[The following takes place in the Polish city of Lvov while under Nazi occupation in 1941, and is told from the perspective of Luncia Gamzer, an eight-year-old Polish-Jewish girl who was living in the city at the time with her family.]
Suddenly Luncia’s father, Isaac, rushed into the apartment. “I just heard there’s going to be another aktzia!” he cried frantically. “They’re grabbing children. Quick, we must hide the kids!”
Barbara tossed a loaf of bread into a bag and filled two bottles with water. “Here, take this and hide in the bathroom,” she told the two frightened children. “No matter what, do not make a peep. Not a whimper. And keep the light off. Understand?”
Luncia and Henry nodded and hurried into the darkened bathroom. Then the adults moved a large, beautifully carved wardrove in front of the bathroom door. But the wardrove wasn’t tall enough to hide the door frame, so Barbara put a washtub and old suitcases on top to cover it. The adults hid all the children’s clothes and any evidence that they even existed.
Luncia and Henry sat quietly in the dark, worrying about their safety in this deadly game of hide-and-seek. They were seized with fear when they heard a Ukrainian policeman and a Gestapo officer enter the apartment, looking for children.
”There are none here,” said Isaac.
In the blackness of the bathroom, Luncia groped for Henry and squeezed him tight, a reminder to stay perfectly still. Barely breathing, Luncia listened to the conversation on the other side of the wardrobe.
The Gestapo officer pointed to a painting of Luncia hanging on the living room wall. The portrait had been made from a photo of her posing in a striped outfit when she was five. “This is your daughter, no?” the officer asked Isaac. “Where is she?”
My picture! thought Luncia. We forgot all about it. How could we have been so careless to leave it up there?
”Where is she?” the officer repeated, staring intently into Isaac’s eyes.
Isaac replied, “They already took her away.”
”It looks like you used to have a pretty child.” The blunt statement was chillingly clear to the Gamzers. The Gestapo officer assumed that Luncia had met the same fate as other children caught in an earlier aktzia - death.
Source:
Zullo, Allan, and Mara Bovsun. “What Will Happen to Me Now That the Nazis Are Here? Luncia Gamzer’s Story.” Survivors: True Stories of Children in the Holocaust. Scholastic, 2004. 11, 12. Print.
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