Chapter Three

WARSAW, 1943

IGLANCE AROUND MY dilapidated kitchen with its rusty sink, chipped brick, crumbling molding, smelly pipes, damaged plates, and mismatched silverware, and it is hard to believe that I once ate from fine bone china and never washed a single dish. Even our staff would never have lived in such squalor.

I think back to my other life. I allot myself only a few minutes per day to reflect, otherwise it is too painful, too debilitating. Our home in Konstancin was a who’s who of Warsaw: politicians, industrialists, poets, novelists, playwrights, entertainers, artists, doctors. We lived among them, believed that we were an integral part of them. There was no us and them where we grew up. Of course, we knew of anti-Semitism, heard about “incidents,” but it didn’t affect our insulated world. Somehow, we believed we were immune. How blissfully na?ve we were. I now know that the lines in the sand had been drawn all along, festering like cracks beneath our rare Calacatta gold marble surfaces. We fooled ourselves into thinking we were above the common Jews of Warsaw and their “lowly” Yiddish, with our clipped Polish enunciations, stylish clothes, salons, live-in staff, influential status. And then later... after the invasion, all the payoffs and bribes my father and uncle doled out to keep us protected. It bought us nine months, before we were taken and thrown into the ghetto with everyone else. We should have left Poland long before the invasion in September 1939. We knew better. We saw the signs; small Jewish businesses targeted and destroyed. We were educated, worldly—we knew. But my mother insisted we stay, believed that our friends in high places would shield us, and my father gave in to her, as always. That blind foolishness cost us our home, our everything.

My father... God, I miss him. He was brilliant, kind, loving, but... with deep respect for the dead, he was perhaps the dumbest man I have ever known. Gullible and blind. He didn’t see what was going on in our home right under his nose. Way before the Nazis destroyed us. I saw it all, at age twelve. I did not look like anyone in my family. My parents and sister, Natalya, were dark-haired, brown-eyed, and olive-skinned. I remember the intense way my mother would eye the man in charge of overseeing my father’s construction sites—Pawel, my father’s trusted right hand. And how Pawel would return my mother’s furtive glances when he thought my father wasn’t looking—but I saw it all. My mother was the greatest actress I’d ever encounter, the way she turned it on for Pawel and off when my father entered the room. And Pawel—tall, blond, slanty-eyed, swarthy, with an ever-present cigarette dangling from his full lips—could not hide his lusty gaze or the obvious: I looked more like him than my own father.

I hated my mother for that, for that flirtation, for betraying my first love. My father, a man who told me that I could become anything, that there were no limits. A man whose only fault was that his life revolved around making my mother happy. I often wondered how he could not know the truth. Didn’t he hear how her breath dropped when Pawel entered the room? And yet, my father died blind to my mother’s deceitful antics. His last word when the Nazis burst into our home and beat him to death with their guns and shiny black boots was her name.

As I lean against the kitchen wall and see my reflection in the small hanging mirror across from me, I can’t help but think: You are just like her. I quickly look away.

Pressing up against the door, I hear the din of voices coming from inside the bedroom, where the secret meeting is being held that includes both my husband and Aleksander. A meeting I wasn’t invited to. But I am showing up anyway. They just don’t know it yet.

Jakub thinks I am at the abandoned convent across the street from our apartment building, where I teach drama classes to the handful of children who are still alive. I told my assistant to watch the kids for an hour while I returned home, so I could eavesdrop on the “emergency meeting” led by my husband. The group sitting on the other side of the door, in a circle of mismatched chairs, comprises the elite wing of Oyneg Shabbos, a consortium of journalists, novelists, playwrights, scholars, and a few prominent artists, like Aleksander.

They are secretly producing an archive documenting ghetto life, an attempt to preserve the truth so that one day people will know what really happened to us—our version, not the Nazi version. Preserve, like the jam we once jarred from our sprawling garden. Giant blackberries, so wild and tart and luscious. Another life ago, the life that was erased. The archive in my opinion (though no one is asking for it) is merely a pathetic passive resistance, an intellectualized way of fighting back to protect the memories of the dead and the almost-dead (there is no in-between in the ghetto). But documented history doesn’t lie, Jakub imparts to his colleagues. Through diaries, drawings, essays, oral histories, and interviews, he is determined to gather all the evidence of our demise. He calls it dignity versus indignities. It is all so antiseptic, so far from reality.

What dignity? Open your eyes, Jakub. I groan whenever I hear those stupid words. Jakub is so much like my father, brilliant but oblivious to what is right in front of his face. All words, no action. Not like me. All action. And that’s just one of our many marital problems.

I hear my husband’s voice rise above the others. Deep, reserved, and persuasive, like a rabbi giving a sermon from a pulpit. I shake my head. That voice seems to work its magic on everyone but me.

“Whores,” he says quietly at first. “I called this emergency meeting because those animals intend to make prostitutes out of our young women. I just got this document... I can’t reveal my source, but it was slipped to me from a friend in the Judenrat.”

A friend. Hah! My stomach turns. The “Juden Rats,” we call them. Twenty-four traitors appointed by the Nazis who rule over the ghetto with the support of the Jewish Police. Police—please! They are turncoats with batons who beat into submission other Jews who get out of line. Trained Nazi dogs. Three thousand strong—the Jewish Police, like the hoodwinked Judenrat, believe that if they collaborate, do as they are told, the Nazis will keep up their end of worthless agreements, and they will somehow survive the ghetto. Delusional, all of them. Worse than Jakub.

Jakub pauses, takes a sip of water. I hear the sip, picture the jump of his large Adam’s apple. “The Nazis are demanding that the Judenrat organize two brothels of girls to be established outside the ghetto—one for officers, one for privates. According to the document, their poor soldiers are ‘suffering from a lack of sexual relations’ and ‘getting venereal disease from casual encounters on the streets of Warsaw’ and—”

“Pigs. Rapists. Pedophiles. We must stop this!” Minna Lipchitz shouts out, and I envision the jutting of her pointy chin. She is a mother of two. Her husband was shot dead in front of her in broad daylight on ?wi?tojerska Street a month ago. Her eldest son, thirteen, is one of our prized smugglers. She also used to be a prominent historian who once headed the National Library of Poland.

“You’re not going to like what I have to say, Jakub,” chimes in another man whose voice I don’t recognize immediately. “We are wasting time with these oral histories. The world needs to know what’s going on here now. Getting out information and training couriers must be our prime focus.”

I snap my fingers lightly. Szymon Berkowicz—that’s who it is. The renowned children’s book author, whose famous story, Go to Sleep, ?abko, about a talking frog, who after a long, twisty adventure finally falls asleep on his own lily pad, is—was—a staple in every nursery, Jewish and non-Jewish alike.

“Does anyone really care, Szymon? We will be wasting time with that too.” It’s Aleksander. “With all the lives we’ve already risked trying to send telegrams through couriers to our friends in Europe and the U.S., where has that gotten us?” His voice rises in a way I’ve never heard before, a mix of disgust and strength. “Has a single goddamn country lifted a finger to help us? We need to fight back on our own. Start smuggling weapons. Our words are no longer working for us, Jakub. We must all accept this.”

“Aleks, that’s enough,” my husband says, cutting off his brother. “This is exactly what they want us to do—divide among ourselves—kill one another, do their dirty work for them. Let’s not argue. Let’s think. We need a plan. That’s why we are here.”

But Aleksander’s voice waxes bitter. “I’m done thinking, planning, drawing, pretending. We’re out of time. They burned my Karina and our baby girl alive, laughing and drinking while torching our home. Just imagine what they will do to our daughters in their beds. Would you have me draw that, too, Jakub?” I hear a chair push back violently, a sudden crash to the floor. “Enough with the archives. The only plan left—the only discussion—is to figure out ways to defend ourselves while there are still some of us alive left to do it.”

My Karina.His Karina, my best friend. I shrink back against the broken brick wall, which pokes sharply into my back. Aleksander’s pain is unbearable. His love for Karina clearly hasn’t diminished, while mine for him has only grown stronger. I feel the heat rising in my neck. But he’s right. Jakub and his precious archives, his opus, his dignities versus indignities. For what? If the world is indifferent to us now, just imagine how it will be in the future. No one cares, Jakub. No one fucking cares! I told him that in the privacy of our bed. Perhaps that’s why he has never asked me to join this group. Too afraid of my rage, too afraid I might incite his brainy supporters to put down their pens and their pondering and to act.

Well, he’s right. Exhaling deeply, I fling open the door and enter the room. Jakub drops his papers and looks up, as does everyone else.

“Bina, what is it? I thought you were in class.”

“I was in class, Jakub. But now I’m here.” I stare back at all of them. The core group of twelve, Jakub’s tribe. “I heard everything. You’re not going to be able to stop them. If they want prostitutes, they are going to get prostitutes.” Hands on hips, I stare them all down. “We need to think ahead, take matters into our own hands immediately, before the Judenrat does it for us. I want to spearhead this endeavor.”

“You? Spearhead prostitutes? Enough. Bina, leave.” Jakub’s reserve has fallen away, giving space to his own anger. So much suppressed anger.

I plant my worn-in shoes on the floor. The soles are so thin I can feel the slivery hardness against my calloused feet. “I’m not going anywhere. Look at what’s really happening around us. The aktions, the mass deportations. We know exactly what’s going on in those death camps.” The tension builds behind my brows. Everybody in this room knows.

“Dignity,” Jakub says emphatically, with a paper slam against his knee. I can tell the thud is softer than he’d intended. “We have to find normalcy inside this hell, if we have any chance at all of surviving.”

My eyes scorch at his na?veté. “Don’t fool yourself. No one is going to survive this place. No. One. It’s a numbers game, a waiting in line until it’s your turn to be slaughtered. We need to assume we have no chance of survival and work from that standpoint.” I should stop right here, but I’m on a roll. “You are just following orders.” I point accusingly at my husband and his band of intellectuals. “Working within their demented system. Accepting the unacceptable. And I simply refuse. I respect that you are documenting these atrocities, but it’s not going to save lives.” My eyes meet Aleksander’s briefly. “Look at me.” I challenge them all, changing tactics. “What do you see?”

No one says a word. They don’t have to. “I will say it for you: I look more like them than they do. The Aryan poster girl. Let’s call this face what it is. Use me. I can act. I speak German fluently. You’ve already seen that I can smuggle. And I’m not dumb.” I turn to Jakub. “Let me do what I can do to get us information and get out information—to resist. Resist, not write. Resist, not sit and wait. Let me handle this matter so that maybe some of us can escape and live to tell our stories. Not die with our stories buried in some secret underground time capsule. Think about that, Jakub.” I feel the fervor burning inside my eyes, daring anyone to defy me.

“You’re my wife. It’s unacceptable, degrading,” he mutters under his breath. I’m undermining Jakub yet again, I know. We are having an intimate fight out in the open. I am landing wild, humiliating punches in his boxing ring in front of the most gifted minds of Poland, his people.

“Look at me,” I command the room. Now I’m Portia in The Merchant of Venice. “Let me be the madame of this brothel for those officers—the decision-makers. Allow me to watch over our girls who are going to be forced into their beds anyway. I will set the rules of engagement for those men. I will demand better food, hygiene—”

“You will demand?” Jakub interrupts with a laugh. But it’s not a laugh. Everyone knows it’s not a laugh.

I stand my ground. “I get it. They could easily get a Polish woman or a German woman to do the job—but having a Jewish woman inside overseeing their sex slaves is exactly what Nazis want. Just the way they have used the Judenrat and the Jewish Police to rule over us. Same damn formula. They are monsters, but brilliant tacticians. They know how beneficial it is for them to pit our own against us. We do all the dirty work for them. I have no illusions. But let’s use them right back, Jakub. I will do what I can to protect our girls and, most importantly, give them purpose to survive—that is the only way they have any chance at all.”

Jakub’s face is pale, but I can see the hot shame sweltering beneath it. My heart thumps wildly. No one says anything, not even Josef Stromski, world-renowned philosopher and a nonstop talker, the type who revels in hearing his own condescending voice. But right now, Stromski is uncharacteristically mute, radio silent, paying attention.

“What about you?” Jakub whispers coldly. “You are the greatest beauty of them all. The prize.”

I don’t argue with that. “No one gets the prize until they earn it, win it, beg for it. It will be a game that I intend to win. That’s how it works with those beasts. You’re going to have to trust me.”

Our eyes meet. I don’t trust you, his soft brown eyes transmit. I once loved you, but we are broken. I know, my eyes transmit back. Still...

I turn away from Jakub, look to the others. They don’t love me. They aren’t married to me. Perhaps they are envious of me. Perhaps they are numb to me, thinking I am beneath them. But all of them want to live, and I’m offering more than just paperwork. I am proposing a way in which I would be the eyes and ears among our captors when they have their pants down, and are at their most vulnerable.

“Enough words,” I announce. “It is time for action.”

I stand before them: self-appointed leader of the whores. I have stooped to my lowest denominator, risen to my highest calling. By the looks on their faces, I have defeated my husband. A man who knows he is impotent against my desires. My eyes meet Aleksander’s once again, but only for a wistful second. He, too, sees the possibility, the fight. A way out, a sick, distorted path to survival. It has come to this. My darkest hour and perhaps my greatest performance.