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Jan nodded.“I will return as soon as we find a better place for you to stay.”
“Is there anywhere else?”Nathan asked.
“I don’t want to get your hopes up, but Mama is looking for an apartment where we might all perhaps live together.”
Antoni’s eyes lit up.“I told her not to bother with that.It’s too risky.”
“But she won’t let that stop her,” replied Jan with a grin.“If she can find a place where no one knows any of us, but also close to the market, she will rent it.Then I will come back to Otwock to get you.”
“We won’t see you before then?”Nacha’s hands twisted together in front of her brown dress.
“You will, no doubt.We all intend to take turns visiting you, bringing supplies and so on, and since we have papers, we can take the train.It will be a much easier and more affordable journey than the one we took today.”
“That’s good to hear.”Antoni cleared his throat.“Tell your mother we are well, and thank you for all you’ve done and are doing to care for us.”
“I will.”
Jan left after embracing each of them, a knot lodged in his throat.They would be safe in the ghetto for now.Still, he hated to leave them knowing they would be so far away from home and in the company of strangers and Nazis.
He said a Hail Mary and offered a prayer to Saint Christopher on their behalf as he jogged through the ghetto in the direction of the train station.He found a place to sneak through the fence when no one was looking and removed the white band from his arm, shoving it into his pocket as he walked.
When he reached the entrance to the ghetto, there was a single guard standing beneath a flimsy-looking archway with a sign overhead announcing the ghetto and its purpose.
Jan stopped beside the guard and lit a cigarette.He inhaled a deep breath of smoke and watched the guard from the corner of his eye.
“Do you have another?”asked the guard in German.
Jan flashed a grin.“Of course.Here you go.”He tugged a cigarette from the packet in his shirt pocket and handed it to the guard.Then he lit it with a match, which he extinguished with a flick of the wrist and threw to the ground.
“Danke.”
“Hey, do you know how long this ghetto is going to be here?”
The guard shrugged as he drew on the cigarette.“They will empty it soon enough.”
“You have orders?”
“We have our duty to perform.Although it will be a big job.”The guard looked wistfully over his shoulder into the ghetto.
“When?”
“In a few months.That’s all I know.They’re working on the Warsaw ghetto first.”
Jan’s heart dropped.Mama had to find an apartment for them all soon or the Wierzbickas wouldn’t last long enough to need it.“Where’s the train station from here?”
The guard directed him towards the station, and Jan took off at a jog.As he ran, he considered his options.If Mama couldn’t find a place for the family to stay and the Wierzbicka family was sent to Treblinka, everything he and his family had done for the past two years would’ve been for nothing.
