Find box.

Box. Find. Now. Need help.

“Oh!” Mom gasps suddenly. “She has that box of mementos. I haven’t seen it in years—not since we moved them into the retirement home after Pa got sick. It’s either in storage or at her unit there. Maybe that’s what she wants, maybe she wants a photo of Pa? That makes sense, doesn’t it?”

“Ah, yes,” I say. A wave of relief relaxes muscles I didn’t even know I’d tensed. “Good thinking, Mom.”

“I can go try to find it if you’ll stay with her?”

“Please, yes,” I say, and I take the iPad. I hit the photograph of Mom, and the iPad reads Nanna, so I wince and start to edit the label on the photo—but Babcia waves my hand away impatiently. Our gazes lock, and she gives me a wry smile, as if she’s telling me I’m broken, kiddo, but not stupid. I’m so relieved by that smile that I bend to kiss her forehead, and then I hit some more buttons.

Nanna find box now.

Babcia sighs with happiness and hits the yes button, then rests her hand on my forearm and squeezes. She can’t speak at the moment, but she’s been a guiding light for my entire life, so I hear her voice in my head anyway.

Good girl, Alice. Thank you.

CHAPTER 4

Alina

Information was not so easy to come by in those days, so what I knew of the lead-up to war was scattered at best, but Trzebinia was quite close to the German border, and my town was not immune to the ideology that was gaining traction within that nearby nation. Hatred was like some otherworldly beast, seeded in small acts of violence and oppression against our Jewish citizens, growing in strength as the power-hungry fed it with rhetoric and propaganda.

It’s only when I look back now with the wisdom of age that I can see that warning signs were scattered throughout our simple life even then. I remember the first few times I heard that Jewish friends in Trzebinia had been robbed or assaulted or had their properties vandalized. My parents were appalled by this turn of events, and by then, my father had well and truly indoctrinated us children with his opinions on relationships between Trzebinia’s Jewish and Catholic communities. A Polish man is a Polish man, he’d often say to us, because to my father, a man’s heritage and religion were irrelevant—Father was interested only in character and work ethic. But this was not a perspective that our whole community shared, and those ugly strains of anti-Semitism enraged my otherwise mild-mannered father.

In the summer of 1939, Father and I took a trip into the town. Mama had baked an extra loaf of poppy seed bread, and I’d arranged it in a basket with some eggs for Aleksy and Emilia. This had become a regular part of my routine—I visited them for lunch once a week, and in return, Mama was always telling me to take them some food. This felt an odd arrangement to me, given Aleksy was wealthy and we were poor, but my mama was a traditionalist and she had always seemed completely bewildered that a man could manage to arrange food for himself and his daughter.

That day, Father and I rode the cart into town to the supplies store. He went inside to conduct his business, and I walked the three blocks to the medical clinic to deliver the basket of goods to Aleksy’s secretary. I knew Father would be a while, so I meandered my way back to the store.

As I walked, I daydreamed about Tomasz. In the year he’d been in Warsaw, we’d fallen into a solid routine of taking turns writing letters, and he’d been home for two delicious weeks during his midyear break. That particular day, it was my turn to write a letter, and I was thinking about what I might say, so lost in thought that I was startled when I finally approached the store and heard my father shouting inside. I peered through the doors somewhat anxiously and discovered he was in a heated discussion with Jan Golaszewski, our neighbor to the northeast, the father of Filipe’s girlfriend, Justyna. Just then, Justyna rushed out of the store. She gave me a wide-eyed look, then embraced me.

“What’s this about?” I asked her, but the words escaped as a sigh because I already suspected the answer.

“Oh, my father is blaming the Jews for everything, and your father is defending them.” Justyna’s weary sigh matched my own, then she shrugged. “Same old argument they always have, just more heated today because of the buildup.”

“The buildup?” I repeated, confused. Justyna assessed me with her gaze, then she grabbed my elbow and pulled me close.

“The buildup at the border,” she whispered, as if we were sharing a scandalous piece of gossip. “Surely you know? It’s why everyone is stocking up.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I admitted, and in hurried whispers before my father returned, Justyna told me: Hitler’s army was coming for us; an invasion now seemed inevitable.

“I can’t believe your parents haven’t warned you,” she whispered.

“They treat me like I am a baby,” I groaned, shaking my head. “They think they need to protect their fragile little flower from things that might upset me.”

I knew enough about the situation with the Nazi regime that I was nervous, but I was also quite confused by this news from Justyna. Coming for us? What could they possibly want from us? Justyna suggested an answer before I even asked the question.

“My father says it’s the Jews. He says that if we didn’t have so many Jews in this country, Hitler would leave us alone. You know how he is, Alina. Father blames the Jews for everything. And you know how your father is...”

“A Polish man is a Polish man,” I whispered numbly, repeating the words automatically before I refocused on my friend. “But Justyna, are you sure? Are we really about to go to war?”

“Oh, don’t worry,” Justyna told me, flashing me a confident smile. “Everyone is saying that the Nazis have barely any ammunition and the Polish army will defeat them quickly. Father is quite certain it will all be over within a few weeks.”

From there though, I saw everything differently—for the first time, I understood the recently frenetic activity of my parents and brothers, and I finally understood their bewildering insistence on preserving perfectly good food before it was even necessary to do so. Even as my father drove the cart back toward our house, I realized the unusually busy roads were not a sign of townsfolk making the most of the warm weather—rather, people were shifting. Everyone was operating in a different mode—everyone was rushing somewhere. Some were heading into Warsaw or to Krakow, as if a larger city would provide them shelter. Some were preparing their homes for relatives who were coming from Warsaw or Krakow, because plenty of city folk had decided the country would offer a refuge. No one seemed to know what to do, but it was not in our national nature to stay still and await catastrophe, so instead—people kept active. Through enlightened eyes, it seemed to me that the people of my town were scurrying like ants before a storm.