Such Good Girls by R. D. Rosen Read Free Book Online Page A

tears, and the SS man turned to look at Laura.
    “Where are they?” he screamed at her. Zofia saw the Polish officer’s eyes on her mother, and somehow she knew that her mother knew the answer. Zofia had never thought of her mother as someone who knew things that the frightening Germans didn’t, and wanted to. What if they realized her mother was lying? They’d hurt her or take her away like the Russians took away her father, and then what would Zofia do? She would have to find the orphanage by herself and she didn’t even remember the name of it. Zofia grew dizzy at the thought that something might happen to her only remaining parent.
    Very calmly, considering the terrified officer, his weeping wife, and the general feeling that something quite horrible was about to happen, Zofia’s mother began to explain to them—in perfect German—that none of them had seen any sign of the boys, and that she was very sorry that they were not able to help them.
    The effect on the Germans of hearing their own language, especially from a woman as pretty as this one, was immediate; they accepted in German what they had doubted in Polish and departed, but not before sternly warning everyone that they would be back to interrogate them again.
    The very next morning, the grateful Polish officer’s wife left a glass of fresh milk outside their room. It would be the only kindness they showed them during their stay. Zofia—who had not tasted fresh milk in months—would never forget how delicious it was.
    The next day Laura placed in one of the Kraków newspapers an ad for a job. It said she sought a position outside the city, preferably with room and board, stressing her fluency in German. She figured that, no matter where they landed, it couldn’t be any worse. Of the 15,000 Jews who had been forced into the Kraków ghetto by the Germans a year and a half earlier, only about 6,000 Jews remained. The ghetto contained two forced-labor camps and some businesses where Jews toiled until most of them dropped dead of starvation and fatigue.
    Laura passed the ghetto on her way home from work, and she couldn’t help but look into the ghetto through the barbed-wire fence between some of the buildings. One day she found all the houses along the fence on fire and German soldiers shooting the Jews as they jumped from the windows. On another, she witnessed a soldier swinging two small children by the legs and smashing their heads against a brick wall. She came close to vomiting there on the street. The ghetto was like a stockyard of emaciated two-legged creatures, waiting to be slaughtered. Yet she somehow envied them. At least they were still living life, however barely, as Jews, to the very end, while she sought to escape death by posing as a member of another religion. If not for Zofia, she would gladly give up her desperate charade and melt back into the ghetto again as Laura Schwarzwald to await the end.
    She wrote to her sisters, both working as domestics in Kraków, of her plan to leave the city and waited for a reply to her ad while continuing to work at the bank, where every time she met the eyes of a colleague, she feared she had been recognized. Finally, a miracle! A response arrived in the post, from an SS man named Leming, who was looking for a bookkeeper and part-time translator with office duties. He was in charge of the Polish agricultural cooperative in the spa resort town of Busko-Zdrój, northeast of Kraków. It was just what her landlady in Lvov had recommended. The offer came with a small salary and the promise of a little food from the cooperative’s canteen.
    Laura accepted immediately and Leming set a date, writing that he would pick her up on his return to Kraków from a vacation in Germany and drive her to Busko-Zdrój. Laura gave notice at the bank, told her landlord she was leaving, and gathered her and Zofia’s few possessions. But there was no word from Leming on the appointed day. Frantic, she rushed by bus to the