War Girls Complete Collection Chapter 135

Chapter 19

S

everal days later, a visitor arrived at the farmhouse. Out of habit, Richard disappeared from sight and went to work in the shed. He had barely opened the toolbox when Katrina called out for him to join her in the kitchen.

A woman in her fifties sat at the wooden table with a mug of herbal brew in her hands, gray hair tied into a bun at the nape of her neck. She smiled at him and extended her beefy hand with long fingers. “Hello, I’m Magda Lenska, the midwife.”

“It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

“I have a message from your relative. Take a seat.” Magda didn’t beat around the bush.

The tension in the room ratcheted up as Richard obeyed her request and sat on the chair to her right, facing Katrina on the opposite side of the table. Katrina had told him that the midwife had helped deliver all of the Zdanek siblings, as she had most of the children around Lodz for the past thirty years.

“Your sister-in-law refused to escape,” Magda said.

Richard’s jaw dropped to the floor. Why would anyone pass up the chance to leave the Ghetto? From all he’d heard, it lingered at the edge of hell on earth. Eighty thousand crammed into a space where formerly twenty thousand had lived, long hours working dangerous and backbreaking jobs in the factories, and little to no food. Above all hovered the constant threat of deportation.

Magda glanced around the big open kitchen as if to make sure nobody was within earshot and lowered her voice to a whisper, “She’s hiding your nephew Janusz.”

“Janusz is alive? Piotr’s son? But how?” Katrina gasped and tears of joy began to flow. “He was deported to Chelmno a year and a half ago. We received communication that all children below the age of twelve were deported.” Katrina’s voice and hands were trembling like leaves in the wind. “His name was on the list. It was there. Yes, it was.” She broke out into sobs.

“It was a horrible day. I was there when Chaim Rumkowski, the head of the Council of Elders, brought perpetual heartbreak over the Ghetto, with his shameful speech.” The midwife’s eyes glazed over with grief and despair.

“What speech?” Richard hissed.

Magda Lenska looked at him with the eyes of a centenarian, before she stood, her arms stretched wide to her sides. “On German instructions, he made a speech pleading with the inhabitants of the ghetto to give up children ten years of age and younger, so that others might survive. I was there, it was pitiful. Parents screaming, mothers weeping, children howling. I remember every single word of his speech:

“‘A grievous blow has struck the ghetto,’ he said. ‘The Germans are asking us to give up the best we possess: the children and the elderly. I was unworthy of having a child of my own, so I gave the best years of my life to children. I've lived and breathed with children; I never imagined I would be forced to deliver this sacrifice to the altar with my own hands. In my old age, I must stretch out my hands and beg. Brothers and sisters! Hand them over to me! Fathers and mothers – give me your children!’”

After her dramatic recounting, Magda sunk onto the chair, exhausted, overwhelmed. She sobbed quietly for a few minutes, then the midwife raised her head and gazed at them, the sorrow of an entire city reflected in her pained eyes. “Your relative, Agnieska, wouldn’t do it. Since then she’s been hiding Janusz and sharing her meager rations with him. If she escapes he’ll starve within days. That is why she has refused to leave.”

“It’s all too awful to comprehend,” Katrina said.

“God has not left Poland. Miracles do happen, even under Nazi occupation. Your nephew is alive.”

“God bless you, Magda. This is the happiest news I have received in years,” Katrina said.

“It may not be as happy as you think, my girl,” Magda responded. “Stan hinted that you had planned for this man,” she nodded at Richard, “to enter the Ghetto in his Wehrmacht uniform and escort Agnieska out with a work permit. This will not happen with a child in tow. I’m sorry I can’t be of further help. Thanks for the infusion.” The midwife gathered her things to leave.

“We are very grateful for everything you did.” Katrina held Magda’s hands and kissed them in a gesture of appreciation.

When the midwife left, Richard and Katrina fell into each other’s arms, happiness and sorrow fighting for dominance.

Sorrow won.

“What are we to do?” Katrina asked with a feeble voice.

“We’ll think of something, my sweetheart.” Richard buried his face in the top of her hair and breathed its sweetness as he held his beloved close. He doubted there would be a way to rescue both Agnieska and Janusz, but he knew better than to tell Katrina right now.

“Why is this insanity happening? Why? What have we done to deserve this?” she cried.

“Nothing, my love. Nothing. Sometimes bad things happen to good people.”

“How can God allow this?”