Run, Boy, Run

1. Food and Freedom


It was early morning. The streets were empty. Duvid took his little brother by the hand and said, "Come on, Srulik, let's cross to the Polish side."

"How?"

"Like the smugglers. I've seen them. They crawl through a hole in the wall in back of the house across the street."

Srulik was excited. He and his brother, who wasn't much older than him, didn't always agree. But this idea he liked.

"What's on the Polish side?"

"Food and freedom."

Srulik knew what food was.

"What's freedom?" he asked.

"That's where there's no wall and you can walk as far as you want and no one stops you," Duvid said. "Some of my friends have left the ghetto through the gate. They wait for a German soldier who looks nice and run to the Polish side."

"Did you ever do that?" Srulik asked.

"No. Going through the wall is better."

"But how do you get food on the Polish side?"

"You beg for money and buy food with it at a grocery. The groceries have everything, like Pani Staniak's in Blonie before the war."

"Candy too?"

"Candy too."

Srulik was a redhead with freckles, blue eyes, and a winning smile. Even after hard times began in the early days of the German occupation of Poland in World War II, he had secretly used that smile to coax change from his father to buy candy at Pani Staniak's grocery store. But now his father had no more change.

"All right," he said. "Let's go."

"There's just one thing," his brother said. "We have to watch out for the tough Polish kids."

"What will they do to us?"

"Beat us up."

"Bad?"

"Pretty bad. Do you still want to come?"

"Yes," Srulik said without hesitating.

They ducked through the hole in the wall. Two grinning Polish boys were waiting on the other side of it.

"We'd better go back," Duvid said.

Srulik wished they didn't have to. Not just because of the candy. He missed the other thing even more, the being able to walk all you wanted, the way he could when they had had their own house in the town of Blonie.

***

Duvid and Srulik's parents heard of the route through the wall and decided to escape from the ghetto and return to Blonie. Maybe some Polish friends there would agree to hide them. A year and a half had gone by since they were forced to leave the village. It had been a grim time. Anything would be better than slow death from starvation in the ghetto in Warsaw. It was decided that Srulik, with his father and mother, would go first. If they made it, Duvid would follow with his older brother and sister. They would know their parents were in Blonie because they would get a postcard that said, "We haven't heard from you for ages. Drop us a line. Yacek." Yacek, Srulik's father said, was just a Polish name.

Srulik remembered the town well. They had lived there together—his parents, his uncle, his grandfather, and his four brother and sisters—in a house with one large room. His uncle and his oldest sister, Feyge, had escaped across the border to Russia when the war with Germany broke out. His grandfather was taken to the hospital one day and never came back.

Duvid guided his parents and Srulik to the opening in the wall. They said goodbye to him and crossed through it. The morning sun was already high in the sky. The streets of Warsaw looked normal. If not for an occasional German soldier, you wouldn't have known there was a war.

"Go slow," Srulik's father told them. "Make believe we're just out for a walk. Don't look at the German soldiers. Don't look at the Polish policemen. Make believe we do this every day."

Srulik couldn't resist looking at everything: the display windows of the stores, the well-dressed mothers with their baby carriages, the cars, the electric trolleys, the horse-drawn coaches—yes, the soldiers and the policemen too. His father and mother looked straight ahead. They forced themselves to behave like any two parents taking a walk with their small son. Finally, they reached the outskirts of the city.

Srulik was overjoyed. Everything made him smile: the green fields, the flowers growing by the roadside, the cows and horses grazing in the grass, the big blue sky that stretched to the horizon, where a thin black line marked the edge of the Kampinowski Forest. It was just like before the war.

Suddenly three German soldiers on motorcycles came speeding toward them. Srulik's father jumped into a ditch by the side of the road. He and his mother dived for the other side. His father got away. The Germans caught him and his mother, put them in the sidecar, and brought them to the Gestapo. His mother was given a whipping and they were returned to the ghetto.

Srulik's mother lay for a long while in bed. His father didn't return.