black suit. She even dimly remembered that they had buried him the next morning, someone pushing a crude coffin through the streets in a wheelbarrow.
It was toward the end of the war, when Laura couldn’t have bought a good night’s sleep with a million zlotys, that an itinerant Catholic priest walked into Busko-Zdrój from who knows where and drew a crowd of faith-hungry Poles to a field outside of town. For reasons Laura herself barely understood, she stood in the chilly spring wind and listened to him.
She couldn’t take her eyes off of him. With his black moth-eaten cassock and sunken dark eyes, he looked as if he had experienced his own share of suffering. He stood in the pasture with his Bible open in one palm and his other hand pointing to the sky. He told the crowd that they would overcome their suffering with hope and prayer, that Jesus had not forgotten them, and that God would punish the evildoers, and so on and so forth. So where’s God been since 1939? she thought.
Laura almost never went to church on Sunday with Zofia and her class, and she couldn’t even remember a single Jewish prayer, but the man’s message struck some forgotten chord in her. When he finally closed the Bible and made some blessing motions and thanked everyone for coming, Laura was overcome with the desire to go right up to him and ask him to hear her confession.
“Prosze pani, I will gladly hear your confession,” the priest said, “but only in a church, if you would be so kind as to show me the way to your house of God.”
She led him back across the field to St. Leonard’s Church, which was empty. She sat in a pew and he took a seat in the row behind her.
“I haven’t said a word to anyone for so long, and although I know I am putting my life in your hands by telling you, Father, I feel I must. I’m not even sure why, but please have mercy on me.”
“Go ahead, my daughter,” came the voice right behind her.
She swallowed and said, “I’m Jewish.”
There was silence behind her, which she broke by explaining that she and her daughter had been living as Catholics since 1942. What am I doing? she thought. Am I sending the two of us to our deaths after all this? After coming so far? A word from this tattered priest to the Gestapo and that would be it.
Still, there was silence, and Laura’s stomach tightened terribly.
She finally heard the priest say in a low voice, “You should not fear anyone or anything except God. Fear God only and you will be helped and he will have mercy on you. Bless you, my daughter.”
The priest mumbled something in Latin and fell silent.
She waited, but the priest said no more. When she finally turned to look at him, he was no longer in the pew. She caught a glimpse of his long coat as he exited the church and turned. She stood up, amazed at what she had done and overcome with the unfamiliar feeling that there was a supernatural being looking out for her and Zofia. Before the war, she had been a nonbeliever, bound only by ethical principles. What sense did it make that only now, after God had abandoned the Jews, she should feel imbued with some fresh hope and renewed strength to survive? And yet she felt a presence.
She really didn’t know what to think. She had been the beneficiary of more than her share of sheer luck, but she didn’t believe she had been chosen. She didn’t believe she had earned it. She and Zofia had escaped deportation several times. Why? Because she was pretty? Because she spoke perfect German? Because her daughter was blond?
She had lived undetected among the Nazis. Why? Because she did the Polish officer and his family a favor? Because her landlady had given her a Christian prayer book and a good piece of advice?
During the bitterly cold winter of 1944 to 1945, some happiness arrived for both of them in the form of Laura’s much younger sister, Putzi, who had against all the odds managed to make her way to Busko in a horse-drawn cart to live with them. She
It was toward the end of the war, when Laura couldn’t have bought a good night’s sleep with a million zlotys, that an itinerant Catholic priest walked into Busko-Zdrój from who knows where and drew a crowd of faith-hungry Poles to a field outside of town. For reasons Laura herself barely understood, she stood in the chilly spring wind and listened to him.
She couldn’t take her eyes off of him. With his black moth-eaten cassock and sunken dark eyes, he looked as if he had experienced his own share of suffering. He stood in the pasture with his Bible open in one palm and his other hand pointing to the sky. He told the crowd that they would overcome their suffering with hope and prayer, that Jesus had not forgotten them, and that God would punish the evildoers, and so on and so forth. So where’s God been since 1939? she thought.
Laura almost never went to church on Sunday with Zofia and her class, and she couldn’t even remember a single Jewish prayer, but the man’s message struck some forgotten chord in her. When he finally closed the Bible and made some blessing motions and thanked everyone for coming, Laura was overcome with the desire to go right up to him and ask him to hear her confession.
“Prosze pani, I will gladly hear your confession,” the priest said, “but only in a church, if you would be so kind as to show me the way to your house of God.”
She led him back across the field to St. Leonard’s Church, which was empty. She sat in a pew and he took a seat in the row behind her.
“I haven’t said a word to anyone for so long, and although I know I am putting my life in your hands by telling you, Father, I feel I must. I’m not even sure why, but please have mercy on me.”
“Go ahead, my daughter,” came the voice right behind her.
She swallowed and said, “I’m Jewish.”
There was silence behind her, which she broke by explaining that she and her daughter had been living as Catholics since 1942. What am I doing? she thought. Am I sending the two of us to our deaths after all this? After coming so far? A word from this tattered priest to the Gestapo and that would be it.
Still, there was silence, and Laura’s stomach tightened terribly.
She finally heard the priest say in a low voice, “You should not fear anyone or anything except God. Fear God only and you will be helped and he will have mercy on you. Bless you, my daughter.”
The priest mumbled something in Latin and fell silent.
She waited, but the priest said no more. When she finally turned to look at him, he was no longer in the pew. She caught a glimpse of his long coat as he exited the church and turned. She stood up, amazed at what she had done and overcome with the unfamiliar feeling that there was a supernatural being looking out for her and Zofia. Before the war, she had been a nonbeliever, bound only by ethical principles. What sense did it make that only now, after God had abandoned the Jews, she should feel imbued with some fresh hope and renewed strength to survive? And yet she felt a presence.
She really didn’t know what to think. She had been the beneficiary of more than her share of sheer luck, but she didn’t believe she had been chosen. She didn’t believe she had earned it. She and Zofia had escaped deportation several times. Why? Because she was pretty? Because she spoke perfect German? Because her daughter was blond?
She had lived undetected among the Nazis. Why? Because she did the Polish officer and his family a favor? Because her landlady had given her a Christian prayer book and a good piece of advice?
During the bitterly cold winter of 1944 to 1945, some happiness arrived for both of them in the form of Laura’s much younger sister, Putzi, who had against all the odds managed to make her way to Busko in a horse-drawn cart to live with them. She
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