Under a sunburnt sky, p.19
Under a Sunburnt Sky, page 19
30
1st August 1944
Nacha lay back in the hidden room and stared up at the ceiling overhead. The book in her hand was illuminated by a lantern on the floor beside her, but the words had blurred. She’d lost interest in its pages. It was hard to concentrate on anything at all these days.
They were in the middle of a war zone. The Poles were rebelling against their German invaders, attempting to push them out of Warsaw. But she was stuck in the small apartment with her father, brother and Jan’s sisters, while Jan, Waltrina and Walter all went out into the world to fight the battles she longed to fight.
It wasn’t fair. She should be out there in the streets of Warsaw fighting to take her own city back from the Germans. She was a Jew. She had every right to be angry, every right to take up arms against the evil army who’d occupied Warsaw for so many years now and had sent most of her family to extermination camps. But Tata wouldn’t let her go. She had to stay in the small, dank apartment that stank like Nathan’s enormous sweaty feet all the time and do absolutely nothing other than bake and sew and read. It was infuriating.
Give her a gun and she’d show the Nazis how she felt. But she had no choice, and she didn’t know how to use a gun. So she was stuck.
The pages of the story in her hand blended together and she found herself re-reading the same paragraph over and over again before finally throwing it down on the sleeping mat in frustration and emerging from the secret room, her hair a beehive of tangled knots.
“Nice hairstyle,” quipped Nathan.
He and Tata were playing a game of droughts by the window. Tata smiled at her just as the air raid siren sounded throughout the city. The high-pitched keening sent a chill through Nacha’s thin frame, and she ran to the window to look out over Tata’s shoulder.
It was as though they’d descended into hell. All around them, the city burned. Jan hunkered down behind a stack of sandbags in the foxhole and peered through the sights of his rifle.
“Can you see them?” Marek asked, squinting through a pair of cracked binoculars.
“They’re behind the fruit and vegetable shop,” Adas replied.
All three men were huddled in the same foxhole after running from the scattered remains of a German division. The city was falling. It’d been coming on for some time now, but the Polish Home Army had sent word via radio to the rebels on the ground—the Soviets were coming. Warsaw would change hands soon enough, and the exiled Polish government wanted the Home Army on the ground to take charge of the city before the Soviets got there.
The last thing the exiled government desired after so many years of war and occupation was another occupation. The Home Army had fifty thousand troops, and the German numbers were dwindling.
The Soviets hoped for the Home Army to oust the Germans and the Polish government didn’t want the Red Army to occupy Warsaw and instate an alternative government. Everyone had their motives, but in the end, it boiled down to Jan and the other rebel troops fighting a street battle with a disabled Nazi force while the Red Army bombed German positions and pushed in from the northeast.
A bullet pinged into the sandbag beside Jan’s head. He ducked low, then shot back in the direction of the produce shop. Successive rounds rang out and Jan fired back again. Suddenly the sky was full of the roar of an arial attack.
Planes raced by overhead, the noise of their engines deafening. A few blocks away, they dropped their loads, and explosions were followed by an enormous cloud of black smoke that filled the air and made Jan cough.
“Let’s get out of here,” Marek said as he covered his mouth with the neck of his shirt.
They ran for cover, escaping the Wehrmacht troops who could no longer see them through the smoke. Jan pressed his back to the wall of a building and surveyed the city around him. It was coming apart. How long could this go on? So many lives lost, so much destruction. And now another army was breathing down their necks.
The uprising in Warsaw, led by the Home Army, had become disjointed and disorganised. The insurgents had split into small groups forced into defensive positions by the much-stronger German forces.
With the Soviet troops surrounding Warsaw, Allied relief had trickled to nothing. It seemed the Soviets would neither help the Poles fight off their invaders nor allow anyone else to help either. Jan anticipated that the Home Army troops would run out of supplies within a few months if things didn’t improve.
“I’m heading home,” Jan said.
The two men waved and headed off in the other direction. Jan set out at a jog for home. They were still living in the apartment his mother had rented for them almost two years earlier. It’d become more of a home to them than any other place they’d lived, since they were all together.
In that time, they’d experienced joy and laughter, bickering and sadness, and everything in between. But they were a family, and Jan couldn’t remember feeling so content in his personal life even as all the world disintegrated around them.
People scurried by. Bicycles rushed past and vehicles honked, trapped by the rush. No one wandered anymore. They didn’t go out onto the streets without some purpose. Many had already left the city and become refugees heading west.
Where they’d go, no one knew, but west seemed like the only option open to them. Away from the retreating Wehrmacht army and the advancing Red one. To the west was freedom and hope. The east held only death and destruction.
Jan and his family had chosen to remain. They had all the food they needed and a roof over their heads. If they left the city, it would be on foot.
Walking west was an unknown prospect—where would they go? How would they find food? Would anyone take them in, or would they sleep rough until they died of exposure? No, the known was preferable to the unknown. At least, that was what Antoni and Mama had decided. Now Jan wondered if they’d made the right choice.
The screech of an aerial assault filled the air. Jan picked up the pace, glancing back over his shoulder as a trio of planes descended towards him. He hid in the doorway of a stone chapel. He tested the doorknob and found the door was locked. The noise was overwhelming.
He squatted and covered his ears as they let bombs loose over the city. The Germans were coming down hard on the uprising. They were like a cornered dog, its teeth bared.
He took off at a run again and found Walter outside the apartment building staring up at the sky, watching the clouds of black billowing westward on the breeze.
“What’s going on?” Jan asked.
Walter cupped a hand to one ear. “What?”
“Are you okay?” Jan shouted this time.
Walter nodded. “My ears are ringing.”
“Come on. We have to get inside.”
The two of them jogged up the stairs, taking them two at a time. They burst into the apartment and found everyone wide-eyed and peering out the windows.
“What’s happening?” Nacha asked, her face white.
“The Germans want to squash the uprising. They’re sending in the Luftwaffe. We should get to a bomb shelter.” Jan set his gun down by the door and slipped off his backpack.
“But it’s not safe. We’ll be seen. The Germans will take us to an extermination camp,” Antoni objected, rubbing both hands over his face. “We should stay here. It’s safer than going outside.”
The sound of approaching planes buzzed on the horizon. Jan rushed to the windows and looked out. A Luftwaffe squadron approached, hanging low over the city like buzzards.
“They’re coming back,” he said. “Everyone, find somewhere to take cover.”
“In our room,” Nathan suggested. “It doesn’t have windows.”
“Good idea,” Mama said.
She ushered everyone into the room, then shut the small door behind them. It was cramped and dark in the room, not enough space for anyone to sit or lie down. So they all stood, pressed up close to one another.
Nacha was beside Jan. He could sense her presence, but couldn’t see her face. Suddenly her hand was in his, her fingers sliding their way across his palm and winding through his fingers. His heart skipped a beat as he closed his hand around hers.
The warmth of her touch sent a thrill up his spine even as the scream of engines shot by their apartment. The entire building shuddered. Then the boom of bombs dropping to earth shook the air.
“That was close,” Mama whispered.
Nacha began to hum.
Soon they were all singing the anthem “Poland Is Not Yet Lost.” The words brought a lump to Jan’s throat. He stood straight and tall, singing alongside his family and loved ones with Nacha’s hand firmly in his own as bombs fell over Warsaw.
31
20th November 1944
They were outnumbered. That much was obvious. They were also very close to running out of supplies and weapons. The Soviet blockade of Allied support around Warsaw had begun to take its effect on the Home Army, and the rebels were growing tired.
The only supplies getting through to the fatigued and scattered fighters came from nightly supply drops of munitions and goods by long-range planes from the British Royal Airforce and Polish Airforce. But since they had nowhere nearby they could land other than Italy, the impact of their supply runs was minimal, and very little got through to Warsaw itself.
The war underway in the city waged between the Wehrmacht and the Polish Home Army had become a desperate battle between two sides, each losing their tenuous grip on any chance of victory.
The Germans were under pressure on all sides from the Red Army and the Allies. The Poles were outclassed and overpowered by the Germans. And the Soviets sat outside the city, starving them of resources, having taken most of Poland into communist custody.
The Soviets seemed determined not to help and were also preoccupied with the four German Panzer divisions dug in around the city. According to Jan’s rebel friends, Marek and Adas, Stalin wanted to colonise Poland and had no intention of assisting the Polish National Army, or Home Army, in securing a defeat of Germany that might give them the impression they could self-govern after the war was over.
They said he intended to let them beat themselves to death against the might of the Wehrmacht and waltz in to claim the city as soon as those who might challenge their authority were gone.
Jan hoped that wasn’t true. He wanted to believe the Soviet Army might liberate them and leave them to go back to their lives in freedom and peace, but he knew it was probably a naïve hope. And he shouldn’t cling to naïvete now that he was in his nineteenth year of life.
He was a man, and he had to think like a man, not a child who didn’t know any better. Too many years of war had honed his perspective and left him bereft of a belief in the ultimate good of humanity or the hope for a free, prosperous life. All he needed was to survive this day. To waken tomorrow and begin all over again.
There was no way for them to remain in the apartment any longer. Nacha felt a mixture of fear and relief wash over her when Waltrina told them. They’d finally be allowed out of this small, dark prison. It was ungrateful to think that way—she knew that. Tata had told her so a hundred times over the past two years. She should be thankful they weren’t buried in the ground or doing hard labour in Treblinka.
The apartment was their oasis, their refuge from evil. She knew that. He was right, but at the same time it felt like a prison. She hadn’t been allowed to leave in over two whole years. She’d wished so many times over the years that she’d been born a bird instead of who she was. A girl with no freedom, a girl with no life. Nothing to call her own but the fear of capture and a painful death.
And now the time had come—they’d face their future of either freedom or death. Death was more likely, of course, given the fact that Warsaw was a conflict zone and no one escaped the wrath of the German war machine. But they’d survived this long and perhaps God was watching over them, although her faith had been shaken by the death and destruction she’d witnessed for the duration of her teen years.
She was an adult now, and it was a difficult thing for her to admit, since she’d longed for a normal teen life for much of their incarceration and now she’d never have it.
She’d never get those years back. Instead, she’d be expected to be an adult with responsibilities, a spouse, children, and a house to keep. To pretend that she’d lived life to the fullest. And shame washed over her as she realised she was being ungrateful all over again.
So many people would never get to see adulthood, never get to have freedom and a family. And perhaps she wouldn’t either because she couldn’t see how they’d get out of the mess they were in this time.
Waltrina wrung her hands together. “The Germans say everyone has to leave Warsaw. Oberführer Meisinger has ordered it—anyone who stays behind will be sent to the death camps or executed on the spot. He’s announced that he’ll personally see to it on Himmler’s orders.”
“Spineless rat that he is. Everyone must leave?” Tata’s brow furrowed. He leaned forward in his armchair. “But…”
“They will spot you if you go. Meisinger’s men will figure it out,” Jan added with a nod. “If Jews join the exodus of Poles leaving Warsaw, they’ll be picked off by the Germans. There’s no doubt about that.”
“You don’t think we could get through?” Nathan asked.
Jan sighed. “They’ll want to see your papers, and unfortunately, you have none. Things are rapidly disintegrating out there. People are being shot indiscriminately. There’s raping, burning, mass transportations to the death camps…everyone’s at risk. I don’t trust them to let Poles safely through their ranks, especially Jews. No, we can’t go. And I don’t want to. I want to stay and fight for our freedom.”
“But the Home Army has been destroyed,” Tata said. “There’s no one left to fight with you.”
“Then we will simply fight for our own lives,” Jan replied. “We will find somewhere to stay until the Red Army takes the city, which won’t be long now. They’ve dug in on the eastern side of the Vistula River. It isn’t far, and the Germans are weakened.”
Jadzia ran her hands over her apron. She stood in the kitchen, rolling dough out on the bench. It was the last of their stale breadcrumbs.
Waltrina had no intention of wasting anything, so they were preparing a feast for their final meal together. “There are jobs in the city, paid work.”
“Doing what?” Jan asked.
“The Germans are paying women and girls to go through abandoned homes, removing clothing and other valuables for them.”
“It’s too dangerous,” Jan stated.
Waltrina raised her chin. “You are the last person to complain about doing something dangerous. Besides, it would give us some protection, and we’d be able to stay close by.”
“I want to do it too,” Danuta added. She was eleven years old and already as tall as Waltrina. Her dark brown hair was pulled into a bun at the nape of her neck, and she had a graceful elegance that made her seem older than her years.
“I suppose that settles it, then,” Tata said. “Waltrina, Jadzia and Danuta will work for the Germans. The rest of us will find somewhere to hunker down until this war is over. And we’ll all pray that we’ll be together again soon.”
Nacha opened her mouth to object to the Kostanskis risking their lives for her and her family all over again, then shut it when she saw the look of determination on Waltrina’s face. There was no way she would win the argument, and besides, fleeing with thousands of other refugees would be arduous and dangerous.
She hated that the Kostanskis had to put themselves in danger for her family, but she was grateful at the same time. She’d found her point of gratitude, and the thought brought a smile to her face.
She was truly grateful so that her heart fairly ached to think about it. In the end, nothing else mattered besides family and the kind of friends who would give everything for the people they loved.
The apartment was empty and dark. Mama, Jadzia and Danuta had already left for their new jobs in another part of the city. Jadzia had managed to get new papers after the Gestapo destroyed hers.
The three of them would bunk in a building under German occupation, something Jan wasn’t happy about. But the Germans had ordered the city to be completely evacuated and threatened that anyone who failed to comply would be shot.
He peeked around the corner, rifle held carefully in both hands, then sidled around and indicated for the others to follow him. Antoni, Nacha and Nathan followed him, with Walter bringing up the rear and keeping an eye on the situation behind them.
It was time to move, to find a place to weather the rest of the war. They couldn’t evacuate with a Jewish family in tow, and so they would have to hunker down somewhere in the city. Finding somewhere safe that wouldn’t be discovered by the German army was a challenge.
They couldn’t stay in the apartment. If the Wehrmacht went home to home checking that the evacuation order had been completed, they’d be sitting ducks. Even walking out the front door left them vulnerable.
Everywhere he looked, buildings were bombed out, with smoke rising in spirals into the putrid air. The streets were deserted, and the brickwork that stood was pockmarked with bullet holes.
They came across a few German troops looting and destroying shops and homes, but otherwise they made their way through the city unhindered. The occasional bomber passed overhead in a squeal of engines and rage.
When they reached 23 Panska Street, they found a tall office building still standing. Jan led the group inside, checking each room on the ground floor for occupants. There were none. They listened for a few minutes but the building was silent and dark. A quick check revealed that the kitchen in the back had running water and a small pantry with rows of food cans stacked on its shelves.
“Jackpot,” Jan said.
Antoni grinned for the first time in a long time. “That is a good sign.”
