We Were the Lucky Ones

Since Mila and Felicia’s return to Radom, the SS have escalated their violence. Raids occur constantly in the ghetto. Jews are rounded up and carried away in train cars, or just taken out and shot. Mila was walking home from work with a friend one evening when some German soldiers started randomly shooting. Her friend Antonia was gunned down in the street: “The Germans were killing now for sport. Any day, she knows, could be her last” (212).

Mila has been leaving Felicia alone in the family apartment during the day, fearful of another raid. Mila knows she must devise a plan to get Felicia out of the ghetto. Felicia hates being left alone in the apartment and dreams of a day when her father returns to them.

It takes weeks for Mila to gather all the materials she needs to enact her plan, knowing that if she is caught smuggling even a scrap of fabric from her workshop, she’ll be killed instantly. Mila got the idea for her plan by observing the German wives who come to the ghetto entrance at precisely six o’clock every evening, waiting for their husbands, who work as guards. At the same time, Jews who work daily outside the ghetto return and are locked behind the gates.

Late at night, Nechuma and Mila cut a blanket and sew it into an overcoat. They smile at each other, reminded of happy times when they’ve sewn together in the past. When they finish, Nechuma hands Mila four 50-zloty bills. Mila takes two and returns the others, saying that she will be with Halina soon and will not need them. Adam found a job in Warsaw, so Halina, Franka, and her parents went with him: “We found a flat in the heart of the city, she wrote—this, Mila knew, meant they were living outside the ghetto walls, as Aryans” (216). Halina urged Mila to join them.

Nechuma insists that Mila take all the money, though it is the last of their savings. She tells Mila that she still has her gold coin buttons and amethyst, if they need them. Mila hugs her mother, who says that Mila’s plan will work.

Mila returns from work the next day and dresses Felicia in all her clothing, telling her that they are leaving the ghetto. Mila takes her false ID and alters her arm band, which all Jews must wear, so that it will be easy to rip off. Sol returns from work and hugs Felicia. Nechuma hugs Felicia also, closing her eyes. Mila hugs her parents and struggles to keep from crying, then she takes Felicia away.

A block from the gates of the ghetto, Mila opens her coat and tells Felicia to stand on her shoe and hold onto her leg. Mila covers her daughter with the coat and continues walking. The guards at the gate are urging the Jews returning from their work outside the ghetto to hurry. Mila wonders if she can go through with her plan, but then she remembers the terror of standing with Felicia in the train car, listening to the sound of murdered bodies falling.

A wagon stops at the gate, and the SS guards begin to search it, which gives Mila the distraction she was waiting for. Mila turns her back to the gate, takes Felicia out of her overcoat, and rips off her arm band: “No one saw, she tells herself. From this point on, you are a German housewife, here to meet one of the guards” (221). Slowly Mila and Felicia inch towards the gate, then blend in with the German wives waiting there. They continue to move slowly towards the main entrance, till they are outside the ghetto walls. Mila forces herself to continue walking steadily, though she feels the urge to run.

Mila and Felicia make their way to their old neighborhood, where she will ask their former neighbors to shelter them for the night. In the morning, Mila will use her false ID to get them to Warsaw: “Her plan, the first phase of it at least, has worked” (223). 

Sol and Nechuma have heard rumors that the soldiers will soon empty the ghetto. In other Polish cities, this meant that all Jews were sent to a concentration camp in Chelmno. In Warsaw, escaped prisoners reported that upon arrival in Chelmno, the soldiers piled everyone into vans and gassed them to death.

Up to this point, Nechuma assured herself that because they have survived many pogroms, they will continue to survive. She has held onto the belief that the fighting and persecution will soon end. She understands now that there is a categorical difference this time. This is not just a situation in which Jews receive harassment or deportation. This time, the occupying forces are exterminating Jews.

Nechuma wonders how she and Sol can go on: “They live in a state of perpetual pain and exhaustion and hunger—depleted by their long days at the cafeteria, by their pathetic rations, by the mental tricks they play to ignore the daily horrors that surround them” (224). Nechuma is thankful that she and Sol are still together, but she can barely stand the pain of not knowing the fates of most of her children. They are only in contact with Halina, who is still trying to secure jobs for them at the factory where she works: “She would give anything, even her life, to know that they were alive, and unharmed” (225). Nechuma thinks of how much Halina, her youngest child, has grown up since the beginning of the war. Nechuma dreams of Halina, flying like a bird, finding a way to save them all.

Halina and Adam are worried that somebody has informed on them; their landlady has started to come by, asking questions about their families. The IDs that Adam made for them are perfect, and they both look Aryan enough to pass. Halina wonders if they should move, but Adam thinks that will make them appear suspicious. He says he has a plan to “prove” that they are not Jewish.

Adam starts to explain his plan, but he hears the landlady climbing their stairs. He quickly tells Halina to turn out the light in the kitchen. There is a knock on the door, and Adam goes to answer it: “Adam’s hands are in his trousers, moving quickly” (228). Halina is shocked, but Adam asks her to trust him.

The landlady barges in and says that someone has accused them of being Jewish. She says that she has defended them, but now she is not sure. She demands to know how they could have put her family’s lives in danger for harboring Jews. Adam tells her that he is offended, and they have no Jews in their families. The landlady retorts that he cannot prove that. Adam glares back at her and says, “Fine. You need proof?” (230). He then unbuckles his belt and drops his pants. Halina covers her eyes, and the landlady freezes.

Adam previously attached a bandage to simulate a foreskin. Halina now understands why he told her to turn out the light, to make the room dim enough to help the ruse. The landlady turns her head, looking ill. Halina opens the door pointedly, and the landlady leaves without a word.

Adam and Halina laugh silently, and Halina calls Adam a “brave man” (230). He replies that he is a lucky man, as he was not sure the bandage would stay in place. He says that it was bothering him all evening. Halina asks if Adam has injured himself with the bandage, and if he is all right. Cheekily, she tells him that she will have to have a look.