They spent their time shuffling back and forth around the cell that first day and night. There was little room to move and none to lie down. They dozed where they stood or sat, leaning on the walls or each other for support.

  Thirst clenched at Jan’s throat, suffocating him with its longing. He swallowed repeatedly, seeking relief, but found none. Several of the boys cried for their mothers throughout that first night. But by the second day, they were all silent, and the shuffling had given way to lethargy and hopelessness.

  “I’m so hungry,” said Peter, his back pressed against Jan’s.

  They’d slept that way for a few hours, but with other boys standing or sitting up against them, they couldn’t find a more comfortable position. So their sleep was interrupted constantly by shoves and knocks, or by their own head dropping from where it’d rested on their knees.

  “I’d love a cup of water,” replied Jan.

  “Do you think they’ll bring us something?” Peter asked.

  “I don’t know. But I’m not sure how long we can go on like this.”

  It was cold in the cell, exacerbated by the stonework and the open window. Their collective body heat helped, but unable to move much and without food or water, Jan found that his joints had stiffened.

  That evening, when the sunlight peeking through the window into the cell dimmed, the door opened and a pot of soup was shoved inside, along with a pile of bowls and spoons. They boys rushed hungrily for the pot, but Jan stepped forward, hands raised.

  “There’s no rush, no rush,” he said in a soothing voice. “Let’s take our time so we don’t spill a drop.”

  The boys listened to his words and waited as he and Peter dipped the watery potato soup into bowls and handed it around. They ate hungrily, though by the time Jan finished his bowl, his stomach had begun to grumble for more. It didn’t satisfy, but it was better than nothing, and the broth had quenched the worst of his thirst for now.

  During the daylight hours, boys were taken one by one. They were each returned to the cell beaten and bloodied. When Jan questioned them about what’d happened, they didn’t want to talk about it. A few said they hadn’t told the Gestapo a thing. They were adamant about that. None wanted to condemn their families. Some didn’t say a word to him, but cried in the corner until they fell asleep.

  On the fifth day, Jan was reading the carvings on the walls again. He’d barely slept in days. His hunger had abated on the fourth day, although his thirst had only grown until it fairly ravaged his waking hours. He could think of little besides finding water. Reading the messages scrawled by other desperate inmates in the Gestapo’s prison was the only thing that distracted him from the cloying thirst.

  Jan found himself by the cell door still reading, with boys crowded all around him so that he felt as though he’d never had a moment in his life without someone touching him, when the door was flung open. He staggered away from it into the crowd of prisoners, but the guard caught him by the collar and threw him into the hall like a piece of luggage.

  “Come on. Your turn,” he snarled.

  The boy they’d taken earlier that morning stood in the hallway. His face was swollen and distorted. Jan barely recognised him but for the floppy brown hair that fell over his forehead. His eyes were swollen almost shut. He was missing teeth. Blood dripped from his chin and stained his torn shirt.

  The boy staggered past Jan and fell onto the dirt in the cell. He lay there unmoving. The door closed, and Jan was pushed forward.

  “Let’s go.”

  There were two guards. One led the way, the other pushing him forcefully from behind. They took him down several corridors to a large room with a table on one side and a chair in the middle. He was told to sit in the chair and then he waited.

  They didn’t make him wait long. They tied him upside down to the chair and took turns beating him. One had a thick wooden club. The other carried a horse whip around with him, whacking it against his own thigh gently as he paced back and forth. When it came his turn to beat Jan, he did so with a smile.

  Jan watched it all upside down, sweat dripping into his eyes along with the blood.

  “Tell us who smuggles food into the ghetto.” They asked their questions over and over.

  “Who is the leader of your group?”

  “What are you plotting?”

  “Why do you conspire against the Reich and your esteemed Führer?”

  “Give us a name!”

  Jan said nothing in response. His silence only further enraged his torturers. They were puffing hard before too long, but it didn’t slow the frenzy of their assault.

  One kick, landed by the guard with the horse crop, knocked Jan’s front teeth out. He lost consciousness then, and didn’t know how long he remained that way. He woke up hours later in the cell again, with Peter watching over him, a worried expression on his pale face in the dull moonlight that sifted through the window above them.

  “You’re awake,” Peter said with a sigh.

  Jan couldn’t speak. Pain rushed into every part of his body at once. His mouth throbbed, his head ached, his limbs were bruised. He clenched his hands and wriggled his toes. At least he wasn’t paralysed. For that he was grateful.

  Peter nursed him back to health, spooning the insipid soup into his bloodied mouth. He wiped Jan’s face clean with his own shirt as best as he could.

  “You’ve got to tell them,” he whispered so the others couldn’t hear. “Tell them you’re Catholic.”

  There were tears in the corners of his eyes, but they didn’t fall.

  Jan shook his head. It would make no difference. He had a death sentence, no matter what his religious beliefs or background. The etchings on the walls of the cell confirmed that. Gypsies, Christians, Muslims, atheists, agnostics and Jews had all gone before him. All had died at the hands of the demons in black who’d taken it upon themselves to rid the world of all that was good.

  When they took Peter early the next morning, Jan was finally sitting up and had even spent a few minutes standing during the night. His heart fell as he saw his friend marched away and the heavy wooden door fall back into place, obscuring everything from his view. The morning sun hadn’t yet risen, and so the cell lay in pure darkness. There was no light from the moon, nothing to break up the blackness that swallowed them whole the moment the cell door shut.

  None of the boys whimpered or cried any longer. Six days in the dank cell with only a bucket in the corner in which to relieve themselves, and one bowl of watered-down potato soup in the evenings, had rendered all of them weak and thinner than they’d already been. Several of the boys hadn’t returned from their interrogations and Jan feared the worst, although he couldn’t bring himself to worry about them or about anything other than the pain that he knew was coming the next time he left that room.

  It was all-consuming. The torture was worse than he’d been prepared to suffer through. He’d known it was coming, but he couldn’t have imagined how much his body would hurt and how intensely he wanted to tell them everything he knew so the pain would stop. But he hadn’t said a word. He’d kept his family safe and his secrets remained hidden in his heart. He only hoped his body would give out and die before it got so bad that he cracked.

  “Where’s Peter?” asked one of the smaller boys, his voice grating on Jan’s nerves.

  “I don’t know,” he replied shortly.

  He didn’t want to take it out on them, but he couldn’t think about Peter. It was too much. Too hard.

  The door swung open again and Peter stumbled into the room a short time later. They hadn’t spent as much time questioning him as they had some of the others. The guard surveilled the room in the faint morning light, disgust turning down the corners of his mouth beneath a short black moustache.

  “Get up, all of you. Come with me.”

  The boys staggered out of the dank cell and into the corridor. They jogged or shuffled in line, two by two, along the hallway and found themselves once again in the courtyard outside. Jan recalled their arrival in that same location six days earlier. It seemed like another lifetime. He was a different boy than the one who’d driven through the archway in the back of a truck, full of trepidation but excited to prove he was strong enough to withstand his fate. Whatever it may be.

  Now he knew—his fate was death at the hands of the Gestapo’s Einsatzgruppe. The cruelty of the men whose purpose was the torture and murder of anyone they deemed a threat went beyond anything he’d seen or believed possible before they snatched him off the ghetto's streets.

  The boys whispered amongst themselves.

  “Where are they taking us?”

  “What will happen now?”

  “Are we going home?”

  “Will they kill us?”

  So many questions. None with any answers. Jan didn’t believe they’d take the boys home, not after all they’d been through. But he wouldn’t say it. Wouldn’t steal hope in their final moments. He steeled himself, his jaw tightening as he fought back the tears. If only he’d had a chance to say goodbye to Mama and to Nacha. They didn’t know where he was, wouldn’t know what’d become of him. The thought brought a lump to his throat.

  “He’s Catholic,” Peter said. His voice was too soft, raspy. It was lost in the noise.

  Jan frowned. What was he doing?

  “Catholic!” shouted Peter, gaining strength as he spoke. “Jan Kostanski is Catholic.”

  A guard wandered closer, his brow furrowed. “Which one of you is Jan Kostanski?”

  Jan raised a shaking hand. His shoulder ached from the effort.

  “Come with me. I’ve been looking for you.” The guard spun on his heel and marched from the courtyard out to the street. The sun glanced above the buildings on the other side of the road, temporarily blinding Jan as he followed the man.

  He stepped through the archway, tenting a hand over his eyes to shield them from the glare.

  “Don’t be shy, boy. What were you doing in the ghetto? Never mind, you’re free to go. Your mother waits for you over there.” The guard pointed across the road to where a vehicle lay idling. An old black BMW Dixie sat with one door open. Mama stood beside the door, her hands pressed to her mouth.

  When Jan saw her, he began to run. His legs didn’t work the way they should, but he ambled and hurried the best he could across the empty street. He reached her and collapsed into her arms.

  “Mama,” he groaned.

  She cupped his cheeks between her hands and kissed him all over his face. “My darling boy. What have they done to you?”

  He gasped at the pain of her touch. She released him, tears streaking down her cheeks in rivulets.

  Just then, a series of shots rang out behind him. There were screams of terror and pain, then more shots fired. Five, ten, twenty, then on and on. He lost count of how many there were. It fell silent for a few moments, then more shooting followed. He covered his ears with both hands, his tears turning to rivers.

  Mama pushed him quickly into the passenger seat and shut the door behind him. She climbed in the driver’s side and pushed the car into gear, accelerating away from the curb.

  They didn’t speak. Instead, each of them sat in silence, crying, Jan with his hands still covering his ears. He rocked back and forth in his seat, willing himself not to think about what had happened, what he’d escaped from with moments to spare. And all because the words of a friend had given him freedom. A friend he’d never see again.

  Mama glanced at him as she wiped the tears from her eyes with the back of one gloved hand. “I bribed them days ago, but they said they couldn’t locate you.”

  “I was there all the time,” he said.

  13

  30th March 1942

  At seventeen years of age, Jan had smuggled regular supplies into the Jewish ghetto in Warsaw for two long years. He’d learned every place to scale the wall or push his way through. Every weakness in the structures of the ghetto, every tunnel built by resistors and every member of the Jewish Police who could be trusted, bought, or was dangerous to his cause.

  Nathan held the barbed wire apart for him and he stepped through, then paused to look at the camera. Edek held the Rolleiflex camera steady atop a tripod. He peered down through the second lens and held up his free hand.

  When his hand dropped, Jan sighed with relief and finished climbing through the wire. “Have you got enough photographs?”

  Edek packed the camera away into a satchel slung over his shoulder. “That’s enough for now. Thanks for posing. I’ll add these to my collection.”

  “What will you do with all these photos?” asked Nathan.

  Edek had followed Jan several times over the years, keen to document the smuggling operation that kept the Jews in the ghetto from starving to death on the meagre rations provided by the Germans. He’d photographed Jan riding in a rickshaw with Jakob, standing at the dividing wall with Antoni, one arm around Nacha in an awkward embrace that still made the heat rise to Jan’s cheeks when he recalled the moment, and a profile shot of him and Walter when they were considering the best way to get back to the Aryan side of the fence one day during a particularly nasty bout of raids.

  In the end, they’d simply marched through the open gate with a work crew and ducked into a nearby alley before running home. Thankfully, the guard on duty at the gate knew them well, had a predilection for fine chocolate that Jan was able to satisfy on a regular basis, and looked away at just the right moment.

  “I have them hidden beneath the floor of my apartment. I hope to smuggle them out to send to the Allies, or perhaps they will be revealed when the war is over and I am gone.” He offered them a wan smile.

  Jan didn’t like it when his friends spoke that way. “Don’t say that—you’ll still be around then. The Gestapo likes you. They’ve given you a job, after all.”

  Edek’s face clouded over. “It isn’t a kindness. You can trust me on that.”

  “What is it you do?” asked Walter.

  Edek studied his expression. “You wish to know?”

  “I do too,” replied Jan.

  Everyone in the ghetto knew of the favouritism Edek received. That he put his camera bag over his shoulder and set off in the gleaming black staff cars with various Gestapo officers. Once he even went on an outing with Meisinger. But he never told them what he did on those expeditions outside the ghetto walls, only that the Nazis paid him to take photographs for the sake of their records and for posterity.

  “You may come with me now, then. I have a small job to do, and if you keep out of sight, I don’t see how it will hurt. You should know, I think. You should see for yourself what I see. Too many still believe they can survive this war if they keep their heads low. Never mind all that—we won’t speak of it now. You can witness for yourself and make up your own mind about the fate of my people.”

  Edek’s black moustache twitched as he spoke, and there was a deep sadness behind his almost-black eyes. His fedora was pulled low and tipped to one side. Dark brown hair curled out from beneath it.

  He adjusted the satchel on his shoulder and beckoned them to follow him. Jan and Walter exchanged a curious glance. With a shrug, Jan trotted after the photographer. Walter waited a moment, chewing his lower lip, then followed them.

  “Wait for me,” Walter called.

  Jan slowed his pace and the two of them walked together, side by side, several paces behind Edek. The photographer paid them no attention. He walked with slumped shoulders and a swinging gate. He hummed beneath his breath all the while, waving occasionally to people they passed in the street.

  Everyone seemed to know Edek, although he was a quiet, studious type who generally kept to himself. He was well-liked in the community, as well as something of a curiosity. People weren’t sure whether or not to trust him, although in Jan’s experience, he was a man of deep integrity and compassion. Still, anyone favoured by the Gestapo was immediately under suspicion in the ghetto.

  They walked a long time until they’d passed through the entire ghetto and out the other side. The boys caught up to Edek to make it through the ghetto gates, where he simply doffed his hat to the guards and they waved him through.

  Jan shoved his hands deep into his pockets and chewed on the stem of a long piece of grass to pass the time. He was missing his front teeth, but had learned to manage with the rest of the teeth he’d retained after surviving the Gestapo’s beating the previous October.

  “I have a favour to ask you,” Edek said.

  “What is it?” Jan asked.

  “The photographs in my collection—will you take them? Will you get them to the Allies? Will you get them into the hands of the right people so the world will see what is happening here in Warsaw to my people?”

  “Of course I will.”

  “Can I give them to you soon? I don’t know how much longer they will tolerate me.”

  Jan nodded. “Tomorrow? I’ll return then, if you like.”

  “Yes, tomorrow.”

  They came across a field between two bombed-out buildings and Edek stopped them at the outskirts. On the other side of the field were two trucks and a black staff car. They were parked on the grass.

  The sun had set behind them and black shadows hung over them and lengthened across the field, giving the entire scene a sinister look with the remnants of a building in sharp relief behind them.

  Edek beckoned Jan and Walter deeper into the ruins of the first building and pushed a finger to his lips.

  “Circle around the outside of the field and you can watch from the building yonder. Do you see it?” He pointed to the outline of the partially collapsed building behind the Gestapo soldiers, who milled about in the field smoking cigarettes that glowed red in the failing light.

  Jan nodded.

  Walter scratched his nose. “What are they doing?”

  “You’ll see.” Edek’s eyes darkened. “When I’m finished, I’ll return and meet you here. Make sure no one sees you.”

 

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