Free Gertruda's Oath: A Child, a Promise, and a Heroic Escape During World War II by Ram Oren Page A

I have to to release my manager.”
    “Not a good idea for you to come now,” one of them advised him before he hung up. “Germany today is no place for you. Remember that you’re a Jew. They’re liable to arrest you, too.”
    Jacob Stolowitzky walked around his office helplessly for a long time. It was hard to plan his next steps.
    The phone rang. The wife of his plant manager was back on the line.
    “Mr. Stolowitzky,” she said in a choked voice. “The SS came back to the factory today and threw out everybody with Polish citizenship. Ordered them all back to Poland.”
    Stolowitzky was proud of his Polish engineers. He had chosen them carefully and sent them and their families to Berlin. Without them, he knew, his plant faced a total shutdown.
    “It’s awful, Mr. Stolowitzky,” the woman added. “Berlin has turned into hell. Anti-Semitism is rampant, the Jews are thrown out of their jobs or are arrested, every one of us is doing all we can to escape from here.”
    The conversation was cut off.
    Jacob Stolowitzky clutched his head in his hands. He had been following events in Germany in the newspaper, had read about increasing abuses against Jews, but his plant was under foreign ownership. After all, he himself was a foreign citizen who did business with the German government. It didn’t occur to him that Germany would dare do anything bad to foreign citizens.
    He went home despondent, recalling the bleak deathbed prophecies of his father who had seen what was happening and understood the inevitable process of incitement against Jews. Angrily, he told his wife about the arrest of the manager and the expulsion of the engineers.
    “I have to consult with my lawyer in Berlin,” he said. “I’ll go there today”
    She tried to stop him.
    “The Germans will arrest you, too,” she said. “There’s talk of war in Europe. Wait until things calm down.”
    He took her hand.
    “I have to,” he said. “Don’t worry. I’ll be back in a few days.”
    One of the maids packed his traveling case, and he said goodbye to his wife and son. On his way out, he met Gertruda.
    “I’m going,” he said. “Take good care of Lydia and Michael.”
    She looked at him with dread. Her senses told her that he was going on a dangerous trip.
    “Yes, sir, I’ll take care of them as best I can,” she replied.
    Emil carried his suitcase to the car.
    “To the railroad station,” Stolowitzky ordered his chauffeur.
    He got into the first-class carriage and sank into the soft seat. As the train moved, Jacob Stolowitzky looked out the window at Warsaw receding in the distance.
    He was sure he’d be back in a few days.

5.
     
    School ended as usual, late in the afternoon. Twilight was falling as Helga left school and walked home, wrapped in her coat, wool gloves warming her hands, along a street where signs of the Kristallnacht pogrom were still evident. The display windows of shops had been smashed and JEW was written on their doors. Her heart stopped at the sight of SS men dragging an old Jew into a gray car. For a moment, she imagined she saw her father among them, wearing a uniform and pitiless like them, but he wasn’t there. Shethought of his relationship with her mother, destroyed recently because he insisted on staying in the SS. She pictured family memories from the recent past, walks in charming landscapes, sailing on the lake of Berlin, a picnic in the forest, joyous birthday celebrations. In all those scenes, Karl Rink appeared as a devoted father, smiling, and happy. She remembered days when she was proud of him. What had happened to her father, she asked herself, what had made him change his skin, turn his back on his way of life, stick with the beasts who ruled the country she loved with a regime of thugs?
    As she was still sunk in her thoughts, a group of boys blocked her way. She tried to get away from them, but they surrounded her and called her names. Their leader, a strong, fair-haired boy, approached the girl,