Resistance: Part One

I’d thought the younger ones would be more naïve, and maybe they were. But they were also ambitious, eager to prove themselves, and fully aware that capturing someone like me could earn them an early promotion.

Like other ghettos throughout Poland, Tarnow Ghetto had been sealed since nearly the beginning of the war, cut off from the outside world. Cut off from Jews in other ghettos. This isolation gave total power to the German invaders.

For the past three months, I’d worked as a courier for a resistance movement known as Akiva. My job was to break through that isolation, to warn the people, and to help them survive, if I could.

I offered him a smile of my own, one that shot bile into my throat.

They combed meticulously through our drawers and cupboards and wardrobes, even cut open the mattress on Sara’s bed to search inside it.

...I’d also learned that the Nazis held us in particular contempt. They wanted the Poles to see that if we were given the work of animals, we would do the work of animals. They wanted the world to think that we were less than human.

He only furrowed his brow, his somber expression full of compassion.

I didn’t have to wait for long inside the Tarnow Ghetto before a tall, gangly boy approached me.

I tried not to look, tried not to think about who had hidden here and why, and how futile it had been.

A woman stepped from the shadows, squinting against the light and looking as ghostly as if she had been an actual apparition.

I chose the guard who looked most likely to give me a pass, this time a German about my father’s age. I didn’t like to interact with the Poles or the OD. They were usually more adept at recognizing one of their own.

“What do the dead need with money?” His cynical laugh was like a drill on my chest.

The baby was already awake but still lethargic from the sleeping pills.

No one laughed here, and smiles were fleeting.

We’d become an organization formidable enough to gain the respect of larger resistance movements in Warsaw, and we had begun discussing ways to get the Nazis’ attention here in Krakow.

Dolek took Meriam and a few other couriers with him on a trip north and returned with a new, fifth member for us, a girl named Esther Karolinski, who intently studied the floorboards as she mumbled, “I’ve never done resistance work before, but I can’t wait to learn.”

Esther was petite, with a shy voice, an uncertain smile, and every possible look and mannerism to radiate her Jewishness.

We hid behind a tree with gnarled roots that threatened to trip us every time we moved and with tendrils of branches that soaked us with dripping rainwater.

No one pretended that our humble gathering could replace the rituals we’d once shared with our families, but for most of us, this was the only family we had left.

Never let it be said that the young are powerless or incapable. Never let it be said that youth is a liability.

Even now, she looked strong, resolute, so much of what I wanted to be whenever I stepped into dangerous territory.

Esther sidled up next to me, arriving last of all with a freshly knitted scarf around her neck.

If the Nazis had breached the bunker, then they knew about Akiva.

Gradually, I began venturing out into the city and found myself at the building where our bunker had been.

Wherever I went from here, I intended to take with me as much contraband from this safe house as possible.

I couldn’t tell them I’d come to sell to the Jews—no one had money left to buy anything, and the Nazis were barely keeping up the ruse of caring whether anyone in the ghetto lived another day.

Now he had power over people who’d barely looked in his direction only a few years ago, and he relished every moment of it.

If he could not be respected or admired, then he would be feared. It took everything I had to hide my loathing of him, and an extra dose of courage.

I wanted him to be defiant, bold. I wanted my parents to fight for their lives as hard as I was fighting.

I stifled my tears, but Mama had already lain down on her bed, evidently too tired to continue talking.