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

The ghetto was inhabited, I realized with surprise. Not by Jews anymore, but most likely lower-class Poles, who had either been assigned the housing by the General Government or taken the vacant residences for themselves. Part of me wanted to be angry at them. These were not wealthy Poles exploiting the property of Jews for their own gain, though, but rather local people just seeing an opportunity and doing what they needed to and providing for their families. No one who had a choice would have come to live here.

Still, they would surely tell the police if they saw us. I considered turning back. We had expected the ghetto to be deserted. It wasn’t safe for us to be here. But we needed the food. The address Saul had given me might be occupied now as well, I thought as we turned onto Lwowska Street. I didn’t know how we would look for the food if that was the case.

As we neared number twelve, I could see the windows were still punched out and the walls charred by a fire I prayed had not destroyed the food stores in the basement. Though Saul had told me that he and his father had come to the ghetto briefly after leaving their village, I had not pictured him living here, just blocks from me, until now. I took in the house, which was so much smaller and more run-down than the building my parents and I had occupied, imagining how they had managed with a half-dozen other families, crowded into shared rooms.

I tried the front door. Despite the decimated condition of the house, it was locked. I was afraid we would have to navigate the broken glass and climb through one of the windows. “Let’s go around back and look for a cellar door,” Ella suggested. We slipped through an alleyway between the houses, crouching low so no one would see us. In the rear, we found a cellar door and pried it open. I crept down the ladder into the cellar first, praying the rotted rungs would hold. Ella followed. I stopped, caught off guard by the dirty, too-close ghetto smell that had filled my lungs all of the months we were here, and which lingered now still. After breathing the stench of the sewer for so long, it was almost pleasant by comparison.

Hurriedly, we walked to the cellar wall that Saul had told me about and felt for the hidden compartment. There was a panel that slid back, just as he promised, revealing a cavernous empty space, meant for hiding things. Only the place he had described was empty.

The food he had promised was not there.

13

Ella

Standing beside Sadie and looking down into the empty space where the food should have been, my heart sank. “I’m sorry,” I said, feeling the weight of her disappointment wash over us. Sadie did not answer. She stood still, her eyes sad and hollow.

“We should go,” I said after a few minutes had passed. It wasn’t safe for us to linger in the ghetto building.

Sadie shook her head. “It has to be here. I can’t go back without it.”

What now? My mind raced. “We can look around,” I said, although I really had no idea where. Despite the war, Ana Lucia did not keep extra food stores in the house because she feared attracting mice. Instead, she trusted that her money and contacts would always allow us to have enough to eat. So I could not steal what Sadie needed from her. Krys appeared in my mind. We had not parted well and I was unsure he would help me. But he was my only option and deep down I knew that he would not refuse me if there were something he could do. “I have a friend who might be able to help.” I instantly regretted my offer. I had no reason to think he could manage to find food in such a short amount of time. But I had to try.

Krys had said he was staying in a flat above the café, I recalled. “Come with me.” We slipped from the cellar of the apartment building, through the charred rubble. As we made our way among the ruins that had once been the ghetto, I walked faster, wanting to get Sadie away from her painful memories of this place.

I led her along the riverbank away from Podgórze in the direction of Dębniki. Though I was unfamiliar with the neighborhoods that blended without a clear border, I knew that Dębniki was just a few kilometers to the west of Podgórze along the industrial southern banks of the Wisła. As we neared Dębniki, we turned away from the riverbank and climbed the road toward Barska Street and the café. I looked up at the apartments above the café, wondering how I could figure out which one was Krys’. It was after eleven and the café was supposed to be long since closed for the curfew. But behind the smudged glass window, I could see that a few patrons still lingered. I did not see Krys, but perhaps if I asked, someone might know where to find him.

I started for the door. Then, looking at Sadie, I stopped again. She could not go inside the café. Her soiled clothes and emaciated, ghost-pale appearance would surely attract attention. There was an arched passageway between the café and the adjacent building leading from the street to the alley behind. I led Sadie there and hid her behind some trash cans. “You need to wait here.”

“You’re leaving me?” She looked terrified.

I patted her hand. “I’ll be just a few minutes.” Before she could protest, I walked from the alleyway into the café, which was deserted except for a table of older men playing cards to the rear. As my eyes adjusted to the dim lighting, I recognized a familiar figure behind the bar. I stopped short. It was the woman I’d seen Krys with the day I had