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66 • 5 A Counterfeit Life Now I began to run faster and faster. I had a long way to go. Already I had passed the ghetto and was near the post office. I looked around to see if anyone was near, but the street was empty and still. My heart began to pound wildly. I could hardly believe that I had actually taken this step . . . Now I was near the monastery, where we had agreed to meet. In the distance I saw a truck—it was waiting for me. A wave of relief flooded my heart and I hastened in that direction. Mr. Krupka stood alongside the truck. In front, next to the driver, was Krupka’s mother, and in the truck was a pile of furniture. He helped me onto the truck and told me to hide inside a wardrobe. That would be safer, in the event of an inspection on the road. No one said much. I was unhappily thinking about the last moments before my departure. The Krupkas were filled with apprehension; they were risking their lives for me. The truck had to go slowly through the heavy snowdrifts that had frozen into an icy armor plate. Sometimes I could hear dogs barking. It made me shiver, remembering the growling dogs in our house, when we lay hidden in our underground shelter. I wondered if I should regard myself as a heroine or as a coward. Maybe I did a heroic thing when I dared to escape, not knowing what the next day, even the next moment, would bring. But because I feared death, I suppose I was a coward . . . The long minutes passed. From time to time I looked out of my hiding place in the wardrobe. The bare outlines of trees cast shadows on the road. A Counterfeit Life • 67 The low huts were weighed down under their snowy coverlets. Nature seemed so deceptively clean and innocent. It was a very long night. I wanted to sleep so badly, but could not. The cold kept me awake. I sat huddled and shivering in the wardrobe. Everything that happened seemed fantastic, unreal. I held on to one saving thought: the hope that someday I would be able to return and find someone here alive. I recalled the words of my aunt’s little grandson, who had been only five: “Why did they take away my Mama and Granny and Grandpa and Chaimek? Why don’t they let us live in peace? I’m hungry—why can’t I eat?” Now I began to ask similarly childish questions: Why do I have to sit in this freezing weather, in a wardrobe on a truck, going to an unpredictable fate? I visualized my mother and Rosie lying awake in bed; or perhaps they were sitting huddled near the stove, brokenhearted, unable to accept the thought of losing me. But these questions that tormented me had only one answer: Because you are Jewish! Hitler hates the Jews. This, then, was the start of my first journey as a homeless wanderer. Occasionally the truck was stopped by Gestapo guards who wanted to see the papers of the driver and the passengers. When I heard the guards I closed the door to the wardrobe, and my heart contracted with fear. But I can imagine how Mr. Krupka and his mother must have felt, nervous and tense at each such inspection. However, we kept on going. It was lucky for me that the guards did not inspect the furniture on the truck! All night long we rattled through Lvov and other, smaller towns. It was almost daybreak when we reached Brody. The apartment assigned to the Krupka family was located upstairs in a house facing the marketplace; below it was a restaurant. They occupied three rooms and a kitchen. We were glad that we had made the trip without any serious incidents, but after a night spent in a cramped position on the truck I could hardly get down and walk. When I entered the cold and empty apartment, I was seized with a strange fear. I must have been running a temperature, for I was shaking with the chills. It was so quiet here, as in a graveyard. There was no furniture; the windows had some broken panes. It was cold and damp, not having been heated for a long time. No doubt a Jewish family had lived here once; now the place was filled with ghosts. [3.15.174.76...

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