David of Żegota

Mama and Papa are packing clothes into suitcases—one of Mama’s dresses, Papa’s trousers, one of his shirts, your nightgown. When you ask what they are doing, they pause for a long moment before Papa answers, “We are packing to go on a trip soon.” 

You remember, vaguely, the time you rode the train over fields and rivers, and through towns and forests. The world flashed past outside the crystal-clear window, which was smudged with your small fingerprints by the time your parents urged you to your feet. They held your hand and tugged you along the narrow hallway, down the little metal steps, and through the bustling station. Then over cobbled streets, until there was a sandy place with an enormous expanse of cold water, and that was the sea.

“Are we going to the sea again?” 

“Yes,” Papa says, “we will be going to the sea, I think. But it is a secret. You cannot tell anyone that we are going.” 

“Can I tell my friends where I have been when we come back?” you ask.

“Yes, perhaps you will be able to tell them when we come back, my dear.” 

A knock at the door makes Mama and Papa jump. They frown and motion at you not to move or make a noise, but whoever is knocking does not stop and go away. A voice calls out, “It’s Irena.”

Mama goes to the door and opens it, and a lady with a boy comes in quickly. Mama locks the door behind them. 

The lady has bright blonde hair, but the boy has dark hair. With one hand he clutches the lady’s hand. His other hand hangs at his side, clenched in a fist. He turns his wide brown eyes on you.

You have never seen him. He is not one of your friends. None of your friends have come to play with you for a long time.

Mama and Papa speak with the lady in hushed voices, and she gives Papa some papers. When they all nod to each other and look solemn, the boy looks up at the lady’s face and looks solemn, too. 

She kneels down in front of the boy and speaks to him. He looks frightened. Then the blonde lady is out the door and gone, but she has left the black-haired boy behind in your apartment.

“Come and say hello,” your mama and papa tell you, beckoning. 

The boy is wearing old, threadbare clothes. As you hesitantly come closer, you can see and smell that though his clothes look clean, he needs a bath. Grime is caked on his wrists under his sleeves and on his neck under his shirt collar.

“I don’t want to play with him; he’s dirty.” You scrunch up your face. “And he smells bad.”

The boy’s face crumples, and his eyes shine with tears.

“Hush, don’t say that,” Mama scolds, and comforts the boy. “You musn’t say such things, dear. He’s your brother in Christ.”

“My brother? He isn’t. He doesn’t even live here.”

“Now he does,” Papa says, “and you must call him your brother.”

“What’s your name?” Mama asks the boy. 

“David,” he answers, drying his eyes with the clean white handkerchief Mama has handed him. He hands it back smudged, his gaze on the faded rug beneath his feet. 

You are sent to bed early. When you ask for a bedtime story, Papa tells you, “Not tonight. You need to get lots of rest for tomorrow. Remember, we are going on a secret trip.” You ask for your nightgown, but Mama says you must wear your clothes to bed. You have never gone to bed in your clothes. You wonder if this is because of David. But then you remember that you saw your nightgown in the suitcase before he came. 

The next morning, Mama rouses you early, and Papa sits you down at the kitchen table with David and tells you both to eat quickly. 

“Is it kosher?” David asks.

“Yes,” Papa says, and David eats like he hasn’t seen food in days. 

You steal peeks at David, who no longer looks or smells dirty. “Is he coming with us?” you ask, turning to look at Mama and Papa, who are going through the suitcases again. 

“Yes, of course he is, darling,” Mama says, looking up. “We couldn’t leave him here all alone.” 

“What about his mama? Where is she?” you demand. “She has left him all alone with us.”

“David’s mama,” she answers quietly, “cannot take care of him any longer. It is not safe for him to stay with her. It is safer for him to be with us. But you must not tell anyone how he came here, or that he is not your brother.” She gets up and takes your hands in hers, looking into your eyes. “Promise me you won’t tell anyone.”

“Yes, Mama,” you say, and she lets go. 

“Eat your food, and then go and pick one of your toys to bring with us. Just one. It needs to fit in one of the suitcases.”

After the one toy has been crammed into the suitcase (you did not give it much thought, after all, you will be coming back and can play with all of them later), Papa grasps your hand, and Mama takes David’s hand, and they pull the two of you out the door, locking it as they leave. In the hands not holding yours and David’s, the battered old suitcases dangle. 

You want to hold Mama’s hand, but she’s holding David’s, and there isn’t room in the narrow, dark hallway of your apartment building for her to walk with a child on both sides. But there is enough room for a child on one side and a suitcase on the other. You try to ask to switch places with David, but Papa shushes you, saying, “Not now, dear.” You wonder if this is all because of David. At least he is the reason you are not holding Mama’s hand right now.

Your feet trip on the cobblestones as Papa walks too fast down the street. You can’t see Mama and David because they’re behind you, so close that sometimes one of them is stepping on your heels.

A train whistles, and you turn to look at the station, getting ready to go up the steps at Papa’s painfully quick pace. But instead, you’re pulled along beside the chain link fence separating the station from the street. 

Through the fence that didn’t used to be here, you can see people standing on the other side of the tracks, crowded together. People who look like David did yesterday: dirty, frightened, solemn, with wide, dark eyes. Yellow stars blaze on their sleeves. 

David says two words in a tearful, anguished whisper you can barely hear.

“Eema. Aba.” 

“You must hush now, my darling,” Mama tells him.

“Why can’t we take the train?” you ask.

“The soldiers are using it for something else,” Papa answers, his voice choked.

“I want to ride the train,” you insist.

“No, you don’t want to ride that train,” Papa says sternly.

Someone sniffles behind you, but you can’t tell if it’s David or Mama. 

Obediently, you hurry your steps to keep up with Papa. 

Irena Sendler was a Polish woman who worked with the Żegota, the Polish Resistance, to smuggle Jewish children out of the Warsaw Ghetto and place them with families to hide them. She was arrested by the Gestapo in October 1943, but refused to divulge any information. The Żegota bribed German guards for her release on the way to her execution. Irena was given the honorific "Righteous Among the Nations" award by the State of Israel in 1965.