“Is it true? About an invasion?”

“You don’t need to worry about that,” Father said gruffly. “When you need to worry, Mama and I will let you know.”

I sat down that evening and I wrote a very different letter to Tomasz than the one I’d been planning. In the entire page of text, I simply pleaded with him to come home.

Don’t try to be brave, Tomasz. Don’t wait for danger. Just come home and be safe.

I’m not really sure now why I ever thought that “home” would be a safe place for any of us given our proximity to the border, but in any case, Tomasz did not come home. In fact, things disintegrated so rapidly that if he sent me a reply to that letter, it never arrived. It felt like the life I’d known disappeared overnight.

On September 1, 1939, I was roused from the depths of sleep by the sound of my bedroom window rattling in its frame. I didn’t recognize the sound of approaching planes at first. I didn’t even realize we were in danger until I heard my father shouting from the room beside me.

“Wake up! We must get to the barn,” Father shouted, his voice thick with sleep.

“What is happening?” I called, as I threw my covers back and slipped from my bed. I had just opened my bedroom door when the first of many explosions sounded in the distance, and the windows rattled again, this time violently. It was dark in our tiny home, but when Mama threw the front door open, moonlight flooded in and I saw my brothers running toward her. I knew I needed to run but my feet wouldn’t move—perhaps I was still half-asleep, or perhaps it was because the moment felt so much like a terrible nightmare that I couldn’t convince my body to act. Filipe got as far as the front door when he noticed me, and he crossed the small living room to take my hand.

“What is happening?” I asked, as he dragged me toward the barn.

“The Nazis are dropping bombs from planes,” Filipe told me grimly. “We are ready and we have a plan, Alina. Just do as Father says and we will be fine.”

He pushed me into the barn after Stanislaw, Father and Mama, and as soon as we were inside, Father pulled the heavy door closed behind us. Blood thundered around my body at the sudden darkness—but then I heard the creak of hinges as the latch in the floor was opened.

“Not the cellar,” I protested. “Please, Mama...”

Filipe’s arm descended on my shoulders and he pushed me toward the opening, then Mama grabbed my wrist and tugged me downward. Her fingers bit into the skin of my arm, and I pulled away frantically, trying to step back.

“No,” I protested. “Mama, Filipe, you know I can’t go down there—”

“Alina,” Filipe said urgently. “What is scarier? The darkness or a bomb falling on your head?”

I let them drag me down into the suffocating blackness. As I sank into the cramped space, the sound of my heartbeat seemed unnaturally loud. I scrambled across the dirt floor to find a corner, and then I wrapped my arms around my knees. When the next round of echoing booms began to sound, I shrieked involuntarily with each one. Soon enough, I was in a fetal position against the dirt floor, my hands over my ears. A particularly loud explosion rocked the whole cellar, and as dust rained down on us, I found myself sobbing in fear.

“Was that our house?” I choked, in a moment of silence.

“No,” Father said, his tone gently scolding. “We will know it if the house goes. It is Trzebinia, they are probably taking out the rail line...maybe the industrial buildings. There is no reason for them to destroy our homes. We are likely safe, but we will hide in here until it stops, just to be sure.”

Filipe and Stanislaw shifted to sit on either side of me, and then the cellar was again filled with a stifling silence as we all waited for the next explosion. Instead, we were surprised by a more welcome sound.

“Hello?” a distant, muffled voice called. “Mama? Father?”

Mama cried out in delight and opened the hatch, then climbed up to help my sister, Truda, and her husband, Mateusz, into the cellar. To my immense relief, Father turned an oil lamp on to help them see their way. Once we were all safely inside the cellar again, Mama and Truda embraced.

“What do we do now?” I asked breathlessly. Everyone turned to look at me.

“We wait,” Mama murmured. “And we pray.”

* * *

We spent much of that first day huddled together, hidden in the cellar beneath the barn. The planes came and went and came back again. Later, we would learn that several hundred bombs were dropped across our region during those long hours we spent hiding. The bombing was sporadic, unpredictable and fierce. From my position in the cellar, the explosions near and far and all around us sounded like the end of the world was happening just outside of our barn.

Most people have no idea what prolonged terror really feels like. I certainly didn’t until that day. In that terrifying darkness, I sweated through hours and hours and hours of being certain that any second, a bomb would fall on us—that any second, the cellar would cave in—that any second, a man with a gun would appear in the doorway to take away my life. I had not been comfortable with confined spaces even at the best of times, but that day I felt a depth of fear that I’d never even realized was possible. I lived my death that day, over and over and over again in my mind. Extreme anxiety like that doesn’t obey the normal laws of emotion; it doesn’t get tired, it doesn’t fade, you never grow used to it. I was every bit as petrified eight hours into those air strikes as I was when they began, until I was entirely convinced that the only end for the fear would be the end of life itself.

There was an extended break in the bombing early in the afternoon. We didn’t dare breathe a sigh of relief at first, because there had been breaks earlier in the day but they hadn’t lasted long. This time, long minutes went past, and after a while, even the sound of plane engines faded away to blessed silence.

Filipe was desperate to run next door to check on Justyna and her family. It was only a few hundred feet—he assured us he’d hide in the tree line along the woods and he’d be back in less than half an hour. Mama and Father grumbled, but eventually allowed him to go, and predictably, as soon as permission had been granted, Stanislaw decided he was going too.

The rest of us climbed into the doorway of the barn for some fresh air, and with the skies still clear, we remained there until the twins returned. Father and Mateusz sat in the doorway; Mama, Truda and I sat in a line behind them. Truda and Mama talked quietly as we waited, but I sat silent, my mouth too dry for small talk.

As promised, my brothers were gone for less than half an hour, but they returned visibly shaken, and at first I thought they’d discovered the worst. They joined us in the barn, sitting against the doorposts on either side of Father and Mateusz. There was some good news—the Golaszewski family were fine, and like us were physically unscathed. But Jan had made a trip into Trzebinia during the last brief bombing break. He had seen locals walking the streets weeping the loss of their families, children with injuries so bad Filipe couldn’t bear to repeat the details, and dozens of homes alight.