The Woman with the Blue Star, Pam Jenoff [highly recommended books txt] 📗

wall and gravely injured. She died before we could get out.”

“I’m so sorry,” I say, seeing the pain in her eyes. I try to imagine the horror that they had been through, but find that I cannot.

“I made it out of the sewer, but I was alone and badly wounded. Saul and the others were too far gone for me to catch.”

“So you were completely alone?”

“No, there was someone else. A young Polish man named Krys, who loved Ella. He was part of the Home Army. He was supposed to help Ella get us out of the sewer, but he was captured by the Germans. When the Germans were transferring him to a different prison, he escaped and made it back to the sewer. He was too late to help Ella, but he found me. He was going to Warsaw to fight as part of the uprising. I went with him to join the cause and do whatever I could.”

“What became of him?” I ask eagerly. I am suddenly curious to know the fate of the man who had played a part in my family’s survival.

“He was killed fighting the Germans, but I think part of his spirit was destroyed the moment I told him the awful truth about Ella’s death. He was a good man.” Her eyes cloud over. “I survived Warsaw somehow.”

“You were so brave,” I say.

“Me?” Sadie looks surprised. “I did nothing. Ella, Krys, Pawel, they were the brave ones.”

I shake my head, smiling inwardly. Researching my family has made me into somewhat of an amateur historian and I have met several survivors of the war over the years. Each seemed to downplay his or her own role in the war, giving the “real” credit to someone else. “You were brave, too,” I insist. “Saul told me so many stories about the courageous things you did.”

“Saul...” Sadie smiles, seeming lost in her memories. “He was my first love. I tried to find him after the war, but I had no idea where he had gone. And later, when there were records, well, what was the point? I assumed that he moved on, had a life of his own.”

“He never forgot you, though. I’m sure he would be glad to hear from you.”

“Maybe.” She falters, and in her hesitation to face the past, I recognize a piece of myself, the same reluctance that almost stopped me from crossing the market square and finding my sister. There are some pieces of the past too far gone to reach.

“But why have you used Ella’s name all of these years?” I ask.

“Before Ella died, she gave me her identity card. I felt bad about taking it, but it was the one thing that would get me safely out of the city. At first, I used it to pass as a non-Jew. After the war, I decided to keep her name and live out my days honoring her. Sadie Gault was dead; she had no one. But Ella Stepanek could have a fresh start. I traveled to Paris, let Ella’s brother, Maciej, know what had become of her. I settled there and realized my dream of studying medicine. I retired from my work as a pediatrician some time ago.”

“You didn’t come right back to Kraków after the war?”

She shakes her head. “But after Communism ended, Maciej was able to get back his and Ella’s family home in Kraków. The government had taken it after the war when their stepmother was arrested as a collaborator. He left it to me when he died. It’s a beautiful house not far from here. I didn’t move into it, though. There were too many painful memories. I sold it. I have a small apartment now.” She gazes out across the square. “I’ve lived all over the world. In the end, I came home. It was strange coming back to this part of the world after so many years abroad. But there was something that called to my soul. This is home now.” I envy her peace, and her calm sense of belonging with her past.

“What happened to Ella’s stepmother, the collaborator?” I ask. The woman means nothing to me, yet I am curious to fill in all of the missing pieces.

“She died in prison before she could stand trial. She was not a nice person and she caused Ella a great deal of pain. Still, it was a sorry end to a selfish life and I would not have wished it on her.”

I try to process all that I have learned. My sister and I had lived all of these years, not knowing that the other still existed. We had lost so much time. “Tell me,” I say, drawing my chair closer. “Tell me everything.” I had found not just my sister, but a treasure trove of information about the family I never knew and a way to fill in the pages of blank history I thought were lost forever. “I want to know it all, about our parents, about our family before the war.” I want to know more than how they died. I want to understand how they had lived.

But Sadie shakes her head. “I can’t just tell you.” I wonder if, as with so many survivors, the past is simply too painful to share. She stands, as if to go. Anxiety rises in me. We’ve lost so many years. Perhaps it is too late. “Let me show you instead.” She holds her hand out to me.

I stand up. “I would like to see the places our family lived.”

“I can show you where our apartment was before the war, and even the place we lived in the ghetto,” she offers.

“But not the sewer?” Although it sounds macabre, some part of me is curious about the awful place where I was born, an indelible piece of our history.

“I’m afraid not. That was all closed up long ago. I considered going back down there. But it’s for the best.” I nod. Though I was born there,