Kommandant's Girl

“No more questions. Trust me. Emmeth,” he repeated, as though his knowledge of my and Jacob’s secret word would magically invoke obedience within me. “I am sorry that we have to walk so far. To do otherwise would attract too much attention.”

“It feels good to be out walking,” I said, though in truth my toes were a bit numb. Then I froze in my tracks. “I’m not coming back, am I?”

“No.”

My heart sank. “But my parents …”

“I will make sure word gets to them that you are safe. But it is better for them if they know little.”

I pictured my parents as I had last seen them, sleeping peacefully. Then I imagined them waking up and finding me gone. I had not had the chance to say goodbye. I opened my mouth to say that I would not leave them, but the stranger had already begun walking once more and I had no choice but to follow him or be left behind. It was nearly dawn, I realized, as fine cracks of light began to appear in the eggshell night sky. Looking around at the seemingly unfamiliar route, I recognized then a small wooden church in a clearing. We were in Las Wolski, the forest to the west of the city. I knew then where I was going. “Pani Smok …?” I recalled that Jacob’s aunt, Krysia Smok, lived on the far side of Las Wolski. The stranger, still moving, nodded. “But won’t I put her in danger?”

“There are papers. You will not be the same person.” My mind raced, overwhelmed by the flood of events and information, but there was little time to wonder. The stranger moved swiftly, and I fought to keep up and not trip on the stones and tree roots that littered our path.

As we cut through the forest, I pictured Jacob’s aunt. I had first met Krysia at a dinner at the Baus’ apartment a few weeks before Jacob and I were married. I remember dressing for the occasion as though I was to be introduced to royalty. Krysia was legendary in Kraków, both as the wife of the cellist, Marcin Smok, and as a social figure in her own right. But when we were introduced, Krysia proved to be as unpredictable as she was regal, skipping the traditional three airy kisses on the cheek and drawing me into a firm embrace. “I can see why you love her so,” she exclaimed to a blushing Jacob.

Krysia’s warm reception of me seemed ironic when I considered that she was not even a Jew, but a devout Catholic. Her marriage to Mrs. Bau’s brother, Marcin, had been an enormous source of controversy and scandal—interfaith marriage was simply unheard of, even for the secular Bau family. Marcin and Krysia had eloped to Paris and the Baus shunned the couple for several years thereafter. Only when Jacob was born did Mrs. Bau, who had lost both of her parents to disease at an early age and had few other relatives, soften and decide to forgive Marcin for the sake of her son.

I quickly understood why Jacob adored Krysia—her mix of elegance and unpredictability was irresistible. The child of diplomats who had refused to consign her to boarding school, Krysia had grown up in places I had only read about: Rome, London, Paris. When she married Marcin, they settled in Kraków, and while he continued to travel and perform, Krysia made their home in the city. Their two-story apartment on Basztowa Street quickly became a hub for the city’s cultural elite, with Krysia throwing lavish parties at which she introduced some of Poland’s most promising artists and musicians to those who would become lifelong sponsors and patrons. Yet despite her prominent social role, Krysia shunned convention: she could just as easily be found in one of Kraków’s many cavernous brick cellar taverns, drinking shots of ice-cold potato vodka and debating politics late into the night, as attending the opera or a charity ball.

Krysia and Marcin remained childless; Jacob once told me that he did not know whether this was by choice or by nature. Marcin had died in 1932 after a two-year struggle with cancer. After his death, Krysia sold their apartment in the city center and retreated permanently to their weekend home at Chelmska. There, Krysia mixed solitude with sociability, enjoying the quiet of her garden during the week while continuing to throw dinner parties for those who came to call on the weekends. It was to this house that the stranger was now taking me.

Soon the forest path began to slope downward and the trees grew thinner. A few minutes later, we emerged from the woods. Below us lay the farmhouses of the Chelmska neighborhood. As we started down the road, a rooster’s crowing, then a dog’s bark cut through the silence, threatening to betray our presence. The stranger placed a heavy hand on my shoulder and we froze behind a large bush until the noises subsided. Looking carefully to make sure the way was clear, the stranger led me across the road and around the back of one of the larger houses. He knocked on the door, almost inaudibly. A second later, the back door opened and there, in the dim light, stood Krysia Smok. Before her larger-than-life presence, I felt shamed by my worn clothes and unkempt hair, but she reached out and drew me through the door and into her arms. Her scent, a mix of cinnamon and apples, reminded me of Jacob.

“Kochana,” she said, stroking my hair softly. I stood in her embrace without moving for several moments. Then, remembering the stranger, I turned to thank him, but he was gone.

“Are you tired?” Krysia closed the door and drew me up the stairs into the parlor to a seat beside the fire. I shook my head. “I’ll be right back.” She disappeared and I could hear her footsteps as she climbed the stairs to the third floor, followed by the sound of running water overhead. I looked around the room in bewilderment. On the mantel over the fireplace, there were several framed photographs. I stood and walked toward them. Jacob as a child. Jacob and I on our wedding day. Jacob. It was so strange being there without him.

A few minutes later, Krysia reappeared. “You need a warm bath,” she said, placing a large mug of tea on the low table in front of me. “I’m sorry we had to do it this way, there was no choice.”

I buried my head in my hands. “My parents …”

“I know.” She came to stand by my side, and her spicy scent wafted over me once more. “There was no way to get all of you out together. They will be happy to know that you are safe. And we will do what we can to help them from outside.”

I began sobbing, the months of despair catching up with me at last. “I’m sorry,” I whispered, ashamed. Krysia did not reply but simply put her arm around my shoulder and led me upstairs to the bathroom, where fresh nightclothes had been laid out beside the steaming water. When she left, I undressed and stepped into my first real bath in months. I scrubbed from head to toe, washing my hair twice, and lingered until the water had gone cold and brown with dirt.

When I emerged, relaxed and almost too exhausted to stand, Krysia led me to a bedroom. I stared in amazement at the vase of fresh gardenias on the nightstand: did such things really still exist in the world? “Sleep now,” she said, turning back the duvet to reveal crisp white sheets. “I promise that in the morning, I’ll explain everything.”

After months on my straw ghetto pallet, the thick mattress and soft linens felt like a dream. Despite all that had happened that night, I fell quickly into a deep sleep.

I awoke the next morning, confused. Looking around the elegant bedroom, I wondered for a second if I was back in the room I had shared with Jacob at the Baus’. Suddenly, the events of the night before came rushing back to me. I’m at Krysia’s, I remembered, looking out at the forest and wondering how long I had been asleep. The sun was already well across the sky. I went downstairs to the kitchen where Krysia stood at the stove. “I’m sorry to have slept so long,” I apologized.

“Sleep was exactly what you needed. That, and a good meal.” She gestured to a platter of freshly cut fruit on the table. “Sit down.” I sat, hoping she could not hear the loud rumbling of my stomach. She placed a glass of orange juice, thick with pulp, before me. “I am told that your disappearance has already been explained to your parents, and that another girl is taking your place at the orphanage so you will not be missed.” I was both relieved and intensely curious: how did Krysia know such things?

I hesitated, wanting to ask her about Jacob. “The Baus?” I inquired instead, when she had set a plate of eggs in front of me and sat down.

Krysia shook her head. “I heard from them about two months ago. Nothing since. They are fine, although living not in Fania’s usual style.” I detected a wry note in her voice. I nodded. Polish money, even a great deal of it, surely would not go that far in Switzerland, and I knew that much of the Baus’ wealth was inaccessible to them because of the war. “They wanted to contact you themselves, but they were afraid to draw attention to the fact that you were related.”

“Their home …” My stomach twisted at the thought of their grand home.

“It was occupied by a high-ranking Nazi official last spring. The Baus know, or have guessed.” She placed her hand over mine. “There was nothing you could have done to stop it. Now eat.” I obeyed, forgetting my manners and washing down enormous bites of eggs and fruit with mouthfuls of juice. But as I savored the meal, my stomach twisted at the thought of my parents, left behind with only ghetto rations.

“Your name,” Krysia began when I had finished eating, “is Anna Lipowski. You were raised in the northern city of Gdansk but your parents died in the early days of the war and you have come to live with me, your aunt Krysia.”

I stared at her in astonishment. “I don’t understand …”

“You are to live as a gentile, outwardly and openly,” she replied matter-of-factly. “It is the only way. It is impossible to hide Jews in the city, and the countryside is even worse. You are fair-skinned and can easily pass for a Pole. And with the exception of your former coworkers at the university, whom you will avoid, anyone who would have known you as a Jew is gone from the city.” Her last words rang in my ears. Kraków had so changed, I could pass as a stranger in the place I had lived all my life.

“Here are your papers.” She pushed a brown folder across the table to me. Inside were an identity card and two birth certificates.

“Lukasz Lipowski,” I read aloud from the second one. “A three-year-old?”

“Yes, I understand you’ve been eager to help in Jacob’s work.” She paused. “Now is your chance. There is a child who has been hidden in the ghetto for months. He has no parents. He will be brought here to live with us and … to the outside world, he will be your little brother. He arrives tonight.” I nodded slightly, my head spinning. Twenty-four hours ago, I was living in the ghetto with my parents. Now I was free, living with Krysia as a gentile and caring for a child.

“One other thing.” She pushed a smaller envelope across the table. I opened the clasp, and a gold chain with a small gold cross slithered out onto the table. My hand recoiled. “I understand,” she said. “But it is a necessary precaution. There is no other way.” She picked up the necklace and stepped behind me to fasten the clasp. And with that, my life as a non-Jew began.

After breakfast, I followed Krysia upstairs to her bedroom. She opened her closet and pushed back the dresses to reveal a set of stairs leading to the attic. She climbed the stairs and handed down to me several pieces of metal and a small mattress. We carried the parts to the guest room that was to be the child’s. “This was Jacob’s,” she said as we assembled the crib. “I kept it here for his parents after he’d outgrown it, thinking perhaps I might use it for a child of my own.” Her eyes had a hollow look, and I knew then that her childlessness was not by choice. When it was assembled, I stroked the chipped wooden rail of the bed, imagining my husband lying there as an infant.

At lunch, Krysia set out plates heaped with cold cuts, bread and cheese. I hesitated momentarily. Surely the meat was not kosher, and eating meat and cheese together was forbidden. “Oh,” she said, noticing my hesitation and realizing. “I’m so sorry. I would have tried to get kosher meat, but …”

“There are no more kosher butchers,” I finished for her. She nodded. “It’s okay, really.” The food had not been strictly kosher when I lived at the Baus’, and in the ghetto, we ate whatever we could get when we could get it. I knew my parents would understand, and be glad I had good food to eat. As if on cue, my stomach rumbled then. A look of relief crossed over Krysia’s face as I took generous helpings of the meat and cheese.

“You know, I’ve never cared for a child,” Krysia confessed later that afternoon. We were standing on the balcony just off the parlor, hanging freshly washed children’s clothing, which Krysia said had been given to her by a friend.

“Me, neither, until I worked at the ghetto orphanage.” I looked at Krysia. She was staring at the damp blue children’s shirt in her hand, a helpless expression on her face. I could tell that she was really worried. “But, Krysia, you have cared for a child. Jacob told me he was often here as a boy.”

She shook her head. “Being an aunt for a few hours isn’t the same.”

I took the shirt from her, hung it on the line. “We’ll figure it out. It will be okay. I promise.”

The child, Krysia told me, would arrive late that night as I had done the night before. By early evening, Krysia looked exhausted. “Why don’t you rest a bit?” I offered, but she shook her head. As the hands on the walnut grandfather clock in the hallway climbed well past midnight, she continued moving around the cottage without resting, cleaning and organizing dozens of little things. Krysia had turned the lights down low so that only the faintest glow remained in the kitchen and our shadows grew long in the corridors. Every few minutes she would lift the heavy drapes of the rear parlor window slightly to look out at the back garden for the new arrival.

Finally, around two o’clock in the morning, we settled in the kitchen with mugs of strong coffee. I hesitated for several minutes before speaking. There was so much I wanted to ask Krysia that I didn’t know where to begin. “How did you …?” I began at last.

“Become involved with the resistance?” She stirred her coffee once more, then placed the spoon in the cradle of the saucer. “I always knew about Jacob’s causes. He spoke to me about it because his mother was not that interested, and his father worried too much for his safety. I was concerned, too, of course,” she added, taking a sip from her cup. “But I knew he was unstoppable.” So did I, I thought. “He came here late one night shortly after the occupation,” she continued. I realized she must have been talking about the night before his disappearance, when Jacob had not returned home for many hours. “He didn’t exactly tell me what was going on, but he asked me to keep an eye on you, in case anything should happen to him. I asked what else I could do, and we realized together that my home and my position might be useful somehow. He put me in contact with people … the specifics did not come until after he was gone.”

“But this is terribly dangerous for you! Aren’t you at all afraid?”

“Of course I am, darling.” The corners of her mouth pressed wryly upward. “Even an old widow with no children wishes to live. But this war …” Her expression turned serious. “This war is the shame of my people. Having you and the child live here with me is the least I can do.”

“The Poles didn’t start this war,” I protested.

“No, but …” Her thought was interrupted by a light scratching sound at the back door. “Wait here.”

Krysia tiptoed downstairs. I heard whispers, some movement, then a tiny click as the door shut. Krysia came back up the stairs, her footsteps slower and heavier now. When she reached the landing, her arms overflowed with a large cloth bundle. I stood to help her and together we carried the sleeping child to the third floor.

We set the child on the crib and Krysia unwrapped the blankets in which he had been swaddled. At the sight of the child’s face, I gasped loudly. It was the blond child whose mother had been shot in the alleyway.

“What is it?” But before I could answer, the child, awakened by my gasp and Krysia’s voice, began to whimper. “Shh,” she soothed, rubbing the child’s back. He settled into sleep once more.