Page 29

And everything I’ve told him has been cast in the same rosy light. We don’t talk about our fears for our families or our guilt for surviving. We never admit they could be suffering – or lost. We live in the moment or in a safe version of the past.

It wasn’t a realisation she wanted. But it explained why part of her hung back and let the looks he’d started giving her – the ones that hinted at deepening feelings – go unseen.

She hung back now too and let Szymon step in.

He lit another cigarette before he answered – he was rarely without one clamped between his nicotine-stained fingers – but his voice lost its belligerent edge.

‘I’m sorry, but there’s no point in lying to you.

Nobody from your area would have escaped.

German officials and their families live in ?oliborz now – it was one of the first areas to be “swept”, as they called it, when they got here.

They began herding Jewish families from there into houses in the city centre where the ghetto now stands long before the wall was built.

And freezing our bank accounts and forcing us into armbands and into factories where they work us like slaves. ’

‘But you’re not in there – you got away. So it’s possible they did too.’

Noemi couldn’t bear to look at Matthias as he leaned forward; the hope in his eyes was too bright for the news that was surely coming. Szymon must have seen it flare too, but he was clearly a man who dealt only in the truth, and he didn’t allow it to last.

‘It’s possible, yes, but it’s not likely.

I wish I could tell you a different story, but I can’t.

I got away and went underground in 1940 because I’ve always lived on the fringes of what most people would consider to be a respectable life.

I was tough enough to do it, and so were the other escapees I’ve met since.

But that wasn’t an option for most Jews – certainly not for the older ones or for the wealthier classes who’d lived more sheltered lives.

They went where they were told because they had no other choice, and they thought it was the law-abiding thing to do.

Nobody could have guessed at the start how bad things would become.

For the first few months, renegades like me were able to get in and out of the ghetto with food supplies and medicines.

That’s also how we mapped out the tunnels and sewers.

But the Nazis got wind of what we were doing and closed it off, and now it’s a sealed world. ’

Matthias sat back, his face a closed mask. It was left to Noemi to ask the question he couldn’t.

‘How many people are in there?’

They’d seen the walls; they knew how far the perimeter extended. The ghetto was huge, but it wasn’t huge enough to contain Szymon’s answer.

‘It’s hard to be certain. We estimated over four hundred thousand at the start, but the boundaries keep shifting.

’ He carried on talking over their strangled gasps.

‘And it’s not just the overcrowding that’s the problem.

The conditions inside are horrific. The houses are filthy and riddled with rats and disease.

The Nazis cut the power off at night and increasingly during the day.

The daily food ration wouldn’t keep a cat alive.

We try to smuggle food in, and we’re inventive as we can be – the hearses that go in to collect the dead are currently our main form of transport for bread – but it’s a risky business, and the Nazis are brutal with anyone they catch smuggling.

They kill the entire family, not just the culprit. ’

Matthias had turned grey. Noemi could see him trying to calculate the odds of his ageing family trying to survive under such frightening conditions and reaching an impossible conclusion. She was doing the same exercise with hers. And she felt as if she was about to explode.

‘How can this be happening? The ghetto isn’t a secret; it’s not hidden away.

How can human beings be penned up like this in the middle of a city while people on the outside go about their business as if the walls and the broken glass and the guards have somehow become invisible? Do we really matter so little?’

Szymon’s face turned old. His eyes dimmed and wouldn’t meet hers. It was obvious he’d been wrestling hopelessly with the same questions for far too long.

‘I wish I had an answer for you, but better men than me have tried to find it and failed. The one thing the ghetto certainly isn’t is invisible.

’ He shook his head as if he couldn’t believe what he was about to say.

‘Chlodna Street, which is one of the city’s main thoroughfares, runs through the centre of it.

Closing that completely would have caused chaos, so the Nazis built a bridge over it instead to allow the good citizens of Warsaw to carry on about their business undisturbed.

I’ve watched them go across it on their way to their offices and shops and schools.

There are starving, terrified people no distance below them; there are dead children lying uncovered in the street.

But nobody crossing the bridge sees them because nobody looks down.

That’s a choice they make every day, but as to how they do it and how they live with themselves?

’ He shook his head again. ‘I’ve no explanation for that.

Like I’ve no explanation for why we are hated or why we’re described as vermin.

Or for why one group can only rise up by standing on the bodies of another. ’

The room fell silent. When Matthias eventually recovered his voice, it had taken on Szymon’s harder edge.

‘They’re not going to keep the ghetto going forever though, are they?

’ He didn’t wait for an answer. They all knew it was no , even if they hadn’t voiced that aloud before.

‘There were rumours doing the rounds in Prague that tens of thousands of Jews had been taken out of the ghetto in Vilna and murdered in the nearby forests. There’s the same whispers circulating about Riga.

I imagine you’ve heard them too.’ He exhaled hard as Szymon nodded.

‘Is that what you’re expecting will happen next here? ’

Szymon drew in another lungful of nicotine.

‘It’s possible. They’re certainly doing something to reduce the numbers, although we’ve not heard anything about actual massacres yet.

There’s a train line that runs through the ghetto, and they’ve started moving packed trains out in the early mornings.

The wagons are sealed when they come through, but we’ve heard cries for help and screaming from inside. ’

Noemi had to close her eyes for a moment. Every time Szymon spoke, he delivered another blow. And he wasn’t done yet.

‘Where are the trains going, do you know?’

It was yet another question she had to but didn’t want to ask, and another answer they couldn’t avoid. For the first time since they’d entered his tiny flat, Szymon looked less sure of himself.

‘Our information – which is patchy – says they’re sent to a camp called Treblinka, which is about a hundred kilometres from here.

Unfortunately, we don’t know much about it yet: we’ve no idea if it’s a work camp or a death camp, or what happens to the ghetto’s residents if and when they get there.

We’ve no idea if that’s where the whole ghetto is ultimately headed.

So we want to send someone there to gather more information, but it’s not an easy mission – or a priority for the Polish Home Army, who are the main resistance organisers here and mostly not Jewish.

And we haven’t found anyone ourselves yet with the right set of skills to get there and back, or spy on the camp, without being caught. ’

‘You have now.’

Noemi wasn’t sure if she said it first or Matthias, but they were both equally determined to volunteer and to prove themselves. And they didn’t give Szymon a chance to argue.

Treblinka. The ghetto’s last stop. Nobody else is going to get sent there, not if we can rescue them first. Which is why we have to hold on, trust to the map and keep going.

The camp’s name flashed like a torch through Noemi’s head as the darkness pressed round her.

From the moment she and Matthias had seen the truth of it, they’d both known that saving the trapped residents of the Warsaw ghetto before their bodies were fed into Treblinka’s flames had to be their next fight.

In a repeat of their flight from Munich, they’d gone to the camp on their reconnaissance mission dressed as hikers, carrying their German papers which Szymon said carried the same weight in Poland as they had in Czechoslovakia, although it was a relief when that assumption wasn’t tested.

Spring had arrived dry and mild so they were able to walk most of the way and keep their bus journeys short.

They stuck to back roads and paths which led them to the forest where the camp was believed to be sited and avoided anything except the most isolated farms when they needed supplies.

They found the forest itself easily enough, and the barracks and gravel pits which lined up with the features drawn on their map.

But the scale of it was too small for the trainloads Szymon had described leaving the ghetto, so they kept walking deeper into the trees.

The faint sound of dogs barking was the first clue that there was another site, and it wasn’t long before that noise altered its pitch and turned into what sounded like human cries. They forced themselves not to weaken at that and followed the sounds in a silence that deepened as the cries grew.

Treblinka wasn’t as easy to find as Dachau – the barbed wire cresting its walls had been camouflaged by a layer of interlaced branches which confused the sight lines.

But there were other clues. The heat haze shimmering from what looked like a long series of fire pits at its furthest side.

The crackle of flames and the thick scent of smoke in the air.

The screams which were definitely human and definitely afraid.

Noemi had heard her parents’ voices in those; she knew from his white face that Matthias had heard his.

They’d sat in the woods with their arms round each other and tears patterning their cheeks, watching and listening until early morning.

They’d heard the whistle of an engine approaching; they’d seen its white plume.

They’d heard the dogs and the shouting, the gunshots and the screams. They’d understood they were witnesses to cruelty, and murder, on a scale they couldn’t begin to imagine.

And they’d brought that grim knowledge back to Szymon, who’d fed it to his contacts in the ghetto.

And now we have a chance to stop the machinery. To stop thousands more from disappearing into those woods. Even one life and one voice left to tell the tale has to be worth it.

Noemi’s eyes had finally grown accustomed to the dark.

There was a battle coming – that’s why they were pushing each other on through the blackness and the filth.

That’s why they were carrying weapons and messages of hope for the fighters already gathered inside the ghetto.

That was why, if this run succeeded, there would be another tomorrow, and the next day.

And when there’s nothing left to bring in, we’ll stand with them and fight too.

Matthias had stopped. He began running his hands over the dirty wet wall. She heard his sigh of relief when he hit metal.

‘The ladder’s here, which should mean there’s a manhole above it, exactly as the map said there would be. So far, so good.’

She almost laughed, it was such an incongruous choice of words. She doubted many people would see anything good in their situation. But it was right, and right would do. She held on as tightly to that as she did to the ladder’s rickety frame as they climbed up it and into the unknown.