“Won’t the army be providing food?” Martha asked. She was thinking of her time at the Henry Street Settlement, where her main job had been organizing the collection of food donations to distribute to sick and needy people in the neighborhood. Back then she had been trying to feed hundreds, not thousands.
“Some of it,” he replied. “But all the fresh stuff comes from the local farms. You’ll have to negotiate with the Germans for that.”
“But . . .” Martha felt a wave of panic rise from her stomach.
“I’ll send you the details,” he cut in. “For now, everything you need to know about the DPs is in those files.” He glanced out the window. “This time of morning they start lining up outside for passes. There’s a rubber stamp and ink pad in the desk drawer: no one gets past the gate unless their papers have been stamped. Can’t have ’em wandering in and out of the place at will.”
“That makes them sound like prisoners.” Kitty’s eyes narrowed as she spoke.
“Well, until we get the go-ahead to send them home, that’s essentially what they are. They don’t belong here.” He tucked his cane into his belt. “We won’t keep them here any longer than we have to, but it’s anybody’s guess when repatriation’s gonna be possible. The Nazis woulda wiped Poland off the map if they’d had their way. Pretty much burned Warsaw to the ground before they were done.”
Kitty looked away. Martha saw the muscles in her jaw flex.
“You need to screen the requests carefully,” the major went on. “Only give out a pass if it’s urgent. If in doubt, ask for verification. You’ll hear some real sob stories—you gotta learn to distance yourself, or they’ll break your heart. Oh, and watch out for the black marketeers.”
Without pausing to explain further, he ushered Delphine out the door.
“How on earth are we going to do this?” Martha went to the window, staring in dismay at the ever-lengthening line forming outside. “Do you think any of them will be able to speak English?”
“It’s okay,” Kitty said. “I can translate for you.”
“You think they’ll speak German?”
“I doubt it. But I speak Polish.”
“Really? You learned that at school?”
“No. From my mother. She lived in Poland before she met my father.”
“Oh?” That would explain the reaction to what the major had said. Perhaps there were relatives in Poland. She hesitated, afraid to ask. Kitty turned away, opening a drawer in the filing cabinet and examining the contents. Martha wondered if her mother had tried to stop her from coming to Germany, if Mrs. Bloom was sitting at home in Manchester, worrying about what her daughter had gotten herself into. Before she could ask, the door opened, and a head appeared. It was a woman about the age of Delphine, her face gaunt and her eyes troubled.
“Czy mog? teraz wej???”
“She’s asking if she can come in,” Kitty said.
Martha nodded to the woman. She came up to the desk, adjusting the scarf knotted over her gray hair. Her cotton blouse was the same spotless white as the scarf, and a black apron was tied around her tiny waist. She rattled off her request, looking from Martha to Kitty with pleading black eyes. Martha understood just one word: Dachau.
“She says her daughter is about to give birth in another camp and she must go to help her. The father of the baby died in Dachau, so there’s no one else to assist.”
“Can you ask her name?” Martha opened a drawer in the desk. There was a ledger inside marked “Passes.” Flicking through the pages, she found the latest entry, dated the previous week. “And we’ll need the number on her identity card.”
Kitty relayed this to the woman. “Her name is Sinaida Sikorsky. But she says she has no identity card.”
Before Martha could query this, the woman pulled back the sleeve of her blouse, revealing eight numbers tattooed in purple on withered skin. She murmured something without looking up.
“She says it’s the only thing she has.” Kitty had gone very pale. She looked as if she was fighting back tears. “It’s the number the Nazis gave her in Dachau.”
Martha swallowed hard. She’d seen a photograph in Time magazine of a mark like this. But the shock of seeing it for real was something else. She reached into the back of the drawer, where her trembling fingers found the rubber stamp and ink pad. “What can we give her as a pass? Is there anything in the filing cabinet?”