Mrs Mordkowicz nodded. ‘About nine thousand of us, from the ghetto in Zdun´ska Wola.’
‘We have been lucky,’ her father said, ‘if you can call it that, to have this room to just the three of us for so long. The overcrowding in this ghetto is so terrible, with more transports arriving daily, that most rooms have eight, nine, even more people living in them.’
Mrs Mordkowicz went to protest, but her father held up his hand.
‘We won’t hear of sending you off to share with strangers,’ he said firmly. ‘Any friend of Dorotha’s is a friend of ours. We insist you stay with us, and tomorrow, I’ll help you to find work.’
Mrs Mordkowicz slid an arm around her daughter’s shoulder and closed her eyes in relief. ‘Your kindness is a blessing.’
As her mother helped to settle Mrs Mordkowicz, Dorotha took Ruth down to the gas shop on the ground floor of their apartment block to cook their soup. There were no cooking facilities in any of the rooms in the near-derelict tenement block,so prisoners were forced to come here and pay to use the gas stoves. As they sliced the cabbage in silence, unable to know where to start, Dorotha sneaked a glance at her old colleague. She barely recognised her. Despite only being in her twenties, ghetto life had etched deep lines into Ruth’s skin, bracketing her mouth and turning her once flawless skin into dried yellow parchment. Mind you, Dorotha knew that she didn’t look much better herself. It had been a long time since she’d looked in a mirror, but she didn’t need to see her reflection to know her gums were rotting and her long dark hair was falling out by the fistful. Dorotha had always had a tall, statuesque figure – she had once represented the school in javelin and shot put – but you wouldn’t think that to look at her now. Like everyone else in the ghetto, she was stooped and skeletal from slow starvation.
‘Where did you go after the invasion?’ Dorotha finally asked, realising she hadn’t seen her old colleague for three years.
‘Mama insisted we go to live with her parents in Zdun´ska Wola. She thought we might be safer in a small city.’
‘Nowhere is safe from the Nazis,’ Dorotha intoned.
‘How bad is it here?’ Ruth asked. Dorotha didn’t reply, just stared down at the yellowing cabbage.
‘That bad, huh?’
‘I don’t want to lie to you. Do you have news?’
Ruth shook her head. ‘Not much. We were very isolated.’
‘Get used to it. In the Lódz ghetto, there are no sewers or escape routes of any kind. I’ve heard from prisoners that, in other ghettos, there were cracks and crevices where children can squeeze out to smuggle food back in, but trust me, this place is hermetically sealed with barbed wire and guards. Even the houses around the ghetto have been demolished, so resistance is limited.’
‘How big is it?’ Ruth asked. ‘It looks much larger than the ghetto in Zdun´ska Wola.’
Dorotha nodded, dropping the cabbage into the pan of water, along with some radish greens, and wishing she had some herbs, chicken stock, or anything to flavour the soup.
‘The Germans have renamed Lódz, Litzmannstadt. The ghetto perimeter is about seven miles, at a guess. Don’t walk too close, though. They’ll shoot you on sight.’
Dorotha refrained from telling her about the people who deliberately ‘went to the wire’ in order to catch a German bullet.
‘Red Cross letters?’ Ruth asked hopefully, and Dorotha shook her head.
‘Nothing gets through. This place may as well be on the moon. We are forbidden from even knowing the exact time.’
‘And you’re here with just your parents? What about your little sister?’
Dorotha turned to look at Ruth though the steam and, for the first time, allowed herself a half-smile. ‘Adela’s in London. We managed to get her out in time, so it’s just been me and my parents for the last three years. We’ve been here in the ghetto since the end of April 1940.’
‘You must be relieved about your sister.’
‘Very.’
Dorotha rarely allowed herself to indulge in thoughts of her old life. That was only for the darkest days. But seeing Ruth had dislodged the memories. She remembered the frantic flurry of letters back and forth between Joyce and her all those years ago, along with her relief that Joyce had agreed to act as a guarantor.
In order to get Adela a visa, her parents had paid a bond. They’d refused to tell her how much, but she noticed her mother’s favourite pearl and ruby brooch had gone missing shortly after. It had all happened so fast, within days. The worst of it was that the Gestapo overseeing the transports at the station had warned about emotional scenes and watched them like hawks, so the final farewell had been muted and false.
‘I’d do anything to put my arms around Adela and give her a proper hug,’ Dorotha admitted.
‘Have you heard from her?’
‘We did manage to exchange a couple of letters before we were forced into the ghetto. She is working as a housemaid for an English lord.’
Ruth’s eyebrows lifted. ‘I am impressed. She has gone up in the world.’
