Read Such Good Girls for Free Online Page B
Authors: R. D. Rosen
Laura looked around for him frantically. Not wanting to call attention to themselves by looking lost near the German policeman patrolling the Glowny station, mother and daughter, with even fewer possessions to their name, then set off in the rain across the plaza to find a room.
Kraków was the capital of the General Government, the name that Germans had given to the occupied region of what had been eastern Poland, and it was swarming with Germans. To avoid prying eyes, Laura moved Zofia and herself frequently, five times in the first month. Zofia was undernourished and constantly sniffling. Laura worried about her health but worried even more that she would make a mistake answering inquisitive neighbors’ endless questions while she was out looking for work. But Zofia passed the first tests with flying colors.
Laura had attended university and once wanted to be a doctor, but her ambition even before the war had been moot in a country where Jews weren’t allowed to attend Polish medical schools. Her brilliant brother Edek had had to go to engineering school in Italy before immigrating to Palestine in the early 1930s. Now any job at all would have to do; without a job considered “essential” by the Nazis, she couldn’t feed Zofia and they couldn’t remain in Kraków.
Luckily Laura found a job in a German bank, but the pay was too low to improve their condition. Moreover, she now had to somehow provide care for five-year-old Zofia during the day. First, Laura paid a small sum to an old woman to look after her. The obese woman in a babushka put Zofia to work every day collecting cigarette stubs in the streets of their neighborhood. She wore a handwritten cardboard sign on a string around her neck that read, “My name is Zofia Tymejko and I live at …” whatever their current address was. Zofia would fill her little play purse with the smattering of discarded butts on the cobblestones, then bring them back. The old woman would dump Zofia’s haul onto a newspaper and separate out the ones long enough to smoke. The useless ones she would hold up for inspection between pinched fingers and say, “And how do you expect me to smoke this, kochanie? With tweezers? Now go and bring babunia some more.”
Laura soon found a better alternative, dropping her off at a Catholic orphanage in the morning before she made her rounds. The terse nuns gave Zofia a plate of soup and a crust of bread at midday. She was shy by nature, and under her mother’s anxious care and ceaseless religious drilling she had grown even more so. Even when she was hungry, and she was hungry almost all the time, she knew how to keep quiet.
Laura managed to establish contact with her sisters, who were both in Kraków as well. Putzi, now living under the name of Ksenia Osoba, was a maid in a German home, and Fryda, under the name of Zofia Wolenska, worked for a Polish family. Neither of them had heard anything from or about their brother Manek.
A few weeks later, Laura ran into Julek in the streets of Kraków. He acted as if he had no idea what had happened to their luggage weeks before, and Laura would have been a fool to provoke him with accusations. What could she do in a country where a shifty Pole held their very lives in his calloused hands?
“Julek,” she said. “Do you know where my brother Manek is?”
The big Pole looked startled. “Oh, there’s bad news there,” he said, placing a hand on her shoulder.
“How bad?”
“The Krauts caught him at the Lvov train station and hanged him.”
“Hanged him?!” she cried in disbelief. “Dear God!”
He said the SS wanted to see his papers and he ran. Julek shrugged. “So terrible,” he said without emotion. “I thought you knew.”
She would have predicted that Manek, the toughest of the five Litwak siblings, the one who once came home with a broken jaw after a fight with some anti-Semites, would have been the one to survive. She was brotherless now, having already lost the eldest of
Kraków was the capital of the General Government, the name that Germans had given to the occupied region of what had been eastern Poland, and it was swarming with Germans. To avoid prying eyes, Laura moved Zofia and herself frequently, five times in the first month. Zofia was undernourished and constantly sniffling. Laura worried about her health but worried even more that she would make a mistake answering inquisitive neighbors’ endless questions while she was out looking for work. But Zofia passed the first tests with flying colors.
Laura had attended university and once wanted to be a doctor, but her ambition even before the war had been moot in a country where Jews weren’t allowed to attend Polish medical schools. Her brilliant brother Edek had had to go to engineering school in Italy before immigrating to Palestine in the early 1930s. Now any job at all would have to do; without a job considered “essential” by the Nazis, she couldn’t feed Zofia and they couldn’t remain in Kraków.
Luckily Laura found a job in a German bank, but the pay was too low to improve their condition. Moreover, she now had to somehow provide care for five-year-old Zofia during the day. First, Laura paid a small sum to an old woman to look after her. The obese woman in a babushka put Zofia to work every day collecting cigarette stubs in the streets of their neighborhood. She wore a handwritten cardboard sign on a string around her neck that read, “My name is Zofia Tymejko and I live at …” whatever their current address was. Zofia would fill her little play purse with the smattering of discarded butts on the cobblestones, then bring them back. The old woman would dump Zofia’s haul onto a newspaper and separate out the ones long enough to smoke. The useless ones she would hold up for inspection between pinched fingers and say, “And how do you expect me to smoke this, kochanie? With tweezers? Now go and bring babunia some more.”
Laura soon found a better alternative, dropping her off at a Catholic orphanage in the morning before she made her rounds. The terse nuns gave Zofia a plate of soup and a crust of bread at midday. She was shy by nature, and under her mother’s anxious care and ceaseless religious drilling she had grown even more so. Even when she was hungry, and she was hungry almost all the time, she knew how to keep quiet.
Laura managed to establish contact with her sisters, who were both in Kraków as well. Putzi, now living under the name of Ksenia Osoba, was a maid in a German home, and Fryda, under the name of Zofia Wolenska, worked for a Polish family. Neither of them had heard anything from or about their brother Manek.
A few weeks later, Laura ran into Julek in the streets of Kraków. He acted as if he had no idea what had happened to their luggage weeks before, and Laura would have been a fool to provoke him with accusations. What could she do in a country where a shifty Pole held their very lives in his calloused hands?
“Julek,” she said. “Do you know where my brother Manek is?”
The big Pole looked startled. “Oh, there’s bad news there,” he said, placing a hand on her shoulder.
“How bad?”
“The Krauts caught him at the Lvov train station and hanged him.”
“Hanged him?!” she cried in disbelief. “Dear God!”
He said the SS wanted to see his papers and he ran. Julek shrugged. “So terrible,” he said without emotion. “I thought you knew.”
She would have predicted that Manek, the toughest of the five Litwak siblings, the one who once came home with a broken jaw after a fight with some anti-Semites, would have been the one to survive. She was brotherless now, having already lost the eldest of