18 Little Market Square

She stood for what seemed like eternity watching the building across the public square. In the market area, surrounded by tall buildings, she propped herself against the lone tree with her eyes never leaving the area. The large square, just across the Vistula River, had been streaming with people for most of the day until the sun began to set casting long winter shadows on the brick pavers that made up the marketplace. With the sun lowering over the building, the people scattered like a flock of pheasants after a shotgun blast. Most people scattered, streaming onto the Powstańców Śląskich Bridge which linked the two distinct districts of Krakow together. Crossing against the oncoming tide of military equipment the civilians, with their heads down, crammed against the bridge railing to avoid getting crushed by the armored vehicles speeding into the ghetto. 

In the square, Rokhl, waited. Waiting had become her religion. She waited to be loaded into trucks and relocated. She waited in long lines to receive food for her family. She waited to be relocated to an overcrowded apartment. She waited for whatever came next. Now in the darkening square she waited until the shadows lengthened and evening was upon her before venturing across the square. She was almost alone. 

Reaching the edge of the square Rokhl stopped. After scanning the area Rokhl took the last few steps to the corner where she waited again. Before crossing the narrow street Rokhl surveyed the area one final time, dug her hands deep into her coat pocket and stepped into the unknown. Walking toward the building, she hesitated for a moment then walked beyond it. Slowly she came to the next corner. As she stopped, Rokhl looked back over her shoulder toward the building where she saw a patrol of soldiers crossing the street. Rokhl tuned back around, pulled her coat tight around her and walked back up the street past more uniformed men standing in the middle of the intersection in front of the building.  

Two more soldiers moved across the street until they stood near the door of the building eyeing the passersby. Rokhl, with her long dark hair tucked under a darker kerchief, walked past the soldiers and around the corner. She could feel her heart pounding in her chest and thought the soldiers must have heard it too. In the shadow of the building, Rokhl stopped, took a deep breath to summon her courage, and turned back around the corner to the front of the building when she saw a tall elderly man, slightly hunched over, possibly from the weight of all the problems he carried approach the pharmacy. He wore a long black coat with a black fedora covering his head. Keeping a safe distance, she followed him to the pharmacy. 

“Woman, what brings you out this late?” It was more of statement than a question. Rokhl froze unable to speak. Like a roadblock, the German soldier stood between her and the door to the pharmacy. Another soldier walked over to them while still more soldiers remained in position, leaning against the white stone building smoking stale cigarettes and lazily surveying the area. Looking down at the brick sidewalk she dug her hands deeper in the coat as she walked past the soldiers and entered the pharmacy. One of the soldiers followed her in. 

Located at 18 Little Market Square the building was the white stone structure known as the Eagle Pharmacy. It was not known by the owners’ name, Pankiewicz, but by the carved eagle handsomely perched atop of the mahogany clock. There he roosted, with wings spread looking down and inspecting every customer who entered the pharmacy.

The pharmacist stood behind a white marble countertop on a platform that made him look seven feet tall which had the effect of intimidating his customers. 

“Come by tomorrow and I’ll try and have it ready for you,” Tadeusz Pankiewicz, the pharmacist, said to a man with a charcoal gray beard that rested nearly on his chest making him look like he just slipped out from the pages of the Old Testament. Leaning over the counter, Pankiewciz shook hands with the man who casually slipped something in Pankiewicz’s sleeve where he slid it down into a secret cache stitched into his suit jacket. Then with a wave of the hand Tadeusz dismissed him and moved on to the next customer. Tadeusz Pankiewicz was the second generation owner of the pharmacy. His father started the business in 1910 and Tadeusz took it over in 1933. Unlike most pharmacists, Tadeusz, especially when he was behind the counter, wore a bowtie and dark wool suit that looked two sizes too big. There he favored the suit over his white lab coat. When he went in a back room to formulate the medicine Tadeusz would switch coats. 

Now behind the counter Tadeusz stood under the eagle that stared down on his customers, wings spread ready to pounce. It was Rokhl’s turn. She stepped up to the counter. The soldier moved with her. They stood under the eagle whose eyes seemed to be glaring down at them. The German soldier, if he got any closer to Rokhl would have been inside her coat. He rested his hand on the rifle strap and placed his left hand on Rokhl’s back. He stroked it. Not quite a caress, more of a reminder that he was watching and listening.  She didn’t need his reminder. She could almost taste rancid cigarette on his breath. She could smell his body odor as strong as her own fear.

“Well, what do you want?” Tadeusz asked. Rokhl was felt the hot pangs of panic. Her voice was soft, just above a whisper that was trounced by a passing truck. She pulled a scrap of paper from her coat pocket and before she could lay it on the counter, the solder seized it. He read it then balled it up and tossed it across the counter for Tadeusz to catch.  

“Come by tomorrow,” Tadeusz said. Looking down at her and then back at the prescription, he said “You need to bring your children with you. Since the medicine is for your children you need to bring them here.  It will take a little while to fill your prescription. Do you understand?”

“My husband will have to help me since they are so sick.”  

“Very well,” he said, “bring him too.”

Turning away the woman brushed against the soldier who followed her out of the pharmacy. When they were gone, Tadeusz closed and locked the doors before pulling down the shades and flipping the sign on the door to ‘closed’. 

Tadeusz called to his wife. Tadeusz pulled a Torah and a miniature menorah from the secret pocket of his suit coat and carefully handed them to his wife. Together they went to a back room. With his shoulder against a display case filled with medicines, he pushed it aside and lifted up oak floor boards that concealed a steel vault. Opening the vault, Selena handed him the articles which she lovingly wrapped. Leaning into the vault, Tadeusz gently placed them storing them inside next to other Jewish artifacts that had been rescued from the Nazis in Krakow. 

“Tomorrow,” he said to Selena, “we have a young family coming. We have new documents to prepare. We are going to need new visas, birth and baptismal certificates.” he said as he tugged on his mustache. “The hair, yes, the hair must be bleached so that it looks blond.” He stared through the wall thinking of what else they needed to do. 

“New clothing also,” said Selena. “Something aristocratic this time. Don’t you think?”

“Can we do it in time?”  

Selena, with her back to the medicine case, helped Tadeusz slide it back into position said, “Do we have a choice?”

“We have a choice,” the old pharmacist said, “but they do not. The Rabbi sent them.” Tadeusz said. “They must be moved out of the ghetto. The wife’s name is Rokhl.”