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| Warsaw Ghetto wall under construction |
Early one morning at the beginning of April, not sure if I was still asleep or already wakened by a ray of morning sunlight shining through the curtain, I felt someone's warm hand on my forehead and heard these quietly-spoken words: "Good-morning, Lala. Sssh...keep quiet because it's still early and everyone's asleep."
I hear Jos's words, recognise his voice. I open my eyes: it is, indeed, he. He is wearing a dressing gown which he is clutching at the neck and he speaks quickly: "Get up, Lala. I'll show you something. But don't get frightened. It's not good news."
My heart missed a beat from fear because I thought that it was something concerning the doctor, his daddy. But no. Jos explains: "Do you know that they are fencing us in?"
"Who? How? Where?" - I ask. I cannot take in what this kind boy is telling me. He turns to the window and urges me in a subdued voice, "Put on your dressing gown, slow-coach! If all girls are like this I will never get married when I grow up. Quick, come out on the balcony and I'll show you what the Germans are planning to build. They've brought bricks, cement, even broken glass from thick bottles. They're waiting for prisoner-workers to be brought to start building a wall. Maybe they want to brick us in alive?"
"I know you're not a stupid girl," Josek continued, "but have you not thought how, once we're bricked in, you'll get through the wall to school?"
I threw a dressing gown over my pajamas and, excited by what Jos told me, simply not believing it was possible, I opened the balcony door in my room and we went out together.
Fact! What Jos said a moment ago was true! A trench was already being dug for the wall's foundations, dividing Pawia St. from Okopowa St. German gendarmes surrounded working prisoners and continually urged them on with their shouts: "Schnell, schnell, Schweine banditen!"
I pulled Josek back indoors. I preferred not to stand on the balcony since our house was only the third along from Okopowa St. Jos laughed with childish glee and said, "Don't worry, Lala! We'll manage. You'll get through to school. We'll fasten a long line from the balcony and you'll swing across the wall like a monkey in the jungle. Don't you think that's funny?"
Not at all amused by his words, I asked, "Just the same, how do you know that it will be a wall, and a high one at that - and not, for example, some sort of entrance gate?"
He reacted quickly, "Oh, you women and girls! You never read the right sort of newspapers!"
It was true. Recently I had fallen behind in that respect and did not read all the conspiratorial papers which Josek brought home. I was studying very hard at the time. I thought for a moment, wondering why the Germans were doing this.
Why should they close the exit into Okopwa St., which is on the tram route and through which it is nearer to the city centre and to Mokotow - districts with which we have such close ties?
