I took the threads of those stories and stitched for myself new memories of our family life together. Florian was strong and brave and handsome and so clever: a lawyer and a self-made man who had risen above his circumstances as an orphan and supported himself with part-time jobs even as he studied at university. His commitment to the Catholic faith was absolute—sick or well, busy or free, he never missed Mass or confession or finding some way to volunteer in support of his congregation at St. Kazimierz each week. Mother used to tell me that the most important things in Florian’s life were her, me and anyone or anything associated with that church.
Florian died at twenty-five years old, just months after he had put a down payment on a house for us and just as his career began. It wasn’t long before my mother and I were in dire financial straits. My grandparents tried to help, but my mother was also from a humble background. There was only so much they could do.
The only person in our lives who had the means to help us was Samuel. Mother and Samuel had been friends since childhood, and he’d been on the periphery of our family for as long as I could remember. When Florian first fell ill, Samuel had promised him that whatever happened, Mother and I would be cared for.
Samuel was a man of his word.
At first, I was comforted by the reliability of his visits. If Mother was sad, Samuel knew how to cheer her up. If she was worried, he knew how to ease her fears. If the pantry was empty, he would often visit with a box of food, and he’d always include sweets for me.
I had a front-row seat to the shifting tone of their relationship over time. At first, I was confused when their gazes began to linger or when Samuel was suddenly giggling like a child when my mother made little jokes intended to amuse me. One evening I found them sitting on the couch together holding hands as they listened to the wireless radio. I climbed up onto Mother’s lap and pushed them apart so I could sit between them.
When I was six, my mother told me she and Samuel were going to marry. We moved into Samuel’s apartment in the Jewish Quarter, but I continued to attend a Catholic school, and she and Samuel went out of their way to ensure I was still active in my father’s congregation at St. Kazimierz, just as Florian had wanted.
Even once we were walled into the ghetto, I still periodically attended Mass—there were thousands of Jewish Catholics trapped within the walls, and many still worshipped in one of the three Catholic congregations that operated inside. And, back when we were allowed, my family would observe the Jewish holidays, and I’d join in those occasions, too. I liked the diversity of our family life. I loved that my mother and Samuel had chosen to honor Florian’s wishes to raise me in his faith’s tradition, but I loved the richness and the rhythms of Jewish culture and religion, too. I took Communion, but my Kennkarte identity card was yellow and stamped with a J to indicate that I was a Jewish man. I wore the compulsory Star of David armband on my arm with pride, not the shame the Germans would have had me feel.
Samuel was right that Mother wanted us all to run before the wall went up, and even once we were trapped, she argued fiercely for me to try to escape on my own. If a German soldier saw me walking down the street on the Aryan side of Warsaw, they might never have looked twice, and even if they did, their first likely action would be to check that I was circumcised. I wasn’t, simply because my mother and Florian had decided to raise me in his faith’s tradition, rather than hers.
But Samuel and I had been determined that I should stay with the family, and even as conditions worsened within the ghetto, I never regretted it. In one sense, I was a prisoner by choice, perhaps out of stubborn pride, perhaps out of loyalty to my family but, mostly, out of sheer terror at the thought of being separated from them.
At the end of the day, that was my worst nightmare—not the trials of the ghetto.
I would endure torture and starvation and even death if it meant I could stay with