My Mother's Secret by J. L. Witterick

to live here with my family.
    I look at those eyes and say, “Do you remember me, Franciszka?”
    She says, “Yes, of course. You and your brother.”
    Her voice is purposely low, so I continue in a whisper as well.
    â€œFranciszka, Dawid is dead. He was shot by the Germans. Please help us. We have nowhere else to go. You are my last hope.”
    I tell her that I have a wife, two children, and a sister-in-law.
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    P EOPLE ARE LIKE WATER in a pond where you cannot see the bottom. You think you know where it is shallow and where it is deep, but it’s only when you have to dive in headfirst that you find out where it is truly deep.
    These are unreasonable times with severe punishment for providing help, however small, to a Jew. Giving a piece of bread or water to a Jew has become a death sentence in Poland.
    Knowing this, Franciszka, a woman I barely know, agrees to hide us above her pigsty in the animal shed attached to her house.
    I can’t believe it.
    I was not expecting such a response.
    She has an idea to use hay as a barrier that we can hide behind.
    â€œGive me a week to clear out the space slowly, so no one will be suspicious,” she says.
    I feel that there is goodness in the world after all, and it’s embodied in this small, white-haired woman sitting in front of me.
    â€œWhat about your daughter?” Perhaps that is why we are whispering.
    â€œShe’ll be fine. She’s like me.” I take that to mean that compassion is a family trait.
    I run back to the ghetto. A man with hope moves differently than one without—so I am floating all the way.
    The moon seems brighter, and I am certain there are more stars in the sky than before I met Franciszka.

Chapter 30
    T he next morning, we are awakened by screaming and gunshots.
    There is a raid on the ghetto.
    They are rounding people up in the same trucks that took my brother.
    I know what this means.
    I take my son and hide him in a woodshed, telling him to stay quiet until I return. Only six, he understands that his survival depends on it.
    My wife, sister-in-law, and I, with the baby in one arm, climb a steep ladder leading to the small opening of an attic.
    There is pandemonium below.
    Then the baby starts to cry.
    My wife looks at me with helpless panic. She tries to rock Biata and cradles her against her chest, but nothing works.
    We had moved the ladder away from the entrance of the attic to deflect attention, but someone is moving it back and climbing up—someone who speaks German.
    It’s a Polish police officer working with a German soldier below. He looks at my terrified wife and whispers, “Do you want to go with your baby?”
    She only has a minute to make a decision that no one could make in a lifetime.
    She gives him our baby.
    Descending the stairs, he says to the German soldier that he has found an abandoned baby.
    â€œDoesn’t matter,” says the soldier. “We’ll get the mother later.”
    I think that had it not been for our son, she would have gone with our baby.
    We stay hidden for a while even after the noise has died down and all the trucks have gone.
    We know that you can never be too careful.
    How do you move when you feel like you can’t go on?
    You think of someone who needs you more.
    We find our son asleep in the woodshed, and we move on.
    In the middle of the night again, I make the trip to Street of Our Lady with my wife, her sister, and my son, all so solemn now that you would think we were going to our death.
    Walter whispers to me, “I saw them take Biata, Papa. Will they come for me too?”
    I look down at the angelic face asking me a question that no child should ever have to ask, and I say to him, “I will never let that happen, Walter.”
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    F RANCISZKA IS SURPRISED TO SEE US, and although she is not ready, she does not turn us away.
    I help clear out the