The next day, Ewa took her children to a religious school for girls she had assisted in establishing alongside a group of Rabbis. She planned to build more of these schools all across the ghetto as she was unsure when these times would end.
Two hours later, on her way back, she heard women screaming. She hurried to find out what had happened since Nehemja’s home was near the noise source. The shrieks got louder as she turned into the alley leading to his house. Suddenly, she felt faint with a lump in her throat when she saw two bodies lying outside his front door. She rushed towards them, only to be stopped midway by ghetto policemen. As Ewa started to cry loudly, the shrieking and wailing intensified when her sister-in-law and her 15-year-old daughter observed her through the window.
“You cannot go near them! The Germans have decreed that their bodies stay in this location as a warning to everyone about the consequences of disobeying the Third Reich!”
“What did they do?” Ewa spotted the man she had paid money to the previous day and walked briskly towards him, crying out, “You had...” She collapsed to the ground, unable to finish her sentence, as another one of the four men who had visited Nehemja’s house struck her in the back of the head with his baton.
Crouching down beside their mother’s motionless body, Leah and her brother screamed in anguish.
A few minutes later, Urjasz arrived at the scene and pleaded with the policemen in Yiddish, “Please allow me to take my sister and her children inside. They are innocent. She is overwhelmed with emotions. I beg of you.”
“Tell her to keep quiet if she wakes up alive, or we will come after her husband next.”
Then he said quietly to Nehemja, “I had warned him to vanish. Had I not told the Germans about his disobedience, someone else would have, and I would be lying next to him.”
Urjasz lifted his sister and took her to his deceased brother’s house. He felt suffocated with grief as he embraced his brother’s family to comfort them. He then cleaned and bandaged the gash on the back of Ewa’s head.
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After a while, Ewa opened her eyes, and without making a sound, tears came pouring down the sides of her eyes.
Nehemja’s wife narrated that the four Jewish Ghetto Police personnel who arrived the day before broke down their front door and left. Six German soldiers entered, pulled her husband and son out into the side street, where they tied their hands behind their backs, made them kneel, and then shot them from the back.
The residents could hear an announcement in Yiddish on a loudspeaker threatening to shoot anyone who disobeyed the Third Reich’s orders.
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The ghetto rapidly became overcrowded due to the forced eviction of Jewish families from neighbouring towns. Leah was overjoyed when Uncle Urjasz and his family shifted into their house along with Uncle Nehemja’s widow and daughter.
A week after the murder of Nehemja and his son, two members of the Council of Elders visited the Poznanskis. They were old associates of Symeon and appeared perturbed by the incident.
“We are sorry for your loss,” one said sorrowfully. “The Judenrat had nothing to do with it. We came to know after the tragic incident had occurred.”
“They were your men!” Ewa remarked in a cold tone. “How can you wash your hands of my brother’s and nephew’s blood when it was Jews who led the Germans to his house.”
“You kill your brothers; you are worse than the invaders!!” Ewa grew louder since she could no longer curtail her emotions.
“Some members of our Jewish police carry out such crimes to please the Nazis in an endeavour to secure the safety of their families. They are also quite active in the black market. Hence, they often ignore our directions and challenge our authority to make money. The Nazi directives often tie our hands, as noncompliance leads to summary execution.”
“We are all prisoners, Symeon, awaiting the ultimate penalty,” the other guest, a reserved man, said, placing his hand on Symeon’s shoulder as he left.
Symeon had learnt to live with his disease. Though frail, he could now stroll around his neighbourhood with a stick, no longer bound to his chair.
He had become quiet and withdrawn, and Leah’s life would have been shattered seeing her uncle’s and cousin’s blood-stained bodies and her father’s vulnerable state if it were not for her mother and Uncle Urjasz, who managed to divert her attention from life’s cruel reality to a world of imaginings and bliss invented in stories of fantasies.
Ewa alone could discern her husband’s emotional state. She could sense an indomitable spirit desperate to rip apart the cage of skin and bone and face the challenges head-on.