Free Clara's War by Clara Kramer Page A

from the house. The Gestapo shot him, but his family was safe. Mr Melman was lucky to get out and safely slip back into his own house undetected.
    We didn’t have time to run to the hiding place in the factory. Instead we all crawled through the bedroom trapdoor to the tomb under the Melmans’ house. The darkness was suffocating. We couldn’t burn the candles we had stored; there wasn’t enough oxygen to keep them lit. I had never sat in the bunker even for a minute while digging. I wasn’t prepared for the closeness, the terrifying darkness and the smell of damp earth I inhaled with the thick air. As the bunker heated up with the warmth of ten bodies, my pores opened and sweat soaked my clothes until they clung to me, like a second skin.
    We stayed there for two days, with no pail for our refuse, a few pieces of bread and a little water. There wasn’t room enough to move. When things seemed calm upstairs, Mr Melman and Mr Patrontasch crawled outside to see what was happening. They scrambled back after just a few minutes. The akcja was still on. They had killed Mr Lockman, a neighbour who tried to escape. We sat another night in the bunker. At dawn, Mr Patrontasch’s younger brother Laibek walked by the house. He knew we were in here and whispered that it was over and that the train had left already. We sat for another hour to be sure before going out.
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    Our city was in desperate mourning. Carriages loaded with dead bodies were taken to the cemetery. Everyone was in shock as they described family members who had been killed while trying to run. Or else they had been shot trying to get up when theywere told to kneel in the centre of the town. Or they had been shot while jumping off the trains. Or else they had been shot when betrayed by the Poles whom they had begged to hide them.
    Aunt Rela lost her mother, brother and sister-in-law. Mr Patrontasch lost his youngest sister Pepka (the girl Josek had flirted with before marrying Rela) and her child. She had been running to the house of a Polish friend who had promised to hide her, but the friend didn’t let her in when she got there. Papa’s friend, Mr Taube, saw her lying in a puddle of blood. They went for her body, but couldn’t find her again. My friend Klara Letzer and her family were taken, but she and her mother had managed to jump off the train and make it back. Her father was shot and killed as he tried to escape.
    We were thankful that all of us had survived, but didn’t know what to do next. It was only a matter of time before they returned to get those they had missed. Mania looked at Papa. Even she didn’t have a word to say. The nuns were just up the street. We could see the steeple of the convent from where we were. But we didn’t talk about the nuns any more. Our only hope was to find a Polish family willing to take us. But my father had already exhausted that avenue again and again.
    We went back to Uchka’s. She was in the same bad straits as we were. After the akcja , the family that was going to hide her had got cold feet. But she told us that one of her Polish clients from another town had offered to take Zosia, thinking that she could pass for a Polish child without any trouble at all. The woman loved Zosia because she was such a delightful little girl. Uchka gave Zosia to the woman at the train station, and was going to spend the night in Lvov before travelling to her home town. Zosia cried and cried as she was separated from her mother. Uchka felt as if her heart was ripped out, but she was grateful to know her daughter would be safe.
    The next morning the woman brought Zosia back to Uchka. Zosia had sobbed all night and couldn’t be consoled, she said. She wanted her mother.
    While my father looked in vain for a place for us, the Nazis announced they had taken Stalingrad, the city Stalin named in his own honour and the very symbol of the Soviet empire. Papa knew the Soviets had to defend