envied her daughter’s ignorance. Better to believe you really are a Catholic schoolgirl than to know you’re a Jew hiding behind a mask of deception, without which you cannot survive. Better not to realize that the mother and son emerging from the woods would be shot and killed.
Was there not a point when terror simply took over a psyche like an invading army and annihilated the self? How was it that during the day Laura could function as well as she did, sitting at her desk in the agricultural cooperative, only feet away from Leming, translating Polish documents into German for him?
As the Polish Resistance in the area grew, it increasingly became Laura’s job to translate something far more unpleasant. Young Polish partisans were sabotaging trains carrying supplies to the Eastern Front, and those who were caught in the vicinity of Busko-Zdrój were brought before Herr Leming for interrogation. It was her job to translate Leming’s screaming accusations and denunciations from German to Polish, and then the partisans’ screaming defenses and denunciations from Polish to German. The adversaries kept having to pause and wait for her translations, which would have been funny if it hadn’t been another matter of life and death. Later, she would hear the cries of the partisans being tortured in the cooperative’s basement—the ones, that is, who hadn’t been taken out and shot.
Laura had to believe that one day soon history would regard Leming and his kind as evil, as a once-in-the-history-of-the-world aberration, or else civilization itself surely would have to come to an end. In the meantime, while she appeared to be doing her part voluntarily to facilitate the punishment of the partisans, she took the extraordinary step of tipping them off to the Germans’ military movements she learned about in Leming’s office. The Polish Resistance was becoming more active and Laura wanted to do something to help. It was a terrible gamble for Laura, all the more so since many Poles around her in the cooperative had begun to suspect her of precisely the opposite sympathies, of collaborating.
News that she spoke excellent German had circulated quickly in Busko-Zdrój, and her Polish neighbors were beginning to talk, wondering whose side she was really on. Her neighbors began questioning her and, worse, six-year-old Zofia. Now not only did she live in constant fear of being exposed to the Germans as a Jew, but she was suspected by the Poles of being a German spy! Once, when Zofia visited her mother at work during lunchtime, two Polish women followed them to the outhouse and stood outside eavesdropping, hoping to hear pro-Nazi conversation—with her daughter? What were they thinking? When Laura provided them with no ammunition, she felt that her Polish colleagues began to trust her. Laura detected a more general shift in the sentiments of the local, mostly peasant Poles toward the Jews. With news of the Warsaw ghetto uprising and other acts of heroism, contempt for the Jews was now grudgingly mixed with admiration.
However, Zofia came home from school to tell her that her teacher was laughing at the futility of the uprising. Poor Zofia, Laura thought: she had no idea how many times her mother had gotten off the bus because she thought a man across the way suspected she was a Jew, or because a woman’s stare might mean that she knew her from Lvov or Kraków. Zofia didn’t know how often she had altered her route or slipped down an alley when she thought she was being followed. She wished she could share with Zofia her happiness when the Jewish fighting held the Germans off for a month in Warsaw.
Laura began to care more and more about their appearance, buying a secondhand coal-heated iron. If she couldn’t be the mother to Zofia she would have liked, she at least wanted her daughter to look her best. When a neighbor borrowed the iron and didn’t return it, she marched over to demand it back. When the neighbor told her that a
Was there not a point when terror simply took over a psyche like an invading army and annihilated the self? How was it that during the day Laura could function as well as she did, sitting at her desk in the agricultural cooperative, only feet away from Leming, translating Polish documents into German for him?
As the Polish Resistance in the area grew, it increasingly became Laura’s job to translate something far more unpleasant. Young Polish partisans were sabotaging trains carrying supplies to the Eastern Front, and those who were caught in the vicinity of Busko-Zdrój were brought before Herr Leming for interrogation. It was her job to translate Leming’s screaming accusations and denunciations from German to Polish, and then the partisans’ screaming defenses and denunciations from Polish to German. The adversaries kept having to pause and wait for her translations, which would have been funny if it hadn’t been another matter of life and death. Later, she would hear the cries of the partisans being tortured in the cooperative’s basement—the ones, that is, who hadn’t been taken out and shot.
Laura had to believe that one day soon history would regard Leming and his kind as evil, as a once-in-the-history-of-the-world aberration, or else civilization itself surely would have to come to an end. In the meantime, while she appeared to be doing her part voluntarily to facilitate the punishment of the partisans, she took the extraordinary step of tipping them off to the Germans’ military movements she learned about in Leming’s office. The Polish Resistance was becoming more active and Laura wanted to do something to help. It was a terrible gamble for Laura, all the more so since many Poles around her in the cooperative had begun to suspect her of precisely the opposite sympathies, of collaborating.
News that she spoke excellent German had circulated quickly in Busko-Zdrój, and her Polish neighbors were beginning to talk, wondering whose side she was really on. Her neighbors began questioning her and, worse, six-year-old Zofia. Now not only did she live in constant fear of being exposed to the Germans as a Jew, but she was suspected by the Poles of being a German spy! Once, when Zofia visited her mother at work during lunchtime, two Polish women followed them to the outhouse and stood outside eavesdropping, hoping to hear pro-Nazi conversation—with her daughter? What were they thinking? When Laura provided them with no ammunition, she felt that her Polish colleagues began to trust her. Laura detected a more general shift in the sentiments of the local, mostly peasant Poles toward the Jews. With news of the Warsaw ghetto uprising and other acts of heroism, contempt for the Jews was now grudgingly mixed with admiration.
However, Zofia came home from school to tell her that her teacher was laughing at the futility of the uprising. Poor Zofia, Laura thought: she had no idea how many times her mother had gotten off the bus because she thought a man across the way suspected she was a Jew, or because a woman’s stare might mean that she knew her from Lvov or Kraków. Zofia didn’t know how often she had altered her route or slipped down an alley when she thought she was being followed. She wished she could share with Zofia her happiness when the Jewish fighting held the Germans off for a month in Warsaw.
Laura began to care more and more about their appearance, buying a secondhand coal-heated iron. If she couldn’t be the mother to Zofia she would have liked, she at least wanted her daughter to look her best. When a neighbor borrowed the iron and didn’t return it, she marched over to demand it back. When the neighbor told her that a
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