Dorotha stared bleakly out of the window of their little room as she watched the dust that had been kicked up drifting along the street. In a matter of weeks, this street would be deserted. Her eyes settled on a woman walking on her own, lagging behind because she could not keep pace with the crowd. A strand of her grey hair escaped from under her headscarf. She was bent almost double, her legs so swollen, it was painful to look upon them. Dorotha saw the moment she decided to give up, perhaps thinking that it was better to die in the ghetto than face the unknown. Her knees buckled and she crumpled to the ground, her metal soup bowl clanking against the concrete. Dorotha swallowed hard and turned away from the window, back to their room, despair twisting deep inside. Who was that nameless woman? Was there anyone who could keep the memory of her life alive?
‘Enough already. What are we waiting for?’ Mrs Mordkowicz said impatiently, gesturing to the window. ‘We should be out there getting a spot on the wagon before it’s too full.’
The older lady had lost so much weight, her shapeless grey dress hung off her. She had already packed their possessions in a bundle and, what she couldn’t fit in, she had secured about her person with a ragged assortment of old scraps and scarves.
She lowered her voice.
‘I say we take the child and take our chances. We can make her up to look older.’
‘It won’t work, Mama,’ Ruth said, her voice strangely defeated.
Dorotha stared at her ghetto sister, usually so fierce and determined.
‘Ruth,’ she ventured. ‘What’s wrong?’
Ruth stood and paced to join her at the window, before exhaling hard, her breath leaving a cloud of vapour on the glass.
‘It won’t work because I’ve been ordered to stay here as part of theRaumungskommando,the clean-up team. I’ll never be permitted on the trains once they check my identity papers against the list.’
‘That’s where you were the other day!’ Dorotha breathed. Ruth rested her head against the window pane.
‘I’ve been working out how to tell you.’
She turned suddenly, her face a mask of anguish. ‘What can I do? Mama, I can’t leave you.’
Mrs Mordkowicz crumpled like an old paper bag and began to weep.
‘Please God no. Don’t let me be separated from my daughter. We’ve come so far...’
Gabriele got up and walked to the older woman, wrapping her arms around her.
‘Emil says that lucky people don’t have to be brave, only the unlucky ones.’ The little girl’s voice was heartbreaking in its clarity. ‘We all have to be brave now.’
Dorotha’s thoughts were racing. Could she? Would it even be possible?
‘You don’t have to be parted,’ she blurted.
‘But how?’ Mrs Mordkowicz asked. ‘You heard what Ruth said.’
‘We swap places and I stay here in the ghetto as part of the clean-up team. I become Ruth Mordkowicz and you become Dorotha Berkowicz.
‘That way, wherever those trains are heading, you can face it together.’ She smiled at Gabriele. ‘And I will stay here with Gabriele and we’ll tough it out until we are liberated.’
‘But the photos on our identity papers?’ Ruth queried.
‘They have thousands of people to move; they won’t be studying them that closely, if at all. And besides, now my hair’s been dyed, we don’t look so dissimilar. One emaciated Jew is much like another to the Germans.’
A long silence settled over the room before Mrs Mordkowicz looked up with hope in her eyes. ‘You would do that for us?’
Dorotha nodded, the memory of her final moments with her mama gripping her heart.
‘I would. You must stay together for the final hurdle.’
Ruth rushed at her, wrapping her in an embrace so fierce, it knocked the breath from Dorotha’s body. Her tears flowed, scalding, and Dorotha felt her cheek grow wet.
‘A dank! A dank. Thank you, my ghetto sister.’
For the next two hours, no one spoke as they tried to steel themselves for the heartache that lay ahead. The silence was only broken when Oscar knocked on the door. They had all agreed to go together to the station.
