The Girl from Krakow Page 20

  Rita disassembled the syringe, dressed, and packed her case. Then she pushed Jerszy over, went through his wallet, and took his money—375 reichsmarks, some zloty. She burned his identity card. How much trouble would he have explaining how he had lost it? Then she found his latchkey.

  Carrying her case she mounted the stair and stole into his room. As she searched through his meager possessions, she thought, They’ve turned this nice Jewish girl into a thief. If that’s what it took to survive, Rita was going to be a good one. She found the knife he had used, a hip flask that might be sterling, a few silk ties and a wool scarf that might fetch a mark or two from a used clothes dealer—if there were any left in Poland—and a tin of tooth powder, a luxury she had not seen for two years. There was almost a carton of cigarettes, Polish but smokable, and a pair of fine leather gloves, men’s, but small. These she assembled on his bed and packed into her case. By now it was midmorning, and she could hear the charwoman trudging up to the top floor, there to begin cleaning vacant rooms. She put a do-not-disturb sign on Jerszy’s room door handle and her own.

  A glance over the window ledge showed the day clerk sitting in front of the building, just where the night clerk had met Jerszy and her the night before. Rita put on her coat, picked up her case, quietly walked down the stairs, and made her way out the back door. She came out of the alley between the hotel and the next building with her back to the clerk, who was chatting with someone and too busy to notice her departure. Ten minutes’ walk, and she was back at the station queuing for a railway ticket to Warsaw.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  How not to make the same mistakes in Warsaw? That was Rita’s problem now, or would be if she reached Warsaw. But reaching Warsaw was beginning to look increasingly unlikely even as the train moved tentatively out of the Lemberg station.

  Why, Rita asked herself, in this almost empty railway car, is a large man in a trench coat coming toward me, smiling more and more broadly as he approaches? Why, given all the empty seats in the carriage, has he decided to sit down on this bench right next to me? I might as well have let Jerszy turn me in.

  The large man had gray hair cut short in a fashion that suggested the military. He took his raincoat off to reveal an ill-cut suit and a loud tie on a badly ironed shirt, with one collar bent across the lapel of his jacket. Without formality or introduction, he opened the conversation. “I am Milkolaj Bilek, Metropolitan Police, Lvov, uh, sorry, Lemberg. Hard to remember when you have called it Lvov for fifty-three years.” He didn’t let Rita get a word in. “So, you met our friend Jerszy, and now you want to get out of town fast. Don’t blame you. Not a very nice customer.” Rita would have been unable to break into the flow of his words even if she had any idea what to say. “I wonder how you managed to extract yourself. Must be a resourceful girl. You couldn’t have done it with money. Money is the one thing that will make our Jerszy and his ‘friends’ stick like leeches.” Here at last he stopped, ready to listen to a comment on all this.

  All Rita could manage was a hesitant, “I don’t understand,” as she fished her identity card and other documents out of her handbag.

  He studied them in a cursory way. “Yes, yes. Very nice. I hope they work for you. But in Warsaw you’ll need a Kennkarte if you are going to get past the Blue Police.”

  Kennkarte was something Rita knew: an identity card issued by the Reich to every German and to Aryan-enough Poles in what was left of Poland. Blue Police, however, was something she didn’t understand.

  “I don’t understand, Pan Bilek. Are you going to arrest me?” Rita’s fear was quickly being supplanted by perplexity. “What is the Blue Police, please?”

  “Arrest you? Have you broken any Polish law? Don’t answer . . . Arrest you for being Jewish?” He smiled. “Not against Polish law last time I checked. Of course you aren’t Jewish, are you? Says so right there.” He indicated the paper he had returned to Rita, still lodged in her hand. “Ukrainian Catholic, and letter-perfect with your prayers too, I’ll warrant. But I think you need a little history lesson and a tourist guide. Blue Police, that’s the street police created by the Germans, but mainly composed of former Polish police. Not all professionals, and more than its share of anti-Semites and pro-Nazis. You are lucky it was regular police, or what’s left of us, who found you. I’m Home Army.”

  “Home Army?” Rita interrupted. She knew well enough. She had sent Stefan off with a Home Army courier. But she thought it better to sound naïve.

  “Maybe that’s really an innocent question. I’m going to risk a lot telling you. Home Army is the main resistance movement in Poland. There are a few others—fascist, socialist, communist—but we are the ones with links to the government in exile in London, and we have the most men, weapons, and the best organization. The Home Army has even worked its way into the Blue Police.” He chuckled. “Anyway, I was keeping an eye on Jerszy and his friends. That’s how I spotted you in the station last night, greeting him so warmly. I figured you for a working girl.” Rita tried to look as though she didn’t understand the term. “Prostitute,” Bilek explained, indulging her. “That’s why I was surprised to see you get on a train out of Lemberg so quickly.”

  “Well, I am not a prostitute.” She tried to be matter-of-fact about it. If she did look like one, so much the better perhaps. “But Jerszy was going to turn me over to the Germans.”

  “No, he wasn’t, or at least probably not right away. First he was going to force himself on you, and then he was going to sell you to the gang of szmalcowniks—blackmailers, extortionists, toughs who keep him as their pet Jew.”

  “Pet Jew?”

  “Sure. It takes one Jew to sniff out another one. Jerszy is a Jewish hood who has been getting into trouble with the Lv’ . . . eh, Lemberg police since he was a kid. Now he’s valuable to the underworld of extortionists in town, the ones who live off of all the Jews in hiding. They don’t turn one into the Gestapo till they have sucked him dry. The bounty for Jews is pitiful—fifty zloty. Compared to what you can get from most Jews still living on the outside, that’s nothing. So, Jerszy was going to milk you for some and then turn you over to the gang for the rest. Maybe they’d get more from your family or friends too. Then when you were picked clean—only then, mind you—they were going to sell you to the Germans.”

  Now Rita was seriously confused. “Why are Jews preying on Jews? And if Jerszy is Jewish, why is he moving around freely in Lemberg?”

  “I can’t answer the first question. But as to the second, most Polish people are not going to turn in Jews to the Germans. We hate Germans as much as we hate Russians. Of course, there are the crazy anti-Semites. The Germans have found most of those and put them to work. But most places they are outnumbered maybe twenty to one by the decent Poles who are not willing to help Germans at all. Polish people are not going to take sides in this war the Nazis have going against Jews. In fact, most people will turn their backs on someone’s being Jewish, never report them, maybe even help them a little, if there is no risk. Police are the same. If some Untergruppenführer puts a gun to my head, I’ll give him a Jew to save my neck, but I am not going to help those bastards. So, Jerszy goes free. As for his gang, well, they’re connected to some people in the Blue Police, so there is not much I can do about them unless they do something serious. Shakedowns like yours are not serious. In fact, there are plenty of Blue Police on the take too. It’s survival.”

  Rita took it all in. She sighed and decided that there was nothing for it but to come clean. Perhaps there might be something to gain. “Look, Pan Bilek, I have been living for the last year in the ghetto of Karpatyn. I am completely lost. I don’t understand what is going on. I don’t think I am going to survive a minute in the Generalgouvernement. Can you help me?”

  “OK. Some rules. First, never, ever tell anyone what you just told me. Second, don’t carry large quantities of money. You are likely to get hauled into alleys all the time in Warsaw. If you have enough money, an extortionist will take it, and keep ta
king it till it’s gone, then sell you off to the Germans for the head money. You’re better off with no money and a solid Kennkarte than being a Yid millionaire in Warsaw. Third, don’t hang around with other Jews. A girl like you can blend into the Polish scene completely. Don’t try to help another Jew. They’ll be spotted and drag you down with them.”

  Bilek paused for a minute, then apparently felt he had to explain things a little more deeply. “There are a million people in Warsaw. You can trust 950,000 of them. But 50,000 extortionists is more than the Germans need. Besides, there’s little work, less food, almost no coal. It’s not surprising that extortion has become a regular business, with its own rules. Learn them.”

  He became practical again. “When you get to Warsaw, find a room with an anti-Semite, someone with a reputation for hating Jews.” Bilek took out a business card. On the back he scribbled an address. Then he carefully put a small blue dot under the letter ‘l’ in his last name. “I am going to get out at Zhovkva and go back to town. Take this card to the address on the back. Show it to the lady. She is Home Army, and she will help you, at least temporarily. Get off at Warsaw East Station, in Praga, on this side of the Vistula.” This was the river that divided Warsaw, as it did Krakow and all of Poland. “Turn left out of the station, turn left at the first street, walk four blocks back down next to the tracks, and you will be there. Please, my dear, look like you know where you are going. If someone approaches you—anyone, man, woman, child—swallow this card, or it will go hard with you . . . and me.” He got up and was out of the railway car before she could say another word.

  Warsaw on a winter evening. Steam spreading from the brakes on the carriage wheels, merging with condensation from the breath of travelers as they hurried down the quays. Only the station Kommandantur—the Wehrmacht office—was lit up against the gloom.

  Rita needed to melt into this flood of travelers. She needed to do as they all did—no hesitation, no searching around, no inquiring looks. She walked past a man in uniform—surely this was the Blue Police, from the color of the tunic—scrutinizing a shabbily dressed passenger’s papers, his ticket, his face. Move past, not too fast, not too slow. Out of the station, turn left, left again, Topazowa Road, four streets down, parallel to the tracks. Rita tried hard to look like a Warsaw girl eager to get home after an eleven-hour rail journey. Like any street facing the noisy, grimy tracks of a city railway terminal, it was a line of narrow tenements, with few lights, some small bars and cafés, and hardly a person on the streets. At number 46 she rang the bell marked only “4th floor.” There was no buzzing her in. Instead, she heard the clop clop clop of wooden shoes making their way down the stairs. When the door was opened, a hand reached out. Rita put Bilek’s card in it.

  The door swung wide. “Come in, please.” It was a tall woman with brown bangs, in her late thirties, thin, and rather studious-looking, wearing a white blouse over a navy blue skirt, and a heavy woolen cardigan sweater that looked as though it had been made for a man. After a more careful examination in the light of the room, the woman smiled, handed back the card, and offered her hand. “I am Krystyna. You are . . . ?”

  “Margarita, Margarita Trush—”

  “Let’s stick with Christian names. It’s safer. Come up. Let me take your case. It’s a long way to the fourth floor.” When they arrived Krystyna carried her bag into the flat, its windows overlooking an air shaft formed by contiguous buildings, covered by a black sky. She turned to Rita. “A cup of tea, Margarita? Then I think you’ll want to go to bed.”

  “I am full of questions, but I suppose they can wait.”

  In the morning Rita slept in. In fact, she was still asleep at noon, when Krystyna slipped in and woke her. “I must go out for several hours. Please stay here. Make yourself at home. You will find some bread and margarine in the kitchen. You can also make some more tea.” She paused. “Can I call you Rita? Margarita is such work.” A ghost of a smile, then she was off.

  So, Jerszy wasn’t the only one to shorten her new name back to her old one. Perhaps it was safe to continue to think of herself as Rita.

  Rita spent a while wandering around the apartment. There was nothing much to see. This was a Home Army safe house, and it wouldn’t have an identity that could give someone away. She took a tepid bath and made herself a bit of a meal. Then she curled up with one of her Darwins. The volumes were an endless fascination and a persistent source of insights.

  Krystyna came back at nightfall, with a string bag filled with several root vegetables no one would have found appetizing before the war. Rita sat at the kitchen table as Krystyna steamed the vegetables and fried some potatoes in lard.

  “How much can I ask you about the Home Army?”

  “Well, I can tell you everything the Nazis already know. Sabotage, intelligence, protecting Allied soldiers, coordination with the other resistance groups, even the communists once Germany attacked the Russians, some of the Jewish underground too. But I don’t know much. Mainly I am a courier around Warsaw, and I never read what they give me.”

  Rita’s interest quickened. “Do you know other Home Army couriers? Ones that operate outside of Warsaw, in the east, maybe?”

  “We aren’t even allowed to know what each other looks like, let alone names. When couriers pass on messages or documents, we try to do it without making eye contact or looking anyone in the face. So, no, I don’t know anyone. And I don’t want to. All I need to know are passwords and dead drops.” Rita looked blank. “Places where I can leave or pick up a message without meeting the other person delivering it or picking it up. Listen, we have more urgent matters to discuss.”

  “Yes.”

  “You can’t stay here more than a few days. It’s not safe for me. You have a Polish identity card, yes? And a baptismal certificate?” Rita nodded. “Good. You must go to the Generalgouvernement bureau across the river to get a German Kennkarte. With your looks it should not be difficult. You tell them you are a refugee from the east. Complain about the Russians. They like that. If you can get a card, you can look for work, you can rent a room, and fade into the population. Find a room by looking through the newspaper classifieds. Better on this side than across the Vistula. This is a workers’ area, and they are used to transients and newcomers.” Rita nodded. She could do that.

  “You speak Polish like a Pole. That’s critical. Any German?”

  “Yes.”

  “Don’t use it around Poles. Some will hate you; others will decide you are educated and shake you down as a Jewess. The Germans don’t know that’s a tip-off with Poles.”

  Rita took the opportunity of a pause in her instructions. “Krystyna, I have to ask, have you ever heard of Home Army couriers saving Jewish children or taking them to safety, hiding them—anything like that?”

  “I haven’t done anything like that. But I know it’s been done. There is a liaison from Home Army to a Jewish organization, the Zegota, that mainly channels money to Jews hiding here in Warsaw and around the country. They may do something like that to save children too. Why do you ask?”

  Rita now sighed. She’d have to tell Krystyna if she was going to learn anything. “Maybe the Zegota could help. I have a child. He was with me in the Karpatyn ghetto till last spring. I gave him to a Home Army courier to bring to my parents, who seemed to be doing all right in the west. But they were taken in an Aktion, maybe before my child arrived. The courier was caught by the Gestapo before I could find out what happened to my son.”

  “I see.”

  “Is there any way I can find out what happened to him?”

  “No chance the Home Army will help you. Just for starters, we have our own share of anti-Semites, and even the ones who aren’t won’t sacrifice security to help look for lost children. Look, there is still an orphanage in the Warsaw ghetto. If your son never got to his grandparents, perhaps he was taken there.”

  “What do you mean, still an orphanage?”

  “Well, there was another one, famous really, but it was s
hut down a year ago, and all the kids deported to the east. But there is another one there now, I hear.”

  “How could I get to it?”

  “Are you mad? You’re free; you might even survive. You want to go into the ghetto?”

  “It’s my child, Krystyna.”

  “Going into the ghetto is a one-way trip—except for the criminals, the Jewish mafia, the gangs that operate on both sides of the wall.”

  “There are Jewish gangs in Warsaw?” Rita realized she shouldn’t have been surprised about this after her experience with Jerszy.

  “There have been several, one pretty much emerging every time another one was eliminated by the Germans. First, when the occupation began, there was Group 13, named after their main office, 13 Leszno Street. These thugs might just as well have been Nazis, a branch of the Gestapo. They took on the Judenrat’s own police for a while. Then they switched to smuggling, and extorting, under the cover of a medical service. But they were liquidated. Other groups filled the vacuum. The Germans are too busy with the Russians to really keep a lid on things. The Blue Police are corrupt; there are still enough Jews in the city to blackmail, extort, sell protection to—why shouldn’t some of these parasites be Jews? It’s groups like them that make it difficult for the Home Army to know who it is dealing with in the ghetto. There are even rumors of a new gang called Zagiew, actually fighting for the Germans against the Jewish resistance in the ghetto. It beggars the imagination. Anyway, if there still are Jewish gangs operating on both sides, they are not advertising it the way they used to.”