My Daughter’s Keeper: A WW2 Historical Novel, Based on a True Story of a Jewish Holocaust Survivor (World War II Brave Women Fiction Book 3) by Adiva Geffen

Author:Adiva Geffen [Geffen, Adiva]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2022-02-01T16:00:00+00:00

My beloved Tulla, my sister, my darling, please, give me a chance. Go to Solly’s office this morning. Wait for me there. Don’t worry, everything will be okay. I know exactly what we must do. Please have faith in me, trust me. I am your soul-sister forever.

Chapter 21

Ciechanow 1942

I woke to daylight spreading between the alleyways and the voices of the neighbors telling one another their stories. I was covered by a thin woolen blanket and a blue jacket.

Who had put them there? Bronek? Or was it Irena? Maybe some miracle had happened and Marta had come back to her senses. Was it possible that she had realized her mistake?

Perhaps they would open the door to me after all. I went back and knocked on the front door, “Open up,” I said. “It’s me, Tulla. Marta. Irena? Please… open up.”

The door remained shut.

“Open up, open up!” Again, and again, I banged on the wooden door. I knocked, banged, rang, pleaded.

After a few long minutes the door opened and Bronek stood before me. He looked older. Shorter. His eyes were red, his face lined, furrowed.

“Bronek, please, let me come back…”

“Go,” he said, his voice flat. “Quickly.”

“She’s my daughter, not yours.”

“You idiot, save yourself, get out of here. She reported you.”

“She…”

“She already reported to them that there’s some Jewish woman trying to steal a baby. It’s dangerous, go!”

“At least let me say goodbye to my baby.”

“No,” he threw a bundle at me. “Get out of here, quickly - save yourself.”

“Wait, Bronek,” I wedged my foot in the doorway so he couldn’t slam it shut.

“I warned you,” he pushed me over the threshold and slammed the door. I pressed my ear against the wood. I heard muffled sounds. Somewhere inside I heard Ilona crying and Marta trying to calm her.

“Irena? Irena open up!” I shouted. “Please, Irena…”

She did not respond. Didn’t even peek out from the window.

Where would I go? Where could I go? Because of them I had not befriended anybody. There was nowhere I could go or ask for help or refuge.

Irena…

My legs would not budge. My arms were heavy as if they had turned to iron. I was empty; all of my life force had drained away.

There, in that big house, were the papers that Solly had provided me and the jewelry that I had tucked underneath the mattress. Even the photograph of Johann, my beloved, remained there. They had left me empty. Finished.

I dragged myself around the city streets without any destination.

Should I go to the ghetto? Tie my fate to that of my people? And when they ask me who I am, what will I tell them? That I’m Polish? Jewish? That I was faking? Introduce myself as Tulla or Rachel, as Bronek and Marta’s daughter-in-law?

I didn’t even have papers for Rachel – those were back in the village, and Tulla’s documents were in their house. And I was here, between the different worlds. Alone. Cast off.

In the bundle that Bronek had thrown at me there was money in bills and coins.

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