The Book of Aron

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THE NEXT NIGHT MADAME STEFA WAS TOO exhausted to stay awake so it was just the two of us. Then I fell asleep on Mietek’s bed and when I woke it was almost light and Madame Stefa was getting the day’s report. Korczak pulled the paper from one window but otherwise let everyone sleep. He told her Reginka had the rheumatic rash and that during the night he had administered salicylate until she’d heard ringing in her ears and seen yellow. She’d vomited twice and the lumps on her legs were turning pale and no longer hurt. He said Mietek was still having trouble breathing.

“Your cigarettes are probably not helping,” Madame Stefa said.

He told her that smoke was a good expectorant for the children and she answered that this was his theory. She said that sometimes when she came up to see him the air was so bad that she couldn’t breathe. He said she reminded him of that entire stern regiment of women — wife, grannie, cook — to which his father had always given in for the sake of peace.

“Is he asleep?” she asked, and I didn’t hear his response but I didn’t move. My head was turned away.

She said two of the girls no longer claimed to be hungry and seemed to be hibernating. Others were no longer sleeping because of hunger insomnia. She kept them covered but they were always thirsty and cold. Their stools were semi-liquid and muddled. When she pressed their skin the dimples lasted nearly two minutes. One was so clumsy with weakness she couldn’t fasten a button. The hungriest were always appearing and disappearing around the kitchen. They all had scabies and crusted ringworm.

Death by famine lacked drama, Korczak told her. It was slow and dispiriting. At least until the crows or the rats or the dogs came along.

“Oh, stop it,” she told him.

“Am I being heartless?” he asked her.

“You’re being unhelpful,” she told him.

“I find it helps if I tell myself that children can die or recover here,” he said, “just as they do in a hospital.”

“Yes,” she said. “Something strange happened today. When I emptied the chamber pots this morning I found a street boy outside our door.”

“I can smell the ammonia,” he said. “And that’s not strange. Did you let him in?”

“He didn’t want to come in,” she told him. “He wanted to see into the main hall. I even stepped aside so he could look all he wanted. When I asked him his business he went on his way.”

“I know how he feels,” Korczak said.

I stayed by the window and watched the street that day and the next but saw no sign of Boris. One kid in a blue cap watched the orphanage both days but it wasn’t him. I didn’t go outside. Everyone claimed I was selfish because I took too long on the toilet. Everyone argued over who had had the worse night. Everyone was preoccupied with his morning temperature. “What is it?” kids asked staff members who were still trying to read their thermometers. “What was yours?” they asked one another.

At dinner Korczak announced the orphanage would be putting on a play called The Post Office by an Indian poet. It would be mounted on the third floor in the former ballroom, which would need to be cleaned and cleared for the event. The text was available to read for the next day or two and auditions would be held after that. One of the staff members, Esterka, would direct it. He asked her to stand to receive our thanks and she gave a wave.

There was a new girl whose brother had left her at the orphanage who kept everyone up with her nightmares and her crying. Her name was Gieńa and she was nine and during the day she didn’t bother anyone though she didn’t work either. Her father had died of tuberculosis and her mother and older sisters of typhus and before dropping her off her older brother had dressed her in so many ribbons and beads and colored crepe streamers that I made her laugh by asking if she was a Hottentot. She ate shielding her plate with her hand. In the dark she screamed so much that for a few nights since I was awake anyway I took her up to the third floor so everyone else could sleep. I sat with her while she wailed and she told me about her brother Samuel, who was seventeen and worked in one of the shops, and showed me how she stood on his feet and put her arms around his waist and was carried around the room when he marched. Her aunt had been unhappy because she said Gieńa ate all the bread and in no time it would all be gone and she told Samuel to put his sister in the orphanage so she didn’t have to live with someone who was stealing from her. Telling her story calmed Gieńa down but the spiders on the third floor upset her. I said she could only go back down if she stopped screaming, so she promised she would and the next night when I checked she was awake and weeping but doing it quietly. She showed me a shell in her palm and chanted, “Snail, snail, show me your horns,” and after we both watched for a minute it did.

OF COURSE THERE WASN’T ENOUGH FOR EVEN THE makeshift sets and costumes that Esterka had planned, Korczak told me early the next morning, standing over my bed, so it was time for Don Quixote and Sancho Panza to go back out on their rounds. I told him I didn’t know what he was talking about and he said he was used to that. When I told him I didn’t want to go he said he was used to that too.

“Can’t someone else go?” I asked him. I was afraid of Boris.

“Madame Wilczyńska asked recently why I was so taken with you,” he said, while he waited for me to find my shoes. “I don’t see what’s so puzzling about it.”

There was a boy out there who wanted to kill me, I told him. I didn’t look at him when I spoke.

“You’ll be fine with me,” he said. At the front door he stopped outside and pretended to check his pockets until I got the courage to follow. He told me I’d be awarded a Good Care Card for looking after one of the new arrivals. The card could be exchanged for an extra portion of sweets.

Again the only ones out that early were the beggars. Some were still in their nooks with their garbage and others were wrapped in their odds and ends and crossing from person to person and begging. A boy who looked like my older brother had printed on his armband Jew Useful for the Economy. When he caught my eye he bared black teeth at me. “And how are you?” he said. “What time is left on your clock?” He kept his horrible expression even when Korczak gave him a few groszy. An elderly couple went around the three of us with their eyes on the sidewalk as if looking for something they’d lost.

The first house we tried gave Korczak all the money he needed after he described the play and then had a coughing fit. “Well, that’s good news,” he said, but once we started back two bodies in the street covered with sheets of paper made him stop. Where the papers weren’t weighed down with stones they lifted in the wind.

We passed a mantelpiece clock wrapped with rope. “You know, when I was a medical student I used to sit at night in the postmortem room after hours,” he said, after we started walking again. “I paid the guard to let me stay there.”

I was scratching at lice. Even at the end my mother begged me to use the kerosene every day. Even at the end I lied about it. In the hospital I shouted for her to leave it alone and she turned to the wall and told me to go.

Korczak took my arm and almost tipped us over. “I just sat there and stared at the faces of the dead children,” he said. “What was I doing there? What was I looking for?”

A yellow police column jogged by. He looked bothered by his question, so I told him I didn’t know.

“What a strange and unsavory person I was. And am,” he said. He said he wished he’d brought a cigarette. He said he wished he’d eaten his breakfast.

“I’m not sure I know what to do with good times,” he said. “My mother told me her father was so comfortable with being downtrodden that even when he drew the lucky number in a lottery he kept the news to himself for a week.”

We stepped over a desk blocking the sidewalk, its drawers open and inkwell broken. He wondered if it was worth sending some boys back to retrieve it. Then he said to remind him that he still needed to talk with Kramsztyk about the poor quality of his coal. For the rest of the walk back he rolled his head from side to side as if his neck was giving him pain.

AUDITIONS FOR THE PLAY WERE HELD ON THE THIRD floor after it had been prepared. Gieńa was cast as Sudah the flower girl, she told me that night, and I told her that she was already in costume. Jerzyk though he still had his fever was cast as the fakir and had already started working on his magic tricks. They were casting the main role last, Korczak said, and he wanted me to try out for it. I asked what it was and he wondered if I’d read the play and I said no. He said the lead was a boy who was dying and inspired everyone.

“He’s the hero?” I said. We were all stripping beds.

“In a way,” he said. “I think you’d be very good at it.”

“Him?” Madame Stefa asked.

Him, Korczak told her. I said no but was surprised by how happy it made me to have been asked. The next day Korczak announced the star would be a boy named Abrasha, who played the violin.

I was emptying the dustbins with Zygmuś and another boy and saw Boris coming down the street with a tall woman in a straw hat. It didn’t look like he’d seen me and when I got back inside I pushed past the long line of kids waiting for the bathroom and went up to the third floor and climbed inside a painted piece of scenery that said Lord Mayor’s House. I waited and then heard footsteps and someone came in and shut the door. I could see out the crack beside me.

The woman in the straw hat and Korczak had come in but I didn’t see Boris. They searched each other’s faces and said it was good to meet again. He told her about the play and she told him how she’d gotten into the ghetto. She said she’d brought honey cakes and vitamin B for the children and he thanked her.

They were quiet. He asked why she had come and she told him she’d come to get him out of there and he said he thought it was something like that. He asked how she imagined she would do that and she said she belonged to the Żegota movement, which distributed newspapers calling on Poles to help Jews, and they ferried people in and out all the time. He asked if he would be going alone. She said that maybe as many as three or four others could go with him. Then she was quiet again.

I could hear the kids downstairs. Someone tried the door and found it locked and went back down.

“I ask you to accept my help,” the woman said.

“Those of us who were here, if we ever met up after this,” he finally told her. “How could we look each other in the eye without asking, ‘How is it that you happened to survive?’ ”

The woman studied her hands. “Why shouldn’t some, if even only a few, be saved?” she asked.

Someone dropped dishes downstairs and kids applauded.

What about the rest, he asked. Could she imagine the ones left behind? “ ‘Pan Doctor is gone. Wait here in the dark,’ ” he said.

I couldn’t tell if the woman was weeping. “We put out a newspaper,” she said. “You produce plays. What good does either do? Maybe we should be learning how to handle a rifle instead.”

Korczak laughed. “I’d love to join the underground but what weapons do they have?” he said. “One group has a revolver. They showed me.”

“You can come out now,” he called after they sat there a while longer, and I stood up and walked around the scenery. The woman didn’t seem surprised to see me. “You can help me show Maria out,” he said. “She’s one of my most successful graduates.”

“The boy with her is the one I was talking about,” I told him. But he didn’t answer and we followed him down the stairs. When I hung back he told me to come on and in the front hall he kissed the woman on both cheeks and then she kissed him on the mouth. Boris stood beside the door and watched them and then looked at me as though he’d never seen me before.

“Please think about what we discussed,” the woman told Korczak.

“I wish I could stop thinking about it,” he told her. “Please thank your friends on the children’s behalf.”

“Have you fallen asleep?” he said to me after they’d closed the door behind them. “Are you just going to stand there and squint?”

In the kitchen he was stopped by a little girl. “You’re the tenth person to ask me about the honey cakes,” he told her. “Do you think there are no problems to solve other than the honey cakes?” She went to Madame Stefa, who gave her a hug. “Do I need to have eyes in the back of my head to keep everyone working?” he called to the group.

HE READ HIS LETTERS ALOUD TO HIMSELF IN THE early morning when he thought everyone else was asleep, so that night I stopped on the stairs and watched from the darkness. I had spent the day mystified by why Boris had acted the way he had.

Korczak held his letter up to the light and read. “To the Editor of the Jewish Gazette: Dear Mr. Editor! Thank you for your favorable evaluation of the Orphanage’s activity. But: ‘Love Plato, yet love more the truth.’ The Orphanage was not, is not, and will never be Korczak’s Orphanage. The man is too small, too weak, too poor, and too dimwitted to gather, feed, warm, protect, and initiate into life almost two hundred children. This great task — this herculean task—”

He stopped and cleared his throat and laid the paper down and made some marks on it. “—has been accomplished through the collective efforts of hundreds of people of goodwill and enlightened minds and insight. As well as by the children themselves.”

He stopped again, still looking at the paper. “Not having any confidence, we are disinclined to promise. Nevertheless, we are assured that an hour of a thinker and a poet’s beautiful fairy tale will provide an experience of the highest order in the scale of feelings. Therefore, we all together invite you—” he said. “We take this occasion to invite you …”

He stood and turned from his writing, then sat down on his bed.

Three weeks of rehearsals were scheduled on the posting board and the performance date was listed as Saturday, July 18. Those who weren’t involved were invited to contribute their opinions when not occupied with chores. The night before everyone got food poisoning and those staff members not throwing up or huddled over chamber pots moved through the darkness with jugs of limewater and morphine for the worst off. Mietek had a nightmare about his mother that was so terrible he shrieked and screamed he was burning up and dying of thirst until Korczak shouted into his face that he would throw him down the stairs and out into the street if he didn’t quiet down.

“That seemed to have worked,” Madame Stefa told him later, while they were soaking up the throw-up with rags.

“Our director shouts and therefore is in command,” he told her.

“He was upsetting everyone,” she said.

“I’m the son of a madman,” he said. “To this day the thought is a torment to me.”

The next morning the main hall looked like a battlefield, but by five that evening the performers had pulled themselves together and gotten into costume.

The audience filled the room and even with the windows open it was so hot that everyone fanned themselves with programs. It smelled of the night before.

Korczak welcomed the guests and told them that an author from India would speak through the mouths of Jewish children in a Polish ghetto. The lights went out and whispers and sounds came from behind the curtain and the kids in the front rows pushed and shoved. The play once it started seemed made for the smaller ones. Abrasha played a sick boy not allowed to leave his room. In the lights his one big eyebrow made him look angry. He had conversations with his doctor and his mother and his stepfather and a watchman on the street and with the mayor and with a fakir and with a flower girl. Then somebody named the Royal Physician came dressed all in white and Abrasha told everyone that he no longer felt any pain and when the boy playing his stepfather asked why they were putting out the lights in his room and opening the curtains and how the starlight would help, Gieńa stepped forward as the flower girl and held out her hands and said, “Be quiet, unbeliever.” And it was as if the entire audience had decided to listen. The kid next to me who’d begun to itch himself stopped.

The physician said Abrasha was asleep and Gieńa asked when he would awake and the physician said as soon as the king came to call him from this world. And she asked if he would whisper a word from her into Abrasha’s ear and when he asked her what he should say she said, before all the lights went out, to tell him she had not forgotten him.

Everyone said they were very moved by the play. An old woman in a Chinaman’s hat told Korczak that he was a genius and could work miracles in a rat hole. He told her that must have been why the others had all been given the palaces.

FOUR DAYS LATER THERE WAS NOISE ON THE STREET early in the morning and in the kitchen Madame Stefa congratulated Korczak on his birthday and handed him a cup of something she’d cooked, and then gave a cry when through the window she saw the lines of blue police and Lithuanians and Ukrainians in black with brown leather collars. Boris had taught me the uniforms. A boy who carried messages from the hospital came in gasping and panting. He said the children there were being evacuated to the Umschlagplatz and apparently getting dumped next to the tracks in their hospital gowns. Korczak got some money from a hiding place behind the stove and ran out the door while the boy was still talking.

I ran after him. Where would I go if he disappeared? I collided with a group running by and a man with a valise knocked me down. Everyone was running out of the courtyard of the building next door and those in the back were being whipped and trying to push forward. We were carried down the street like a river and collected in a blockade. I couldn’t see if Korczak was with us. We were pulled into lines of four and shoved onto our haunches in the street. One of the Lithuanians demonstrated and clubbed anybody who didn’t obey on the head. We crouched there while more and more people joined us, everyone wailing and calling to friends and relatives in the crowd. They were shouting, “Where are my children? Tell them I’m leaving.” Or that they had a sewing machine or worked at Többens’s. The yellow police took the sides of the column and the Lithuanians the back and they stood everyone up and got us moving again.

I worked over to the closest yellow policeman and everyone was shouting at him at once, giving him their names, asking if there was anything he could do, asking him to tell their wives or sons or husbands where they were. He shouted for them all to shut up and when I got close enough to ask if he knew Lejkin he hit me in the face with his stick.

A little girl helped me up and was crying that they had to send her home so she could take care of her younger sister. I asked why she was telling me and a woman took her hand and pulled her away. People were fished from the mob or jumped into doorways or dropped down cellar stairs when the policemen were distracted or willing to look the other way.

A blue policeman dragged a girl into the crowd from an apartment we passed and I stepped through the door before he slammed it shut. The girl called “Mr. Policeman!” and then disappeared. The inner entry doors were locked but I held the outer ones together with my arm through the handles. I held them tight until everything had passed by and the street got quiet.

I cracked the door open and saw a shoe on its side in the street. My cheek was numb. My arm holding the door was shaking. I heard banging metal and opened the door wider.

A German down the block was hammering the bolt of his rifle with the butt of his bayonet. I could see eyeglasses on the cobblestones near him. Nearer to me a girl lay on her back.

I shut the door but could still hear her cries. The building around me was silent. When I finally looked out the doors again she was dead and the street was empty except for her and her eyeglasses. Even the shoe was gone. The sun hurt my eyes.

The next street over I could follow the trail of suitcases and scattered hats. Window shutters swung squeaking. One banged against a wall. Feathers still floated around from torn-up bedding.

I started back to the orphanage and two looters passed carrying a clothes wringer. On Twarda a German was poking a pile of clothes with a long stick and I hid and waited for him to leave. On Sienna the Ukrainians sat with their backs to the ghetto wall, tired and drinking with their shirts open. I got into the orphanage through the courtyard.

The kids were all in the middle of the upstairs room with the blackout paper still up on the windows. Everyone was together on the floor. Madame Stefa hugged me but Korczak stayed with his arms around Mietek and another little girl who was asleep. Madame Stefa told me to clean my face.

Some kids were whispering but most were listening. There was shouting and whistles and boots running by outside. Every so often someone got up to use the chamber pot.

We stayed like for that a day and a night. There was no dinner. No one lit any lamps. Once it got late Korczak stood up and weaved through the tangle of sleepers and lifted a corner of the blackout paper on one of the windows. He stood over Madame Stefa, who was asleep with her head back and mouth open, and raised a finger to his lips when he saw me looking. We watched each other until the sun came up and it was like the city outside was gone except for the occasional shot or voice calling in the darkness.

AFTER THAT KORCZAK WENT OUT EVERY DAY AND never let anyone else go with him. When he returned he told whoever wanted to listen what was happening as far as he could tell. The smallest kids held the hands of older ones, proud to have been included.

He said members of the Jewish Council had been arrested and their families held hostage. He said a proclamation had appeared announcing that all of the Jews would be resettled outside of Warsaw and only a few workers were to remain exempt and also that those who reported voluntarily would receive three kilos of bread and one of jam. He told Madame Stefa that only the Germans would have chosen to begin this on Tisha B’Av and when a kid asked why he explained that Tisha B’Av was a fast day commemorating Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon’s destruction of the First Temple and the Roman emperor Titus’s destruction of the Second. He said they were going block by block and doors that were locked or bolted were broken down and the streets emptied one day were being revisited on the next to catch those hiding in places already searched.

He told of how he’d saved an old student by pulling her from a Jewish policeman and shouting that he’d saved the policeman’s daughter that afternoon and so the policeman had let them go, but that he hadn’t saved the policeman’s daughter, not that the man could have ever known for sure.

He said he’d been thrown onto one of the roundup wagons and then a block later had been recognized by another yellow policeman who’d helped him down and warned him not to play the hero or it would get everyone killed. If they had to give up an arm or a leg to save the body, so be it. And if the Jews helped out, wouldn’t that mean fewer casualties and less brutality?

Was this how they were all supposed to ride off into the unknown, Madame Stefa asked, with no fresh clothes, no bundles, not even a piece of bread?

So many kids were crying that Korczak said the policeman had assured him that the orphanage was so famous that the Germans would never touch it. Everyone else was running about frantically trying to get work papers and men who’d been captains of industry were now overjoyed to sweep a factory yard and everybody said the brushmakers’ workshops were the best, because they were controlled by the Army, or that Többens’s workshop on Prosta Street was, because he was Göring’s brother-in law, so everyone wanted the green pass from Többens. But no one knew what worked and what didn’t and what seemed secure one day was a soap bubble the next. He said that while he’d been trapped on the wagon a German had told a woman whose papers featured all the proper seals and signatures that she was an imbecile and the best document that she could hope to find was a cellar.

AT NIGHT WE STAYED QUIET AND LISTENED FOR THE patrols. We could hear muffled sounds of people coming out of their hiding places for water and food. When someone cried or called out down below the windows we weren’t allowed to look.

Almost no one was sleeping. Korczak and Madame Stefa talked on the third floor when it was very late. Sometimes I listened from the stairs and sometimes I didn’t. Their voices were so low I couldn’t hear everything. He told her the shooting on Ogrodowa Street had gone on all day to accommodate those who hadn’t been at home earlier. She asked how he knew that and he asked how anyone knew anything. He said if people had survived they’d probably been hiding whenever something happened.

He said children had walked to the Umschlagplatz in order to travel with their families. The lucky ones left behind were stealing from empty homes since it couldn’t be stealing if there were no longer any owners. He said that the Ukrainians at the end of the day reminded him of farmers at the end of a harvest.

THE NEXT DAY HE CAME BACK SO UPSET HE WOULDN’T let anyone see him until Madame Stefa talked to him alone. Outside we heard the horns of police vans and whistles and the sound of people running.

He told her he’d gone all the way to the Umschlagplatz to find Esterka and got past the Ukrainians and Germans and Jewish police and found her and had tried to bring her to the hospital. At the gate he asked a blue policeman if he could help his assistant who was vital to his orphanage and the Pole said he knew very well that he couldn’t and while another Pole and a Jewish policeman dragged Esterka away Korczak stood there and let it happen and thanked the Pole for his kind words. This was what it had come to, Korczak said: he’d now been trained to be thankful for even that.

Kids tried to get by me on the stairs and asked what Korczak and Madame Stefa were talking about up there but I said I didn’t know. I couldn’t hear what else they said. Finally I heard him tell her they had responsibilities downstairs and to remember that if Miss Esterka didn’t return she’d assist others in the meantime, just as she had made herself so useful here.

THE NEXT MORNING A RUNNER FROM THE JUDENRAT told him about Czerniaków’s suicide. His secretary had found him dead in his office chair. Czerniaków had written notes to his wife and to the Judenrat. The runner showed the Judenrat note to Korczak, who read it and refolded it and handed it back, and the runner left.

When Madame Stefa heard they stood facing each other, their foreheads touching.

The rest of the morning other staff members gave what orders needed to be given. Korczak and Madame Stefa sat at the kitchen table over a single cold glass of tea. “The easy way out,” she finally said.

“He gave up a visa to Palestine to serve his community,” he answered.

Neither of them left the kitchen when Zygmuś told me there were two boys outside who wanted to see me and when I opened the front door a crack Boris pulled me out and another boy shut the door behind me. I was so scared I couldn’t hear what Boris was saying at first and finally the other boy slapped me and got my attention. He asked if I knew the interior of the Żelazna Street house, the one the Germans had set up, and asked me to describe its rooms and then seemed satisfied when I did. He asked how often I went there and at what times of day and whether the Germans guarded the doors. He said they needed me to let them know from the inside when it was a good time to pay a visit and I asked who they were and he said his group and when I asked who was in his group he told me it was none of my fucking business.

Boris still had me by the shirtfront and I said why should I do anything for them and Boris said because if I didn’t he would kill me and I said then he should just go ahead and kill me. They stared at me for a while until the other boy asked what I wanted and I had to think. Then I told him I wanted Korczak saved. And Madame Stefa too, if that’s what Korczak wanted. Boris snorted. The other boy thought about it and then said yes, he could arrange for this if I gave him what he wanted and that I’d be hearing from him soon. Then they left.

That night Gieńa’s older brother Samuel visited before curfew and she threw herself on him and the kids gathered around and stared. Madame Stefa and Korczak watched with their arms folded. Gieńa’s brother told her he had to talk to Korczak and Madame Stefa and she waited with her friends in the main room while he sat with them in the kitchen. The glass was still where they’d left it, though someone had drunk the tea. I sat in the hall by the doorway.

The brother told them he’d heard the orphanage wouldn’t be touched but that he couldn’t be sure and had promised his mother to watch over his sister and that lately his nightmares had convinced him they should be together, given what was happening. But he hardly knew the couple he lived with and worried that his sister would be terrified to be alone all day while he worked.

He waited but Korczak was silent. Madame Stefa finally said they too believed the orphanage would be safe and that taking children away wasn’t good for the group’s morale, though this was his decision.

So he talked with his sister and she couldn’t decide but eventually left with him the next morning. But the morning after that he brought her back, because of what she’d heard when she’d been locked alone in his room. He brought her back in time for breakfast and sat her at her place. He wiped his eyes and promised he would visit when he could, and she told him he’d been very helpful and should take care of himself. Then she picked up her spoon and turned away. After he left Madame Stefa asked why Korczak was waiting tables and he told her he liked to keep occupied and by picking up soup bowls and spoons and plates he could see who was sitting next to whom. And who was most alone.

THAT NIGHT AFTER EVEN KORCZAK HAD FALLEN asleep there was a low rapping at the back door and when I took the lamp over to it and threw the bolt open Boris shoved me back and he and the other boy stepped in and shut the door behind them.

“How can we help you gentlemen?” Korczak said. He was in his nightshirt and without his glasses.

“Come into the kitchen,” the other boy said, and took the lamp from me and led us there.

They sat at the table and we stood in front of them. “Hello again,” I said to Boris.

“Hello,” Boris said.

“Yes, it’s nice to be back,” the other boy said. Then he told Korczak that representatives of the youth movements had met and established the Jewish Fighting Organization and had decided their first task was to inform everyone that the deportations were to a camp at Treblinka where everyone was to be gassed. They were already distributing flyers but the flyers were being destroyed by the Judenrat, who viewed them as a German provocation intended as a pretext to shoot everyone.

“If everyone’s being gassed then how has this information reached you?” Korczak asked.

One or two who’d escaped from the trains came back to the ghetto every week, the boy told him.

“And these people are reliable?” Korczak asked. “How did they achieve this feat?” I asked if he wanted me to fetch his glasses and he said no.

“In my case I managed to tear the barbed wire from the window and wriggle through,” the boy said. When he saw Korczak’s face he added, “I’m not Hercules. Others ahead of me worked at it and ran out of time.”

They stared at each other. I thought: that’s what I would do. I’d climb over heads if I had to.

“Others kicked out floorboards or sideboards,” the boy said.

“While the train was still moving?” I asked, but the boy gave me such a look that I shut up.

“Are there no guards on the trains?” Korczak asked.

“There are guards,” the boy said. “Some who get away are shot and some aren’t.”

Korczak seemed unsurprised by any of this. “And you’re a member of this fighting organization?” he asked.

The boy said they’d come for two reasons and the first was to help Korczak escape.

The Polish underground was always offering to help him escape, Korczak told him, but he always said no unless they could take everyone.

“They want you because you’re the only one they consider a Pole,” the boy said. “But we want to get you out not just because you’re the famous Dr. Korczak. We want you to help spread the word about what’s going on.”

“Why would anyone listen to me?” Korczak said.

The boy didn’t answer. “Tell him,” he said to me.

“Tell me what?” Korczak said. And all three of them looked at me.

“They’re also here because they want my help,” I told him. “I said if they wanted me to help them they had to do this for me.”

“Do what for you?” Korczak asked. His expression was so surprised and disappointed that I had to look away.

“Get you out,” Boris said. He said the Germans were directing their resettlement from an office on Żelazna. He said Lejkin was the Jew in charge and that I had worked as an informer for him and the Gestapo, which meant I could get inside. And since I could get inside, then I could help them attack it when the time came.

“You want him to help you attack their office?” Korczak asked.

“His price was getting you out,” the other boy said.

“When was all this arranged?” Korczak asked me.

“They came to the home yesterday,” I told him. “I talked with them on the front step.”

“When did you imagine you would do this?” he asked me, in the voice he used when he talked to the Germans.

“He’ll have to come now,” Boris said.

“I’m not doing anything until he’s out of the ghetto,” I told them.

“Do you have guns? Do you have bombs?” Korczak asked.

“We’re getting guns. We’re getting bombs,” Boris said.

“From where?” Korczak asked.

Boris finally told him that his plan was for me to bring him to the wall at the end of Próżna Street at four the following night and there would be a ladder and someone waiting on the other side to take him out of the city.

Korczak walked to the sink and stood with his back to us. “I’m waiting to speak until I’m not so angry,” he said.

The other boy moved the tea glass from spot to spot on the table like a chess piece. When I looked at Boris he only shrugged.

Korczak turned around. “And all the children in this orphanage?” he said to me. “I’m going to leave them now, when they have so little time left?”

I put my hands on my face. “I just wanted to save you,” I said.

The other boy said, “Boris chose the spot along the wall from your smuggling days. He picked a good one.”

“When they argue with one another the children have a saying,” Korczak finally told us. “They say, ‘I’ll give you away in a bag.’ ”

“Tell them the truth,” the boy said. “Tell them we can’t save them.”

“Tell them they’re all just on their own?” Korczak asked, and his anger surprised even them.

“They are all on their own,” the boy said.

“They’re not all on their own,” Korczak said. None of us could look at anyone else.

“So you won’t go?” the boy finally said to Korczak. “And you won’t help us if he doesn’t go?” he said to me.

My hands were still on my face. Madame Stefa was now standing in the doorway.

“Maybe he’ll change his mind,” I said.

“But you have to come now,” Boris said.

“And just leave him? And everyone else?” I asked.

“Aron’s not a violent boy,” Madame Stefa said. She cleared her throat and said it again.

“Sh’maya? Don’t tell me about Sh’maya,” Boris said. “Because of him my two best friends are dead. Sh’maya doesn’t care about anyone but himself. Do you, Sh’maya?”

The other boy got up from the table and looked sad when he put the glass in the sink. “So you’re going to do as you’re told,” he said to Korczak. “And make everything simpler for the Germans.”

“Gentlemen, it’s been a long day,” Korczak told them. Madame Stefa stepped over and put an arm on his shoulder.

“And now he’s crying,” Boris said to the boy about me, as though he’d predicted it. I put my fists atop my head as if that would help.

The Jews could fight better than anyone knew, the boy said. He said there was an anti-aircraft post near Mława during the first days of the war when everyone else had run away during an air raid and the Jews had shot down seventeen planes. “Seventeen planes!” he said.

“You won’t go?” I asked Korczak. He looked away.

“Make yourself useful,” Boris finally said to me.

“Make up for what you’ve done,” the other boy said.

“I’ve never been useful,” I told them. “And I can’t make up for what I’ve done.”

They both stared at me. “I never thought he’d help,” Boris said, pointing at Korczak. “But I thought you might.”

The other boy looked at me with hatred. “We have no chance without someone on the inside,” he said to Korczak. “Tell him that.”

“It’s his decision,” Korczak said.

Lice and bedbugs swarmed around on my head and chest. I raked my hands over them. “Can I take a day to think about it?” I asked.

“You don’t have a day,” the boy said.

“Then no,” I told him.

KORCZAK WENT UP TO HIS ROOM AFTER THEY LEFT and Madame Stefa followed him. I sat below in the dark with the sleeping kids until I couldn’t stand it anymore and climbed the stairs.

They were sitting together. He had pulled the blackout paper down from one of the windows and the sheets on all the beds gave off a pale light. The paper was still in his hand and when he crumpled it only a few of the sicker kids stirred.

“What a marvelous big moon over this camp of helpless pilgrims,” he said to himself. It was as sad as I’d ever seen him.

“I’m sorry,” I said from across the room.

He nodded. “Do you even understand why I’m so angry?” he said.

“I just wanted you to be safe,” I said. But he didn’t seem to have heard.

“Can I get you anything?” Madame Stefa asked him after a minute.

He shook his head. “Sit with us,” he said without looking at me, and patted the sheet.

I went past the other beds and sat at the foot of his next to Madame Stefa and after he laid down we did too, though our feet were still on the floor. We listened to his breathing.

“Did you know I met Madame Stefa on a trip to Switzerland when I was still a student?” he asked. I shook my head but he couldn’t see. She made an amused sound.

“I told her on our first meeting during a long exchange on a park bench that I was the son of a mental patient but was going to become the Karl Marx of children,” he said.

“Thank you,” I told him, “for calling me over.”

“She was very self-assured,” he said.

“I’m still self-assured,” she told him.

“She was eating an unripe pear,” he said, and she stretched an arm in his direction. I felt his knee under the sheet.

“Always at the back of your mind is the question of what you’ll do when they finally do come,” he said after we’d been lying there for a few minutes. He touched his glass and his cigarettes and then fell asleep.

WHEN HE WOKE UP I DID TOO AND HE PROPPED HIMSELF up on his elbows. It was early. Gieńa was in her nightshirt under the window. “Good morning,” he said to her.

“Good morning,” she said back.

“Smile,” he told her, and she did. He said that today he thought he’d like a breakfast of sausage, ham, and buns. Madame Stefa got to her feet and walked to the staircase and shouted “Boys! Breakfast! Get up!” and down below we could hear beds moved and the wooden tables pushed together and the pot being filled in the kitchen. Then there were two whistle blasts and men at the front and back doors shouted, “All Jews out! All Jews out!”

Gieńa put a hand to her mouth. Madame Stefa ran downstairs. Korczak struggled into his clothes and I followed him down once he’d stuffed his feet into his shoes.

Madame Stefa was in the main room trying to keep the kids calm. She shook some who were making too much noise. The Germans and Ukrainians were still shouting. Korczak looked out the kitchen window and saw something that made him pull me out the back door into the courtyard with him.

It was filled with men standing around: five or six SS, a line of Ukrainians, and two more of yellow police. The SS and Ukrainians were wearing long overcoats in the heat and sweating and yelling for water. Lejkin was bent over with his hands on his hips in front of his police. Korczak asked him what was happening and Lejkin told him to get everyone together. Korczak asked again and Lejkin repeated himself.

When Korczak told him he needed time to allow the children to pack up, Lejkin said that he had twenty minutes.

“Explain to him,” Korczak said to me. “Tell him that I need more time.”

“He needs more time,” I said to Lejkin.

Lejkin looked at me. “Ten minutes,” he said.

Korczak pushed back inside and clapped his hands for everyone’s attention. Madame Stefa and the other staff members worked on getting those who were most upset to listen to him. He asked two boys to close the doors and when some Ukrainians tried to stop them he shouted, “We still have five minutes,” so they allowed it.

Once the doors were shut the kids pushed forward as if whoever was closest to him would be the safest. I pushed forward myself. I was so panicked I was just calling, “Pan Doctor! Pan Doctor!” Mietek held my shirttail to keep his position. His head was so full of lice it was like he had gray hair.

Korczak said it had been claimed this home was so filled with the well-behaved that at times you wouldn’t know there was a child in the house. He said his mother had told him he had no ambition because it always had been the same to him whether he played with his own kind or the janitor’s children and that there was no one with whom he would rather undertake what we were all about to do. He said where we were going there’d be no card playing, no sunbathing, and no rest. When some of the kids made noises he said he was telling us this because he’d spent his entire life demanding respect for the child and it was time to practice what he preached. More kids made noise and he quieted them with a hand gesture. He said not to forget that Moses himself had been a child under a death sentence. He told everyone of a time he’d convinced Jerzyk not to cover some ants with dirt. And who knows, he said: maybe even now those ants were back at their home, telling the story of how they survived.

He told us to arrange ourselves in lines of four and the staff members helped. It took all of the time we had left. The doors burst open before we were finished and the shouting started again.

Korczak waited for it to stop and then said he was already so proud of us that his heart was bursting. And who was to say that if anyone had a chance of surviving it couldn’t be us? And he said he’d use his old magic, we would see, to wheedle bread and potatoes and medicine for everyone. And that he’d be with us for whatever lay ahead.

Madame Stefa was holding one of the sicker five-year-olds, and handed another to Korczak. He hefted her in front of everyone and said Romcia would be our standard-bearer. Along with Jerzyk who had spared the ants. He asked one of the staff to hand Jerzyk the bright-green flag with the Jewish star and two older kids helped him with the harness.

Mietek was still in his rotten boots with his dead brother’s prayer book. Abrasha with his eyebrow had his violin in its case. Zygmuś was bare-handed. Other kids held toys or cups. Most had put their caps on.

At the front door an SS man held a clipboard and took a roll call that took several minutes. The kids packed in tighter on Korczak. The SS man called out the door when he was finished that a hundred and ninety-two children and ten adults were accounted for. Korczak told the staff to spread themselves out and take every fifth row of four but Dora and Balbina had trouble finding their spots. Dora said that all her life she’d had to be first and just this once wanted to take her place farther back. Balbina said she’d never seen anything like it in her entire life and this was the first time she’d ever gone on a trip without knowing where she was going. They were still arguing when he led us out into the sunlight.

It was hot. The sidewalks were so full that we had to walk in the street. Madame Stefa asked why this was and Korczak told her everyone was now required to stand in front of their homes when such operations were taking place.

It was a gigantic procession, a rag parade, everyone staggering and squinting in the daylight, most carrying spoons and bowls. Some of the kids were cheered just to be walking all together.

The sky was hazy. We were the only ones making noise, with our feet. Everyone watching was quiet. We went up Sosnowa, Śliska, and Komitetowa. After a few blocks people called, “Stay well!” or said goodbye to particular kids by name.

All the shoes on the cobblestones made a clopping sound. There was a lot of dust. When we turned up Twarda the sun was in our eyes. Dora started singing “Though the Storm Howls Around Us” and held up her hand to block the sun while she sang. She didn’t have a very strong voice.

She went on alone for half a block before Madame Stefa and Balbina and the rest of the staff and finally Korczak and the kids joined in. I started singing my younger brother’s name.

“Those aren’t the words,” Zygmuś told me.

“What do you care,” I said. One of the Germans escorting the procession pretended to sing along.

The song stopped at Grzybowska Square when we saw all the others. We took a rest while the Germans tried to organize everyone. Korczak put Romcia down. People in the square looked as shocked to see him as he was to see them. We stood with a big group of older girls from the School of Nursing who were all dressed in their uniforms. Korczak told the woman leading them that he’d managed to secure a special wagon for his children.

When they got us moving again at the intersection it was like two floods merging. As the crowd got bigger people had to work harder to stay in their groups. We took over the sidewalks and the Jews looking on had to retreat into doorways or courtyards or else get carried along. Almost everyone was carrying sacks and suitcases or dragging bundles, knocking into the kids and mixing into our lines. Zygmuś got pushed down a side street covered with abandoned bags and luggage and had to fight his way back into the procession. People shouted they’d forgotten their ration cards and had to go back or asked if there’d be water up ahead and if the yellow police had gone deaf.

At Krochmalna an SS man with a cap shaped like a horse’s saddle watched us go by. Gieńa took my hand and told me she’d hidden some bread in her bag.

At Chłodna Street there was another slowdown because kids fell going up the steps. The boards on the top of the bridge bent and creaked under everyone’s weight. Somewhere outside the wall an Aryan trolley clanged its bell. I could see our gang’s old gate. Jerzyk waved his flag when he got to the top of the bridge. He spat down at the street below.

We kept walking. We’d been walking since seven. We were all walking and swaying, walking and swaying, walking and swaying. The sun was now straight overhead. My ears were ringing. Kids stumbled and fell into one another. How were they doing this with no food or water? I felt like I was flooding with something inside.

We stopped twice on Zamenhofa. Every so often someone called Korczak’s name in surprise. The twine on my shoes came undone and I stepped out of them. Some kids had to be pulled off the pavement when we started moving again. They cried they were thirsty or wanted to rest or needed to go to the bathroom. Korczak was still in the front and still carrying someone. We passed my old apartment and I saw my house. I saw my window. Boris stood with his arms folded at the front door, next to his mother.

The gate where the ghetto ended opened well before we got there. Germans and Ukrainians stood in lines on either side of it with clubs and guns and dogs.

Everyone was shoved through and funneled across trolley tracks that opened onto a dirt field by a railway siding. Barbed wire wrapped around a cement post tore my sleeve. Jews already there were weeping and sitting and standing in the hot sun. Clothes and soup spoons and toys and throw-up were spilled around us. People shouted and hugged when they found someone. Some sat in circles facing one another and others wandered around spattered with blood.

Korczak led us to the far end and sat the smallest kids against the wall for shade. He got some men to move to make room.

He sat with the boys and Madame Stefa with the girls. One of the boys asked what would happen next and I heard him say, “Now we’re going on a trip to the forest.” A yellow policeman took the flag from Jerzyk and tossed it over the wall. Ukrainians came by saying that whoever had good boots should give them up since they’d be taken later anyway.

Mietek was still holding my shirttail. The German Witossek stood over us and reintroduced himself to Korczak. His uniform was soaked with sweat even through the empty sleeve that was pinned up and he said that wool was unsuitable for this kind of heat. He took off his cap and wiped his forehead with his sleeve and Korczak turned his attention to the children.

Witossek apologized for the necessity of what had to happen and said he hoped Korczak understood the necessity was one thing and the people who had to carry it out were another. He said he wanted the good doctor to know that what was going to happen was going to happen and that how everyone chose to face it would be the point.

“I agree with you,” Korczak said.

I heard someone singing a song about the king of Siberia. “Pisher!” I shouted. “Pisher!” I stood up and looked around.

The Ukrainians and the yellow police began loading those closest onto the train cars. People were screaming as they were pulled to their feet. Germans lounged against the wall and watched. Some teased the kids nearby. Witossek put his cap back on and walked over to join them.

The Ukrainians and the yellow police kicked and pushed everyone they could into the open doorways. The Ukrainians used their rifle butts as well. Arms and hands stretched out the little window through the barbed wire. When it looked like there was no more room in a car a German walked over with his pistol and fired into the crowd and everyone near who was shot fell backwards and another six or seven people were shoved into the space.

The train was filled and the doors banged shut and the Jews inside screamed until it left. Dust hung in the air from where the ramps had been kicked down.

Korczak put his hands on Abrasha’s shoulders and told him something and other boys leaned in to listen. Madame Stefa put her arms around two girls. A Ukrainian bent over Gieńa and fingered her beads as she sat there with her hands in her lap.

The yellow police gathered around a white enamel pail and took turns cooling off with ladles of water, some pouring it over their heads. Lejkin took the ladle and I put Mietek’s hand on Zygmuś’s shirttail and worked my way over to him.

“Look who’s here,” Lejkin said.

“I know where all the smugglers’ holes are,” I told him.

“So do I,” Lejkin said. The headband of his cap was so soaked you couldn’t read the lettering. He poured water down his shirtfront.

“I know where all the smugglers are,” I told him.

“So do I,” he said.

“No you don’t,” I said.

He looked at me like he’d been swindled before. “So I get you out of here and you’ll deliver those people to me?” he said.

I pointed to Korczak and Madame Stefa and said, “You get them out of here and I’ll deliver those people to you.”

“Ah,” he said. “Well, a lot of people would like to get him out of here.” He said something to the policeman beside him and we walked over to Korczak.

“Pan Doctor,” he said.

“Mr. Lejkin,” Korczak said. He didn’t have his glasses and the sun made him squint.

“Another train is on its way,” Lejkin told him.

“Another train is always on its way,” Korczak said. He was shaking.

“This young man seems to think you should be saved,” Lejkin told him.

“I think we all should be saved,” Korczak said.

“It’s possible that could be arranged,” Lejkin told him.

Korczak looked up. “And how would that happen?” he said.

“You’d have to come with me and ask the commanding officer,” Lejkin said.

“And where is he?” Korczak asked.

“Not far,” Lejkin said. “A ten-minute walk.”

“Will you guarantee they won’t be taken away while I’m gone?” Korczak asked.

“You’re joking, yes?” Lejkin said. “You’re making a joke?”

“Then no,” Korczak told him.

“You might be able to get everyone out,” I said.

“So I should leave them here, all by themselves, in this place?” he asked me.

“I’ll watch them. You could hurry,” I said.

“You’ll watch them,” he said.

“I’ll watch them,” I said.

“And can you imagine what it would be like for them if the next train comes back while I’m gone?” he said.

“Please,” I said.

“Please what?” he said.

“Listen to me,” I shouted. But the truth was I couldn’t imagine anything. I always imagined myself, put upon. I never imagined anything else. And the next train sounded its whistle and ground around the curve into view and there was more screaming and calling out of names until its brakes drowned everyone out.

Korczak turned his attention back to his boys and Madame Stefa stood up and walked over to him. Girls hung on to her skirt. Korczak held out his hand and she squeezed it. Zygmuś and Mietek squatted wet-eyed and miserable. “I pissed myself,” Zygmuś told me as though that were the worst of all. By the train cars the shouting started up again.

“Everyone up,” Korczak said. “Rows of four.”

I wailed and shook and jabbered until someone took my hands from my face. It was Korczak. “Stop,” he said. But I wouldn’t.

“I never showed you my Declaration of Children’s Rights,” he said. Behind him the kids had collected their things, boys and girls together, and had gotten into their rows. Zygmuś was pulling at the back of his pants. A yellow policeman beside him started to weep.

“There isn’t a bit of me left in sound health,” Korczak said to himself.

He bent farther down until he was close enough for me to smell him. He put his hands behind my head and lowered his forehead to mine. I was blubbering and got his face wet but he only drew closer. “ ‘The child has the right to respect,’ ” he said. “ ‘The child has the right to develop. The child has the right to be. The child has the right to grieve. The child has the right to learn. And the child has the right to make mistakes.’ ”