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2
15thOctober 1940
Warsaw’s Old Town, Poland
Janek Kostanski jogged along the cobblestone street and jumped up onto the footpath just as an automobile rattled by.It blew its horn at him as it trundled through a throng of pedestrians and bicyclists outside St.John’s Archcathedral.
He slowed to a walk, ducking between a woman pushing a perambulator and a trio of girls wearing matching calf-length dresses and overcoats.The girls giggled at him, and he flashed them a grin.His arms swung freely at his sides, and he dipped his head in greeting at people as he passed.
Two elderly Jewish men crossed his path, deep in conversation, heads bent together and hands gesticulating.White armbands with blue stars flashed stark against their dark clothing.They wore long, black coats over woollen shirts, withkaszkieton their heads, the workers’ caps that’d replaced the traditionalyarmulke.Theyarmulkewas banned when the Germans had invaded Warsaw six months earlier.The distinct headwear changed overnight.
He skirted around them and overheard the words “Judenrat”and “ghetto”spat from their mouths like poison.Those were words he'd heard more frequently these days, but still didn’t mean much to him.He wasn’t interested in politics or the musings of adults.
Ever since the Germans invaded Warsaw, people had predicted disaster, but so far, life had carried on.The utter chaos of the German attacks on the city had ended, and the noise and cloying fear that had saturated the atmosphere through a haze of smoke and ash had subsided.He hated to see the fascists parading around the city, but they allowed him to do mostly as he pleased.
There were anti-Jewish posters everywhere now.Nazi propaganda had been accompanied by an uptick in violence against the Jewish citizens of Old Town for months before the invasion, but it’d escalated the moment theWehrmachtmarched into the city.
One such poster was pasted to the side of a building across from the cathedral.The poster was white with a picture of a scientist looking into a microscope, alongside a spider with a human face and elongated nose.It read,“Tuberculosis Syphilis Cancer are curable...It is necessary to finish the biggest curse: The Jew!"The sight of it sent a shiver down his spine and he pulled his overcoat tighter, then shoved his hands deep into its woollen pockets.
Jan took the stairs to the cathedral two at a time, paused on the threshold to cross himself, and strode inside.Saint John’s onSwietojanskaStreet was a large Gothic structure in orange brick with tall, rounded windows on a sharply reaching façade that towered high on either side to a pinnacle.Jan paused in the entry and glanced up.Vertigo swept over him, and he inhaled a sharp breath.He tipped the cap from his head and crumpled it in one hand, then stepped inside.
At fifteen years of age, he’d taken it upon himself to come once per week and light a candle for his father, who’d left them several years before the war in Europe began.Perhaps he’d return one day, if only Jan prayed hard enough.Surely he couldn’t mean to stay away forever.
Mama, Jadzia and Danuta didn’t speak of him any longer, but Jan missed his father more than he could express.He was gone, Mama had said, and there was nothing more to discuss on the subject.Only where had he gone?And why?Jan hadn’t found the answers to his questions.He couldn’t help wondering if his father’s leaving had something to do with him, though Mama had assured him once that it didn’t.Now, he thought about finding his father and asking him all the questions that lingered in the back of his mind daily.
He hurried down the centre aisle beneath the arched dome of the basilica, with its crisscrossed brickwork against the white plaster, and knelt quickly at the altar.He crossed himself again and recitedOur Father.Several women dressed in black knelt in pews dotted throughout the cathedral.Black shawls covered their heads and they murmured quietly, hands clasped together in front of them.
A man sat on the first pew, staring at his gnarled hands.Two boys giggled from the vestibule, where the table of candles stood.One shushed the other.Jan walked to the vestibule and sent the children a brief smile before taking a match from a jar.He used it to draw the flame of a candle and light one of the others standing upright on the table.He began a prayer for his father, but the words stuck in his throat.
What was the point of praying for a man who’d abandoned them?That was what his sister Jadzia said whenever she discovered where he’d been.
“He left us.He doesn’t care about us.I hope we never see him again.”She spat the words with fire in her eyes.
But Jan knew she didn’t mean it.She missed their father as much as he did.Danuta barely remembered him.Surely when he heard about the invasion of Warsaw, he’d want to find them, to make certain they were okay.Perhaps he’d even want to take them away from here.
The cathedral was promptly filled with the chiming of bells.It was noon, time for him to get back to the market and help Mama.Two priests stood on the other side of the basilica, talking quietly between themselves.They glanced up in surprise as strong hands flung the cathedral doors open and shouts echoed through the building.Jan stopped short of the aisle and shuffled into the vestibule by the candle table again, then peeked around the wall.
German soldiers filed inside.One near the front, dressed in the black uniform of the SS,strode into the cathedral, hands clasped behind his back.He surveyed the room, his gaze fixing on the two priests.He shouted something in German and pointed at the men.Jan knew enough to understand what he’d said —there they are.He watched in horror as severalWermachtsoldiers marched to where the priests stood, questions lingering on their lined faces.
“Can I help you?”asked the elder priest.
The soldiers raised their rifles and shot them both in the head.The priests crumpled to the floor as one of the women seated nearby screamed.
The noise of the gunshots reverberated around the building.The women shrank down behind the pew’s timber structure.The soldiers turned at the sound they made and fired into the pews.The man seated in the front began to run.They shot him in the back.The SS officer in charge shouted something else, and the soldiers spun on their heels and headed for the cathedral’s inner chamber.
The boys in the vestibule huddled trembling, in a corner of the small room.Jan raised a finger to his lips to quiet them, then beckoned them forward.They crawled to him, stood, shaking, to their feet.
His heart thundering, he studied the exits.He had to get them out of there, but the man in black blocked the door at the entrance and the soldiers had used the exit in the back of the building, the only other door within the cathedral proper.He slipped out of the vestibule and slid along the wall in silence, his eyes wide, heart pounding.The other children followed his lead.He could hear their panting as though it was amplified.His own heart held a steady drumbeat in his ears.
One of the children, a small boy, began to cry.Jan glared at him, nostrils flared, until he stopped.They continued on their way, edging along the wall.The man in black peered through the front doors.A soldier ran inside and handed him a sheet of paper.
“Entschuldigung,OberführerMeisinger…”
Jan had heard of Meisinger.Everyone in Warsaw knew of him, but he’d never seen him in person before.He cut an imposing figure in his black uniform, with jaunty black cap perched on his perfectly smooth brown hair.His eyes were piercing and empty as they searched the shadows at the edges of the cathedral.Known as the Butcher of Warsaw, he headed up the dreadedEinsatzgruppe IV, a paramilitary death squad whose entire purpose was to kill.
Wherever Meisinger went, peopled died.The rumours that followed him sent a chill down Jan’s spine.Mama said she didn’t want Jan listening to such rot, but he told her he couldn’t help it.People talked and he listened—it was the curse of his open demeanour.When she laughed, he knew he’d won the argument.
Her attempts to keep him a little boy while war waged all around them were futile.They both knew it.He’d grown up the day his father left home and again when the Nazis goose-stepped into Warsaw.Innocence was gone from Warsaw, and in its place languished a black kind of evil that no one could ignore, not even the small boy sniffling beside him against the cathedral wall.
