Biebow stepped up onto a makeshift podium, his blond hair shining in the July sunshine. His smooth voice flowed like oil round the square.
‘Meine Juden.The ghetto, just as the city Litzmannstadt itself, has to be evacuated due to the threat of bombing raids. All workshops and administration will be moved to the German Reich.
‘The relocation of the ghetto should proceed with calm, order and benevolence. I assure you that we shall do our very best to save your life through the relocation of the ghetto. I know you want to live and eat, and that’s what you will do.’
A ripple of disbelief reverberated around the square. A lone voice shouted. ‘Lies! Where were the sick taken from the hospitals last night?’
A horrified silence fell, broken only by the sound of a crow’s wings flapping as it took to the skies. Dorotha stiffened, waiting for the retribution. The Schupo bundled their way through the crowds until the objector was located and tossed into the back of a truck.
Biebow’s smooth façade of calm had been punctured by the heckler. ‘I’m not standing around here like some itinerant preacher,’ he bellowed into the microphone. ‘If you force us to use coercion, there will be dead and injured. The piggish mess and laxness must stop, that I’m telling you.’ He wiped a hand through his hair, a muscle twitching in his cheek. ‘Back to work, everyone. The relocation will begin.’
He strode off to deliver more speeches around the ghetto, leaving in his wake yet more fear and indecision. When the square had emptied and it was safe to talk, Mrs Mordkowicz turned to them.
‘Could it not be true? If the Allies aren’t so far away, we could end up being bombed by the very people whom we look to for freedom? I say we go. Enough already. Wherever they’re planning to send us can’t possibly be worse than here!’
‘Fools are taken in with fine promises,’ Mrs Cohen muttered. ‘If the Allies really are coming then, believe me, their plans to annihilate us all will only escalate. I for one will not make it easy for them.’
‘But what will you do?’ asked Ruth.
‘I’ll spend the next day gathering as much food and fuel as I can, then I’ll go into hiding with my son. It’s my belief that the Red Army will have the last word!’
She took Dorotha’s hand and clasped it firmly. ‘I hope to see you again one day. But if I don’t, know this. What you’ve been doing in this ghetto, uniting us with books and reminding us of the precious life wemustfight for... Well, in my opinion, that isbashert. Pre-ordained. Keep doing what you’re doing. It is God’s will.’
Then the redoubtable lady was gone, slipping off into the maze of streets and alleys that led off the square and into the unknown.
‘I just don’t know what to do for the best,’ Mrs Mordkowicz worried.
‘Let’s decide this evening,’ Ruth said, shooting a meaningful glance at Dorotha. ‘But I believe we must all stay together.’
Back in the administration offices, there was a mountain of forms to type and file. Everyone was filled with anxiety, the slightest noise making them all jump. When Ruth was led away to work in another part of the administration, Dorotha satstaring after her, chewing the inside of her cheek so hard she drew blood, and it wasn’t until the afternoon that Dorotha finally got the chance to be alone with Oscar. Before she had even uttered a word, he was leading her up the corridor.
‘Follow me,’ he said, glancing left and then right, before stopping outside the stationery cupboard where the books were kept.
‘Now’s the time to show you something. Quick. We haven’t got long.’
He opened the door and hustled her into the small room. Usually being in the little library, breathing in the alkaline tang of paper and being around her books, was an instant balm to Dorotha’s soul, but today her stomach was clenched like a fist.
‘You need to know about this, should you ever find yourself in need.’
The back of the room was lined with bookshelves but, at the bottom, there was a gap of about two feet, through which a skinny person might, with some effort, be able to squeeze. Oscar was crouching down on his belly on the floor, then suddenly he was disappearing into the gap under the bookcase.
‘Follow me,’ she heard him call. Dorotha blinked. She was finally losing her mind. People didn’t simply disappear into bookcases. She got down on her belly and began to pull herself under. To her shock, the back of the bookcase seemed to have vanished. In the darkness she felt Oscar’s hands pulling her through. She found herself in some sort of dark cavity space.
‘What is this?’ she gaped, looking around her. The small room was about six feet wide and tall enough to stand up in.
There was a sputtering of sparks, then a flame lit up the dim interior space. Oscar had lit a candle placed on an upturned crate.
‘When I first started working here all those years ago, I managed to create a fake partition wall upon which I builtthe bookshelves, thus creating this small secret space. The resistance managed to supply the plywood and there are candles in the crate.’
‘How... Why?’ she spluttered, astonished to find her library was a front for a secret room.
‘Believe me, it’s been used plenty of times over the course of this war.’
Dorotha could make out scrawled names graffitied on the walls. She was utterly confounded by the discovery, and her nose was a little out of joint that she did not know about it before.
‘I suppose this means you are in the ghetto resistance? I had my suspicions.’
He grinned and somehow his smile sneaked in under her defences.
