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Jan and Walter showed them how to run quietly.To find refuge in shadows and doorframes.To stay away from the sounds of fighting.They led them into a building and took them from apartment to apartment, looking for one they could break into and fill their backpacks with food.They found water there too and filled jugs and containers, as many as they could carry.
Then they showed the men how to pick through the wardrobes.Most had been cleaned out, but they found a couple of cupboards with clothes left in them.Jan updated his coat to something bigger, and the Jewish men chose several warm items to wear themselves and some to take back to their family, along with an old blanket.
On the way out of the apartment building, they almost walked directly into a German patrol.FourWehrmachtofficers strode in formation along the street, checking windows and doors for any sign of movement.Jan pushed the others back behind him, almost stumbling over the doorstep.
“Germans,” he hissed.
They hurried through the ground floor of the building and out a back exit.Then crept through the remnants of a garden and over a fence, along an alley, keeping low as they went.Finally, they returned the Jewish men to their families beneath the rubble.
Jan wondered how they kept warm down there and offered to help them find a better place to stay.But they refused the help.They’d been safe there so far, they said.They didn’t want to risk getting caught somewhere else.
Then he and Walter returned to the basement with their booty.Nacha was waiting for him, a smile on her face.Her brown eyes glinted at the sight of him, or perhaps it was the food.He didn’t want to presume.
But he wished he could tell her all the things on his mind—how he thought of her constantly.How he longed to put his arms around her and hold her close.How her words meant everything to him, and how one day they would be married and raise a family together.But he couldn’t.They were never alone.And so he treasured his plans and his memories of her touch in his heart as he settled down in the bunker and listened to the renewed boom of the Soviet artillery as it decimated his city.
It wasthe silence that Nacha noticed first.The city was completely quiet.There was no staccato firing of a machine gun in the distance, no boom of artillery, no whine of bomber engines overhead.Everything was still.
“Hush,” she said.
The rest of the crew in the bunker fell still.They listened, eyes narrowed.
“What is it?”Tata asked.
“Don’t you hear it?”
“What?”Nathan said.
“The fighting has stopped.”
They all stood slowly and made their way in a line up the staircase.Nacha peered out the front door of the office building.The street was empty.But still, the silence rang in her ears like the screech of crickets on a warm summer’s night.
“There’s nothing out here,” she said.
Just then the crunch of a thousand feet on gravel and crushed concrete marched in the distance.It was quiet at first, grew louder by the second.Overhead, a crow descended to land on the remnants of a shattered wall.Bricks lay scattered in every direction.The buildings around theirs were like a shadowland of ancient ruins.Only their building and a few others remained whole.
They stayed hidden and out of sight, waiting to see what would come.When the Red Army marched into view, people began to emerge from buildings, ruins, sewers and holes in the ground.They crept, walked and skulked slowly over to meet the army.It marched, in glorious order, its strength on full display, through the rubble of Warsaw.
Jan turned to face Nacha.She offered him a smile.“Is it really over?”
He sighed.“It’s over.”
She leapt into his arms and buried her face in his chest.He wrapped her up and held her close.The scent of his skin was like an elixir.She wanted to caress his face and kiss him and tell him all her secrets in that single moment.But there was no time.
They all ran through the doorway and into the street to watch the armed men in their dark uniforms march by.And she wondered how life could ever go back to the way it was.The city was ruined.It was a wasteland.The people were dead or scattered.
But now there was hope.
With a cry of joy, she spun in place, her arms held out on either side of her.Tata laughed, tears wetting his cheeks, and reached over to kiss her on the cheek.Nathan embraced her, and she watched as Walter and Jan danced in a circle, hugging one another.
Then Jan was back.He put his hands on either side of her waist and lifted her into the air until her face hovered over his.He lowered her gently until her lips met his.Then she kissed him with all the passion that was in her heart as Tata and Nathan danced a jig in the middle of the street behind them.
