriage, and then we heard the very first rumors of friends from within the town being shot, sometimes for attempting to flee, but often for no real reason at all. The oppression came in waves, each one more determined than the last—setting a new baseline of “normal” for the stunned Jews in town and those of us watching nearby.

My Roman Catholic family had lived side by side with the Jews in Trzebinia forever—we’d been to school with their children, sold them our produce and relied on goods from their stores. So as the noose around the neck of “our” Jewish community began to wind tighter, the sheer helplessness the rest of us felt affected everyone in different ways. Mama and Father would curse the invaders, but reacted almost violently to any suggestion that we were anything other than helpless bystanders to the tragedy unfolding before us. They were determined that if we kept our heads down, we could stay under the radar and remain safe ourselves. But Stanislaw and Filipe were eighteen-year-old boys—right on the edge of manhood, flooded with testosterone and an optimistic belief that justice was achievable. They’d wait until Mama and Father were out of earshot, then have intense discussions about growing rumors of a resistance. The twins traded hints of hope, spurring one another on, until I was absolutely terrified one or both of them would disappear into the night and get themselves killed.

“Don’t do anything rash,” I pleaded with Filipe at every chance I got. He was the more sensitive of the twins—Mama sometimes said that Stanislaw had been born a hardened old man. But Filipe was softer, vastly less arrogant and I knew if I could convince him to remain cautious, Stanislaw would likely follow.

“Mama and Father think that if we keep our heads down, the Nazis will leave us alone,” Filipe said to me one morning, as we collected eggs together in the chicken yard.

“Is that so foolish?” I asked him, and he laughed bitterly.

“Life doesn’t work that way, Alina. Hatred spreads—it doesn’t burn out with time. Someone needs to stand up and stop it. You watch, sister—when they’re done with the Jews, it will be our turn again. Besides, even if we could ride out the war with our heads down, and we sat back while the Nazis worked all of our Jewish friends to death, what kind of Poland could be rebuilt once they were gone? Those people are as important to this country as we are. We’re better off dying with honor than sitting back to watch our countrymen suffer,” he said.

“The father of your girlfriend would disagree with everything you just said,” I muttered, and Filipe sighed heavily.

“Jan is a bigoted pig, Alina. It is hard enough to be civil to that man even on my good days—I can only force myself to be polite to him because if I wasn’t, I’d lose Justyna, and I love her. But don’t you see? It is because of men like Jan that we must find a way to rise up—we owe it to our sisters and brothers.”

Filipe’s rage only intensified once we had our first direct encounter with Nazi harassment. A group of SS officers stopped Truda and Emilia on the street outside of their home when they were walking to the factory to see Mateusz one day.

“I didn’t understand what was happening,” Truda whispered to Mama and me as we watched Emilia sit sullenly in the corner. Filipe and Stani were trying to make her laugh, but she was too shocked to even react to their antics. “One of the officers measured her height and said she is tall for her age and her eyes are green, so she is close enough to Aryan and they should take her.”

“Take her where?” I asked hesitantly.

“I don’t know,” Truda admitted with a shrug. “But clever Emilia was calling me Mama, and my hair is so dark. They looked at me and said her hair would get darker as she got older, and then they told us to go.”

“Yesterday, they took Nadia Nowak’s daughter,” Filipe murmured from his position on the floor. He looked up at us, rage simmering in his eyes. Nadia was Justyna’s aunt, the sister of her mother Ola, and I’d met Nadia’s daughter, Paulina. She was a tiny slip of a thing, only three or four years old, with a halo of blond curls and bright blue eyes. “It’s called the Lebensborn program. The SS are assessing each child in the township for their suitability to be taken from their families and ‘Germanized.’ The soldiers told Nadia that Paulina will be placed with a German foster family and given a new name so she has a chance of growing up to be racially pure. Nadia refused to let Paulina go, so the soldiers tore her from Nadia’s arms. Ola and Justyna are there today comforting her. Nadia is distraught.”

“Oh, that poor thing,” Mama gasped, clasping her hands in front of her chest. “Her husband was killed in the bombings too. She has suffered so much already.”

“I told you, didn’t I?” Filipe said, looking right at me. His nostrils had flared and his shoulders were locked hard. “I told you it was only a matter of time before they came for us too. This is our punishment because we lay down and let them torture our Jewish brothers and sisters, Alina. Now they steal our children, and God only knows what will happen to that little one now that she’s away from her family.”

Emilia was listening to all of this, her eyes growing wider, her jaw going slack.

“Filipe,” I whispered, glancing at her anxiously. “Please, not now.”

Stanislaw broke the tension—he leaped playfully at Filipe, who cried out in surprise. Just as he went to throw Stani away, Filipe looked at Emilia. A startled smile had broken on her face, and so Filipe went limp. Stani had clearly been expecting a wrestling match and didn’t seem to know what to do with Filipe now that he’d pinned him, so I quickly skipped across the room to join the tangle of bodies on the floor. I grinned at Emilia and locked my hands into claws, then tickled my strapping young brothers. They both looked at me blankly, but then when Emilia howled with laughter, they played along too.

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