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22 Time to Leave Again T he graying days of approaching fall deepened our isolation and loneliness. Max and David concluded that it was time to leave and find a friendlier country before winter arrived. There was one last thing we had to do before we left Poland forever . Mama pleaded, “We must go to Warsaw to make sure that we did not miss any survivors who might be looking for us, and to find out if we can recover any of the gold and jewelry we had buried in our bunker.” Among the buried valuables were documents of a partnership in a sizable tract of land and a brick-making factory in Baniochy, a village near Warsaw. Not all of us could go. Travel was still difficult, finding a place to stay in shattered Warsaw would be a problem, and someone had to remain to look after the store. It was decided that Fredka and Max would go: Max, because he was the elder brother and had the most experience in dealing with officialdom, and Fredka, because Mama turned to her and spoke with the voice of a true believer: “It would be useless for me to go. I am nothing . You must go. You will have a greater chance of breaking through bureaucracy. You are smart and beautiful. No one will turn you down.” Mama was pulling further away from outside confrontations. She remained as vigi- Time to Leave Again 145 lant as ever in determining what had to be done to protect us, but she pushed us to carry out her ideas. She especially counted on Fredka’s abilities and charm to make up for her own imagined shortcomings as she had once counted on Tata. That task weighed heavily on Fredka, but she never failed to meet Mama’s expectations. I, the younger and less diplomatic child, was not even considered for that trip, though I wished to go. I longed to see Warsaw one final time, even if it meant to look at the ashes of what was once my paradise and later my hell. I wanted to go to remember, as one goes to a cemetery. Fredka and Max never found a trace of Warsaw. They told us that Warsaw was completely razed. Not a single habitable building survived the Warsaw Ghetto uprising of 1943 and the Aryan uprising of 1944. They walked on mounds of rubble that stretched as far as their eyes could see. Sharp angles of charred walls, propped up by piles of wreckage, gashed the desolate landscape. Heaps of broken brick and piping protruded from the ground here and there, like grotesque weeds. Warsaw was a cemetery. Fredka and Max followed a maze of posted street signs to lead them to our street, Nowolipki Street. They said that the signs protruded from the destruction like grave markings. Fredka recognized the lone church spire precariously balanced atop the ruins of the church that once stood across the street from our house. It was the single identifiable fragment of architecture in this bleak landscape. Stray dogs roamed the gloomy terrain and scratched in the rubble. Their barks broke the sepulchral quiet and scared Fredka. She wondered, “What are the dogs finding there?” She told me she was afraid that they were digging up the bones of our neighbors. Fredka and Max returned with charred dust in their hair. Saddened and defeated, they shared with us the grim details of their experience. I had hoped, I had fantasized, to hear Fredka and Max tell us that something had escaped the cataclysm, something to return to, a few places to look for surviving family members and friends. Nothing was left. Eventually, Warsaw was faithfully rebuilt, according to the original plans. “Warsaw is again exactly as it once was,” people say to cheer me. I can imagine that if you had left Warsaw before 1939 and returned after the war, after reconstruction, you might say to yourself, “Same as it was.” You would stroll in the same Stare Miasto (Old Town) and beautiful Łazienki Park. As before, if you were lucky to arrive at the park in the right season, you could sit on a bench among flowers and shrubbery, charmingly arranged in the French style, and listen to piano music floating from the tall windows of Chopin’s palace. “Times have changed, but the city is the same,” you would think. [3.21.106.69] Project MUSE (2024-04-26 14...

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