My Mother's Secret by J. L. Witterick

Author:J. L. Witterick
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: General, Fiction
ISBN: 9780399168543
Publisher: Putnam Adult
Published: 2013-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter 30

The next morning, we are awakened by screaming and gunshots.

There is a raid on the ghetto.

They are rounding people up in the same trucks that took my brother.

I know what this means.

I take my son and hide him in a woodshed, telling him to stay quiet until I return. Only six, he understands that his survival depends on it.

My wife, sister-in-law, and I, with the baby in one arm, climb a steep ladder leading to the small opening of an attic.

There is pandemonium below.

Then the baby starts to cry.

My wife looks at me with helpless panic. She tries to rock Biata and cradles her against her chest, but nothing works.

We had moved the ladder away from the entrance of the attic to deflect attention, but someone is moving it back and climbing up—someone who speaks German.

It’s a Polish police officer working with a German soldier below. He looks at my terrified wife and whispers, “Do you want to go with your baby?”

She only has a minute to make a decision that no one could make in a lifetime.

She gives him our baby.

Descending the stairs, he says to the German soldier that he has found an abandoned baby.

“Doesn’t matter,” says the soldier. “We’ll get the mother later.”

I think that had it not been for our son, she would have gone with our baby.

We stay hidden for a while even after the noise has died down and all the trucks have gone.

We know that you can never be too careful.

How do you move when you feel like you can’t go on?

You think of someone who needs you more.

We find our son asleep in the woodshed, and we move on.

In the middle of the night again, I make the trip to Street of Our Lady with my wife, her sister, and my son, all so solemn now that you would think we were going to our death.

Walter whispers to me, “I saw them take Biata, Papa. Will they come for me too?”

I look down at the angelic face asking me a question that no child should ever have to ask, and I say to him, “I will never let that happen, Walter.”

• • •

FRANCISZKA IS SURPRISED TO SEE US, and although she is not ready, she does not turn us away.

I help clear out the upper loft, and we move in.

She asks about the baby, and when I tell her what happened, she lets out the loudest wail.

We are all touched by her reaction, but at the same time we hope no one heard her cry.

I have nothing to offer Franciszka for taking us in, and I remember all the times that we took her carrots for the wagon ride.

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