Free The Woman from Hamburg by Hanna Krall

Blatt sank into thought. “I lose everything. If I had it removed, I would lose it, and this way it sits in my jaw and I know that it’s there.”
9
    The war ended. The surviving Jews from Izbica got together in Lublin. For some ill-defined reasons it never occurred to them that they could return to Izbica. It also never occurred to Tomek, but he couldn’t leave. His boots remained in Marcin B.’s barn. He was walking around barefoot. The war was over, but he was barefoot. He gave ten zlotys to a boy.
    “Go to Przylesie,” he told him, “go into the fourth house on the right and ask for Marcin B. Tell him that Tomek is waiting for his boots near the well in Maliniec. Say that Tomek’s boots remained in the barn.”
    He waited near the well. It was July. It was hot. Marcin B. arrived, also barefoot. He held in his hands tall boots, polished to a shine. They were Szmul’s boots. Without a word he held them out to Tomek, turned around, and walked away. Tomek took the boots and also walked away. Still barefoot. With Szmul Wajcen’s boots in his hands, the right boot in his right hand and the left in his left hand.
    He went to Lublin. He met Staszek Szmajzner, the one to whom Peczerski had given the single rifle in the woods.
    “You have splendid boots,” Staszek observed.
    He told him about Fredek, Szmul, and Marcin B.
    Staszek stopped a Soviet truck carrying a captain. He gave him a half liter of vodka. They drove to Przylesie. Marcin wasn’t there. He’s gone to do the threshing, his wife said. You can stand in for him. Staszek indicatedMarcin B.’s daughter with his head. Gentlemen, the wife groaned. She ran off somewhere and came back with gold in a pot. Take it, gentlemen. The girl was already standing against the wall. She isn’t guilty, Tomek yelled. And my sisters, were they guilty? asked Staszek. Was my mother guilty? Marcin B.’s wife sank down on her knees before Staszek. He raised the rifle he’d taken from a German to his eyes and took aim at the girl. Tomek shoved his arm. Marcin B.’s wife was weeping loudly. Marcin B.’s daughter stood there calmly, leaning against the wall. She was looking up at the sky, as if she wanted to discern the flight of the bullet.
10
    They lived on Kowalska Street, with Hersz Blank, who had established his own business in Lublin. Come what may, people will always need hides. Someone stopped Tomek in the stairway: “Don’t go there; there’s still blood.” He wasn’t surprised. He knew that people exist, exist, and then they’re gone. He went to the Jewish cemetery. Hersz Blank lay in the little cemetery hut, wrapped in linen. A boy from Sobibor, Szlomo Podchlebnik, had brought him there and wrapped his body. Jews from Izbica, Lublin, and Sobibor came for the funeral. At the funeral people talked about two things. That this was done by men from the Armia Krajowa, the Home Army, and that it would be necessaryto leave here. Many people left for Palestine. Tomek went to the States via Palestine, because he knew an American Jew. He settled in California. At first he worked on automobile radios. Then he began speaking about Sobibor, he wrote a book about Sobibor, and placed memorial tablets in Sobibor. Twenty-odd years later, his wife informed him that she didn’t intend to spend the rest of her life in Sobibor.
    Staszek Szmajzner left for Rio. He married a Miss Brazil. He settled down in Copacabana. When he opened his windows, he could hear the Atlantic. He left his home and moved to the Amazon. He didn’t want to see any people other than Indians. With his rifle that he acquired in Sobibor and with which, in Marcin B.’s homestead, he had fired an honorary shot for his mother, his sisters, and also for Fredek and Szmul, he shot at birds in the Amazon jungle. He spent thirty years writing a book. When he finished it … and so forth.
    The Home Army men who were involved in the Hersz Blank affair were executed in April 1945. Not because of Blank, but for a