Prisoner B-3087

If I had known what the next sIx years of
my life were going to be like, I would have eaten more.
I wouldn’t have complained about brushing my teeth,
or taking a bath, or going to bed at eight o’clock every
night. I would have played more. Laughed more. I would
have hugged my parents and told them I loved them.

But I was ten years old, and I had no idea of the
nightmare that was to come. None of us did. It was
the beginning of September, and we all sat around the
big table in the dining room of my family’s flat on
Krakusa Street, eating and drinking and talking: my
parents, my aunts and uncles, my cousins, and me,
Jakob — although everybody called me by my Polish
name, Yanek.

“‘The Jews must disappear from Europe.’ That’s
what Hitler said,” Uncle Moshe said, reaching for
another pastry. “I don’t know how much more clear
he could be.”

I shivered. I’d heard Hitler, the German fuehrer,
give speeches on the radio.
Fuehrer
meant “leader” in
German. It was what the Germans called their president now. Hitler was always talking about the “Jewish
menace” and how Germany and the rest of Europe
should be “Jew free.” I was a Jew, and I lived in
Europe, and I didn’t want to disappear. I loved my
house and my city.

“The British and the French have already declared
war on him,” my father said. “Soon the Americans
will join them. They won’t let Germany roll over all of
Europe.”.

“He’s already annexed Austria and Czechoslovakia,”
said Uncle Abraham. “And now he invades Poland!”
My father sipped his coffee. “Mark my words: This
war won’t last more than six months.”
My uncles argued with him, but he was my father,
so I believed him.
“Enough politics,” my mother said. She got up to
clear the table, and my aunts helped her. “Yanek, why
don’t you put on a show for us? He built his own
projector.”
I ran to my room to get it. It wasn’t a film projector
like the one at the movie theater. It was a slide projector I’d made by mounting a lightbulb on a piece of
wood and positioning wooden plates with lenses from
magnifying glasses in front of it. I could show pictures
on the wall, or do shadow-puppet shows. My cousins
helped me hang a white sheet in the doorway of the
sitting room, and when everyone was seated I plugged
in the projector and clicked on the radio. I liked to
have musical accompaniment, like a movie soundtrack.
When the radio warmed up, I found a Count Basie
song that was perfect and started my show.
Using cardboard cutouts of cowboys, Indians, stagecoaches, and horses I’d glued to sticks, I projected a
shadow show about a sheriff in the American Wild
West who had to protect his town from bandits. John
Wayne westerns were my favorite films, and I took all
the best parts from his movies and made them one big
story. My family laughed and cheered and called out
to the characters like they were real. They loved my
shows, and I loved putting them on for them. I was
never prouder than when I got my father to laugh!
Maybe one day I would go to America and work in
the movies. Aunt Gizela would often ruffle my wavy
hair and say, “You look like a movie star, Yanek—
with your dark-blond hair and big eyes.”
I was just getting to the part where the bandit leader
robbed the town bank and was squaring off for a shootout with the hero when the music on the radio stopped
midsong. At first I thought the radio’s vacuum tube
had blown, but then a man’s voice came on the radio.
“Ladies and gentlemen, we interrupt this broadcast
with the news that the German army has reached
Kraków.”
“No!” my father said.
“So soon?” Uncle Moshe said. “It’s been only six
days! Where is the Polish army?”
I came out from behind the sheet in the doorway to
listen. While the radio announcer talked about Polish
forces withdrawing to Lodz and Warsaw there was a
big BOOM, and my mother’s tea cups rattled in their
saucers. My cousins and I ran to the window to look
outside. Dark smoke curled into the sky over the rooftops of Podgórze, our neighborhood. Someone cried
out on the next street, and the church bells of Wawel
Cathedral rang out in alarm.
It was too late. The Germans were here. If I had
only known then what I know now, I would have run.
I wouldn’t have stopped to pack a bag, or say goodbye to my friends, or to even unplug my projector.
None of us would have. We would have run for the
woods outside of town and never looked back.
But we didn’t. We just sat there in my family’s flat,
listening to the radio and watching the sky over
Kraków turn black as the Germans came to kill us.