Kommandant's Girl. Pam Jenoff

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      Originally, we had intended to wait to marry until Jacob graduated the following year. But by late July 1939, Germany had swallowed the Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia, and the other countries of Western Europe had done nothing to stop him. Hitler stood poised on the Polish border, ready to pounce. We had heard stories of the Nazis’ abysmal treatment of the Jews in Germany and Austria. If the Nazis came into Poland, who knew what our lives would be like? Better, we decided, to get married right away and face the uncertainties of the future together.

      Jacob proposed on a humid afternoon during one of our Sunday walks by the river. “Emma …” He stopped and turned to me, then dropped to one knee. I was not entirely surprised. Jacob had walked to synagogue with my father the previous morning, and I could tell from the pensive way my father looked at me as they returned to the apartment afterward that they had not been discussing politics or religion, but rather our future together. Still, my eyes watered. “Times are uncertain,” Jacob began. Inwardly, I could not help but laugh. Only Jacob could turn a proposal into a political speech. “But I know that whatever is coming, I want to face it with you. Will you do me the honor of becoming my wife?”

      “Yes,” I whispered as he slipped a silver ring with a tiny diamond onto my left hand. He rose and kissed me, longer and harder than ever before.

      We wed a few weeks later under a canopy in the Baus’ elegant parlor, with only our immediate families in attendance. After the wedding, we moved my few belongings to the spare room in the Baus’ home that Jacob and I were to share. Professor and Mrs. Bau departed shortly after we returned for a teaching sabbatical in Geneva, leaving Jacob and me on our own. Having been raised in a tiny, three-room apartment, I was unaccustomed to living in such splendor. The high ceilings and polished wood floors seemed better suited to a museum. At first, I felt awkward, like a perennial guest in the enormous house, but I soon came to love living in a grand home filled with music, art and books. Jacob and I would lie awake at night and whisper dreams of the following year after his graduation when we would be able to buy a home of our own.

      One Friday afternoon about three weeks after the wedding, I decided to walk down to the Jewish quarter, Kazimierz, and pick up some challah bread from my parents’ bakery for dinner. When I arrived at the shop, it was crowded with customers rushing to get ready for Shabbes so I stepped behind the counter to help my harried father fill the orders. I had just handed a customer her change when the door to the shop burst open and a young boy ran in. “The Germans have attacked!” he exclaimed.

      I froze. The shop became instantly silent. Quickly, my father retrieved his radio from the back room, and the customers huddled around the counter to hear the news. The Germans had attacked the harbor of Westerplatte, near the northern city of Gdansk; Poland and Germany were at war. Some of the women started crying. The radio announcer stopped speaking then and the Polish national anthem began to play. Several customers began to sing along. “The Polish army will defend us,” I heard Pan Klopowitz, a wizened veteran of the Great War, say to another customer. But I knew the truth. The Polish army, consisting in large part of soldiers on horseback and on foot, would be no match for German tanks and machine guns. I looked to my father and our eyes met. One of his hands was fingering the edge of his prayer shawl, the other gripping the edge of the countertop, knuckles white. I could tell that he was imagining the worst.

      “Go,” my father said to me after the customers had departed hurriedly with their loaves of bread. I did not return to the library but rushed home. Jacob was already at the apartment when I arrived, his face ashen. Wordlessly, he drew me into his embrace.

      Within two weeks of the German invasion, the Polish army was overrun. Suddenly the streets of Kraków were filled with tanks and large, square-jawed men in brown uniforms for whom the crowds parted as they passed. I was fired from my job at the library, and a few days later, Jacob was told by the head of his department that Jews were no longer permitted to attend the university. Our world as we had known it seemed to disappear overnight.

      I had hoped that, once Jacob had been dismissed from the university, he would be home more often, but instead his political meetings took on a frenetic pace, held in secret now at apartments throughout the city at night. Though he did not say it, I became aware that these meetings were somehow related to opposing the Nazis. I wanted to ask him, beg him, to stop. I was terrified that he might be arrested, or worse. I knew, though, that my concerns would not squelch his passion.

      One Tuesday night in late September, I dozed off while waiting for him to come home. Sometime later, I awoke. The clock on our nightstand told me that it was after midnight. He should have been home by now. I leapt from bed. The apartment was still, except for the sound of my bare feet on the hardwood floor. My mind raced. I paced the house like a mad- woman, returning to the window every five minutes to scan the street below.

      Sometime after one-thirty, I heard a noise in the kitchen. Jacob had come up the back stairway. His hair and beard, usually so well-kept, were disheveled. A thin line of perspiration covered the area above his upper lip. I threw my arms around him, trembling. Wordlessly, Jacob took my hand and led me into our bedroom. I did not try to speak further as he pushed me down to the mattress and pressed his weight on top of me with an urgency I had never felt before.

      “Emma, I have to leave,” he said later that night, as we lay in the dark listening to the rumbling of the trolleys below. The sweat of our lovemaking had dried on my skin in the cool autumn air, leaving me with an inescapable chill.

      My stomach tightened. “Because of your work?”

      “Yes.”

      I knew he was not referring to his former university job. “When?” I asked, my voice trembling.

      “Soon … days, I think.” There was an uneasiness in his voice that told me he was not saying all that he knew. He rolled over to press his stomach against my back and curled his knees under mine. “I will leave money in case you need anything.”

      I waved my hand in the dark. “I don’t want it.” My eyes teared. Please, I wanted to say. I would have begged if I thought it would have done any good.

      “Emma …” He paused. “You should go to your parents.”

      “I will.” When you are gone, I thought.

      “One other thing …” His warmth pulled away from me and he reached into the drawer of the nightstand. The paper he handed me felt new, the candle-wax seal raised. “Burn this.” It was our kittubah, our Hebrew marriage certificate. In the rush of events, we had not had time to register our marriage with the civil authorities.

      I pushed the paper back at him. “Never.”

      “You must take off your rings, pretend we were never married. Tell your family to say nothing.” He continued, “It will be dangerous for you if anyone knows you are my wife once I am gone.”

      “Dangerous? Jacob, I am a Jew in a country occupied by Nazis. How much more dangerous can it get?”

      “Just do it,” he insisted.

      “Okay,” I lied, taking the paper from him and sliding it under the mattress. I would not burn the one thing that would always link me to him.

      I lay awake after Jacob had begun to breathe his long, even sleep. Softly, I touched his hair where it reached his collar, burying my nose there and inhaling his scent. I traced his hand with mine, trying to etch the shape in my mind. He shifted and grunted, already fighting the enemy in his sleep. As my eyelids at last grew heavy, I struggled to stay awake. There would be plenty of time for sleeping later.

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