Gertruda's Oath: A Child, a Promise, and a Heroic Escape During World War II (19 page)

Two men came out of a nearby shop, grabbed Emil’s arms, and dragged him to the curb away from the door. One of them covered the blood on the sidewalk with sand.

“What happened to him?” Gertruda asked the two.

“There was a brawl here. Somebody took out a knife and stabbed him.”

“Where does he live?”

The man pointed to a nearby group of buildings. “Around there,” he said.

Gertruda bent over Emil’s body and burrowed in his pockets. They were empty. Without a word, she straightened up and went to find out where he lived. She knocked on a few doors until she located the landlady.

“Does Emil live here?” she asked.

The landlady was a fat, ruddy-faced woman.

“Yes,” she said casually. “Who are you?”

“I’m his sister.”

“What do you want?”

“Emil’s dead,” said Gertruda.

Not a muscle moved in the woman’s face. “Lucky that he paid me the rent at the beginning of the month,” she growled. “You know how it is these days, people behave like animals. They rent an apartment, they don’t pay, and they run away in the middle of the night.”

“Can I go into his apartment?” asked Gertruda. “I have to take a few family documents from there, if you don’t mind.”

The landlady hesitated. “I’ll come with you,” she said.

They went into the dingy room. A few shirts and trousers were hanging in the closet. A half bottle of vodka stood on the table. The bed was unmade.

Gertruda made a quick search. She didn’t find any of the jewels or money Emil had stolen and the landlady was beginning to lose patience. “Enough,” she said. “I don’t have time for this.”

Gertruda begged her to let her search a while longer. She rummaged among the kitchen items in the cabinet and in the pockets
of the trousers in the closet, hoping to find at least some of Lydia’s jewelry and the documents from her purse. She didn’t find a thing.

As she was about to leave, her eyes made out Lydia’s gun at the bottom of the closet. Gertruda picked it up carefully, as the landlady looked on in horror.

“Don’t leave that here,” the woman called out. “Take it and get out before the Germans arrest me because of it.”

Gertruda stuck the gun in her coat and left the apartment.

In the street, she felt the gun burning her skin through the pocket. She didn’t know what to do with it, but it did give her a sense of confidence.

Gertruda was haunted by thoughts of the fate of Dr. Berman and his family. Disturbing information constantly filtered out of the ghetto. Jews were being taken for forced labor or sent to concentration camps. Those who tried to flee from the ghetto were shot. People were starving to death and dying of terrible diseases.

She was sure the doctor’s family was suffering, maybe even starving. In her pantry there was food she wanted to get to them, but all the roads to the ghetto were blocked by German soldiers. She heard that Jewish children crawled through the sewers from the ghetto to the nearby neighborhoods every night to rummage in garbage cans and collect remnants of food. She told this to Michael.

“If only I knew how to get to those sewers,” he said.

“Why, Michael?”

“Because then I could bring Dr. Berman a little food.”

She loved the way he thought, his daring. The hardships of life
had made the five-year-old as mature as a grown-up. She thought about the Berman family starving and the great moral obligation she owed those people who had helped her in her time of need, whom she couldn’t help when they were in distress.

One night, on her way home from writing a request to the military authorities for a customer, Gertruda was walking through a narrow lane and saw a sad child emerge in a shabby, oversized coat. He asked for alms and she gave him a few pennies.

“Are you from the ghetto?” she asked.

He hesitated and then nodded.

“Do you know a doctor named Berman?”

“No.”

“Are you going back to the ghetto?”

“Why?”

“Berman is a friend of mine. I want to send him some food.”

“You can’t do it yourself.”

“Why not?”

“Because there’s only one sure way, through the sewers. It stinks terribly there. It’s not for you. But I can take the food to the doctor. You can trust me. What’s his address?”

“I have no idea.”

“I’ll find out. I’ve got connections. What’s your name?”

“Gertruda.”

She gave him the bag of fruit and vegetables she had just earned.

“Take a little bit for yourself, too,” she said.

“Thanks, lady.”

“Let’s meet here tomorrow at this time,” she said. “I’ll bring more food.”

“Great.”

She watched him until he disappeared into the sewer and then returned home with a light heart.

Michael listened to her story with sparkling eyes.

“Is the Jewish child scared to come here?”

“Of course he’s scared, but he has to.”

“If the Germans catch him, they’ll kill him, right?”

“Maybe.”

“He must be very hungry. I’d do the same thing if we didn’t have any food.”

“I know, Michael,” she said and hugged him warmly.

The winter of 1941 was colder than ever. Thick snowflakes covered Vilna with a white shroud and people wrapped themselves in thick coats and long wool scarves when they went out. The child from the ghetto was shivering in his rags but hunger got the better of him. He slipped out of the ghetto again almost every evening and often found Gertruda waiting for him in the alley with food for the Berman family and for him.

One evening, the child stumbled toward her with shaking legs.

“What happened to you?” asked Gertruda in terror.

“I don’t feel well,” he murmured and leaned on the wall next to the opening of the secret passage to the ghetto. His hands were empty. “For a few days now I haven’t been able to find food,” he said.

“But I give you fruit and vegetables every day.”

He dropped his eyes. “What you give to the doctor, I take to him. And what you give me, I sell,” he said.

“Why?”

“To buy medicine for my aunt. I live with her.”

“And where are your parents?”

“Died in the ghetto.”

“When was the last time you ate?”

“Don’t remember.”

She opened the bag of food for Dr. Berman’s family and gave him an apple.

The boy put it in his pocket.

“Eat it here, now,” Gertruda insisted. He relented easily and gobbled it up.

“Come with me,” she suddenly decided.

“Where?” His eyes gazed at her in wonder.

“To my home.”

“Why?”

“I’ll make you a hot meal,” she said.

His childish face glowed. “For a hot meal, I’m willing to do anything,” he said.

It was an impetuous and dangerous act. Gertruda knew that if the two of them fell into the hands of the Germans, their fate was sealed. But her heart couldn’t bear his distress.

“Follow me,” she said. “Keep a distance. I live close by.”

The boy followed her like a shadow. She cautiously checked the staircase of the house. When she saw there wasn’t anyone there, she ran upstairs to the apartment with the boy.

Michael was surprised to see the guest.

“This is the boy from the ghetto,” said Gertruda. “I invited him to eat with us.”

She made him soup with a piece of meat. The boy ate hungrily and color returned to his face. He told them about life in the ghetto, about the hunger and the shortages, the bodies lying in the
streets, the people taken supposedly to work for the Germans and who didn’t come back.

“I’ll also die in the end,” he said in a dry voice, as if stating a fact.

“You mustn’t talk like that,” said Gertruda. She thought of Michael, who was also constantly threatened by serious danger. “The war will end and life will go back to normal. You’ll also go back home.”

“The war won’t end so fast,” he said with the tone of someone who has already seen and knows everything. “We’ll all be killed first. Nobody in the ghetto has a chance.”

She gave him a little food for himself, handed him the bag for the Berman family, and checked the staircase again to make sure nobody would see him as he left.

From the window of the apartment, she watched the tiny figure clinging to the buildings on the way to the secret passage.

“I want him to get to the ghetto safely,” said Michael.

“So do I.”

The snow piled up in the streets and it grew colder. Gertruda heated the fireplace with pieces of wood she got as payment from a farmer who needed her as an interpreter. The wood could run out quickly, so she was careful to ration it. When the fireplace wasn’t burning, the cold was intense and bit painfully. It also brought fear. More than anything else, Gertruda worried that Michael would catch cold, would be bedridden, and would need a doctor. Any doctor, she worried, would immediately discover the secret that Michael was circumcised. If that happened, they would almost certainly be turned over to the Germans. She dreaded the thought that
Michael might be taken from her and that she would never see him again.

Michael got through the first months of winter, but in December he contracted pneumonia. He had a high fever, became delirious, and couldn’t breathe properly. Gertruda did her best to take care of him with her meager means: cold compresses and constant prayers. But the child’s fever rose and his breathing turned into a wheezing. She sat helplessly at his side and waited in vain for his condition to improve.

Only a doctor could help and there was only one doctor she could trust.

She was determined to get to him, whatever the risk. She told Michael she had to go out for a while and he had to stay alone for a few hours.

“Don’t open the door to anyone,” she warned him. “Don’t answer if they talk to you outside the door.”

“All right,” he whispered. “Come back soon, okay?”

Gertruda put on Lydia’s fur coat and slipped into the alley by the secret opening to the ghetto in hopes of finding the Jewish child there who could summon Dr. Berman. The night was dark and terrifying, and the child wasn’t there. For hours she hid in the entrance to the house near the opening of the sewer. German guards passed by her but didn’t see her. The cold penetrated her bones and froze her body. She thought constantly of Michael, feverish in their apartment, and the fear that his condition would worsen drove her crazy. As time passed, she knew that at dawn the chances of slipping into the ghetto and getting in touch with the doctor would vanish.

There was only one way to be sure of getting there. She bent over the opening and crept into the sewer, ignoring the danger, the
stench, and the turgid liquid sloshing at her feet as she walked bent over through the puddles.

The streets of the ghetto were silent. Candlelight flickered in a few windows and dark figures slipped past. The snow-covered curbs reeked of piled-up garbage and corpses. A truck loaded with German soldiers stopped at one of the houses. The soldiers burst inside and dragged a group of frightened men, women, and children to the truck. Some of them had managed to wrap coats over their night-clothes. Those who hadn’t were shivering. The children wept and the soldiers hit them with the butt of their rifles. Gertruda knelt near a pile of garbage until the truck disappeared and then continued on her way. She entered a nearby house and knocked on the doors, pleading with them to open up. After a long wait, one door was opened a narrow crack. An old woman looked at her in fear when she asked for the doctor’s address. The woman said she didn’t know him and slammed the door.

Only after repeated attempts in nearby houses did she manage to find out where he was. Plodding through the snow, she hurried to the cellar of the hospital where Dr. Berman and his family lived. Her feet were frozen, her teeth were chattering, and her eyes darted around to make sure the German guards weren’t in the area.

Gertruda entered the dark staircase of the hospital, groped her way to the cellar, and knocked on the door. A panicky rustling of feet and a hasty whispering were heard inside, but the door didn’t open.

“I’m looking for Dr. Berman,” she called in Polish, in a desperate voice. “It’s very urgent.”

She saw the door open. The inside of the apartment was dark. A man’s voice asked from the darkness, “Who are you?”

She felt a wave of joy when she heard the familiar voice. “It’s me, Gertruda, Michael Stolowitzky’s nanny.”

“Gertruda!” The doctor didn’t believe his ears. “Come in, come in, please.”

“Michael’s very sick, doctor.” Her voice gave out and she started weeping.

“What happened to him?”

Gertruda briefly described the symptoms of the illness.

“Has a doctor examined him yet?”

“No. I was afraid to call a doctor I didn’t know.”

“How did you get here?”

“Through the sewer.”

“Did anybody see you?”

“Nobody.”

“Wait a minute. I’ll get my bag and I’ll come with you.”

Only now, in the dim light of the kerosene lamp, did Gertruda see that the doctor looked like a walking skeleton. His face was emaciated and bore the stamp of suffering. His body had shed most of his flesh.

The doctor’s wife came to them.

“First drink some tea,” she said to the nanny. “You must be freezing.”

“I don’t have time. Michael’s waiting for me.”

“You can’t imagine how grateful we are for your help,” she added. “The food you send really saves us.”

The woman’s eyes were fearful as her husband packed his examination instruments in his bag. She knew he was risking his life, that there was a good chance he would be caught by the Germans, but she said only, “Please, be careful.”

When they were about to leave, Dr. Berman kissed his wife’s cheeks.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “I’ll be back before dawn.”

He and Gertruda went into the street. Danger, heavy and threatening, hovered in the night air. German guards constantly moved around in the ghetto, their fingers poised on the triggers of their guns. Every figure that moved at night was a target. The Germans preferred to shoot rather than to ask questions. Gertruda was glad that, despite the danger, Dr. Berman didn’t hesitate to come with her.