‘Nothing. Then...’ She breathed in through her nose and blew out slowly. ‘Finally, last week, I received some information from the Red Cross.’
Tension held the group in a tight knot.
‘And?’ Evelyn persisted.
‘Dorotha’s name appears on the list of prisoners in the ghetto in Lódz, from the very beginning, in early May 1940. She was registered at a one-room address, firstly with her parents until they were deported out of the ghetto in September 1942, most likely to an extermination camp in a place called Chelmno.
‘After that, Dorotha was listed at the same address with two women, Miss and Mrs Mordkowicz. They’re all listed there, right up until the ghetto was liquidated in August 1944. The majority of prisoners were sent straight to Auschwitz-Birkenau.’
She paused. Swallowed. Exhaled. ‘Dorotha’s name appears on a transport list to that camp.
‘The ghetto was liberated on the nineteenth of January this year, and Auschwitz-Birkenau eight days later, on the twenty-seventh of January, by Soviet forces.’
No one breathed.
‘She next appears on a list of those believed to be deceased. It seems she never left Auschwitz. The location of her body is unknown.’
The silence was deep and deafening. She knew what the group were picturing. Smoking crematoria chimney stacks. Billowing black smoke. The tangle of human bodies.
‘I will never forget her. She was the most extraordinary and visionary woman I’ve ever met,’ Clara whispered, unaware that she was already referring to their founder in the past tense.
Joyce tried to talk, but the grief was clotting in her throat. In a way, she supposed the story of the Berkowicz sisters was a microcosm of this shattered world. One story ending as another began. Life and death. Dorotha, like so many millions of others, had been sucked into a dark void of uncertainty, her wartime grave a mystery. With the dawning of peace, Joyce now had to face up to bitter truths, like so many other decimated families around the world. In all likelihood, they might never know the other half of the story. Dorotha would always be the librarian who never came home.
‘Our love for her must always win over our grief,’ Joyce managed at last, reaching out for her friends’ hands. Instinctively, the group linked hands and drew closer together for strength. ‘We must never stop saying her name.’
‘Joyce is right,’ Grace said. ‘The value of a life isn’t measured in years. It’s measured in how her memory lives on.’
Joyce pulled a candle from her bag, set it on the grass between them and lit it as the sun finally slipped behind the shattered London skyline.
She looked around at the faces of the women she loved so much. ‘This society is her legacy. Our achievements are hers. Dorotha helped us all to see what we’re truly capable of and where we might still go.’
The women nodded, understanding, memories of Dorotha as bright as the flicker of candlelight dancing on their faces.
‘Do you think she was able to leave anything behind in her library?’ Beth asked. ‘Any clue as to what happened?’
‘I doubt it,’ said Grace sadly. ‘From my experience of Occupation, the Nazi regime was ruthless. The Nazis systematically stripped Jews of everything that made them human. Books, I should imagine, were the first things to go. Then people.’
Joyce tilted her head and stared across at the dome of St Paul’s Cathedral, lit up with dancing beams of Victory searchlights, and imagined Gerald tucked away inside in his secret library.Introducing books to readers is a form of magic, is it not?
‘Maybe, we ought to look at it this way. Her spirit went into the creation of every library we founded and every single book we loaned out. Every woman who, just for a chapter, was able to press pause on the war.’
‘Ought we to put all our wartime bulletins into a book and dedicate it to Dorotha?’ Clara suggested.
‘That’s a smashing idea,’ Beth said, and heads nodded all round.
‘I love that,’ Joyce agreed. ‘If ever any woman’s name deserves to live on in the pages of a book, it’s Dorotha’s.’
24
Joyce
Thirty years later London, spring 1975
‘Libertatem per Lectio’
Bulletin No. 432
I can’t believe we’re having an actual book launch, with cake and a book signing and everything. I feel like a proper author! Ange at Bethnal Green Library has asked us if we could be there at least half an hour early, so no stragglers please. Annie, I’m looking at you. Plenty of spare beds at mine and Virginia has a sofa bed going spare in her lounge. Can’t wait to see you all to finally launch our book into the world.
