No One Says Goodbye

“You have to go,” she says.

There are no questions needed; we know what those words mean. She hands us an envelope containing money and whispers the address of a café. “Go there. The owner, her name is Irena. She’ll take you to the partisan community.

There is no time to say thank you. That we do with our eyes and a gracious nod.

We put on our coats and wigs, take a few deep breaths, and step out into the hallway. A glance at our apartment door, the place we called home for the past two years, our first years as a married couple. And with that, quietly but confidently, we walk down the two flights of marble stairs and step out into the cold winter air.

—

In look, she was tall and thin with short blond hair. She was about our age, maybe twenty-three or so. We didn’t know her real name. “Call me Jana,” she told us the day we first met.

Jana was the daughter of a friend of a family friend. A long link, yes. “Can we trust her?” I wondered at first and asked my wife. “Of course, Papa’s best friend knows her family.”

But she was a stranger to us. A woman sent to live in our home in the summer of 1939 in case life changed if the Nazis invaded. The apartment became her home. That was the arrangement. We staged a move-out and took the mezuzah off the front door. As far as our neighbors knew, the apartment now belonged to a studious young woman named Jana.

Shortly after, the Nazi’s did invade. And life changed. Jews were ordered into ghettos. From our window, we watched as families, bundled in coats and clutching bags and wearing their armbands, marched down the street into the walled-off ghetto. We could see the rooftops of the ghetto from our apartment.

We considered ourselves lucky, if that’s the word, to still be in our apartment. Jana brought food to eat, and there was warmth. On summer days, we’d lie on the floor next to the big window and take in the sunshine and fresh air. It was this window that had sold us on the apartment.

On some nights, the three of us would drink hot tea and talk about life. “Why do you risk your life to help?” I once asked Jana.

“I don’t know,” she said. “This is how my father raised me. Do what’s right. And this is what’s right.” She shrugged like it was the simplest truth in the world.

—

The plan was to escape the city and make our way to the forest, where we would join a group of Jewish partisans. But first, we have to find Irena.

It had been nearly two years since we had walked the streets. How different everything seemed. The café is along a quiet street, ironically located on the same block where my best friend used to live. Is he still alive, I wonder. We approach the wooden door and a frosted window that reads ‘Kawa i Ciasto,‘ and step inside.

Inside, it smells like yeast and burnt sugar. A small radio crackles behind the counter, playing a love song from before the war. Irena greets us with a smile that feels too bright for such times.

She looks about twenty, short and slender, with long blond hair pulled into a braid and deep blue eyes. She is playful, flirtatious even. But there is something sharper behind the facade: a watchfulness. What she’s doing is an almost certain death sentence if caught – for all of us. And she knows it.

Irena pours hot water over dried rosehips and hands us tin cups. We warm our hands in silence. When the clock strikes nine, she turns off the radio.

“Come,” she says after closing the café.

She drives us in an old truck along frozen roads that wind out of the city, past shuttered farms and abandoned carts. I cannot fathom how the city has changed, particularly the seemingly never-ending swastikas. As we leave the city boundaries, fields stretch empty under a pale moon, scattered with broken fences and skeletal trees. Snowflakes drift down in soft spirals. Eventually, the truck lurches to a stop near a wooded path.

Irena’s cabin stands alone, nestled among pines and bare ash trees. Its steep roof is heavy with snow, but inside is warm thanks to the fire and the heavy insulation of woven quilts nailed to the windows. The air smells of old wood, wet wool, and something sweet. There’s a single table, a drying rack of scarves near the stove, a cot in the corner, and a basin with cold water.

“Stay here tonight,” Irena says. “You’ll leave before dawn. I’ll walk you to the first marker.”

We’re too tired to speak. Irena gives us soup, thick and earthy, with floating bits of potato and thyme. And then instructions. “You’ll meet someone named Samuel tomorrow,” she tells us. “He’ll ask your favorite fruit. Say, ‘Plums, if they’re in season.’”

I almost laugh at the innocence of the phrase. My wife does smile.

“Sleep,” Irena says. “It will become a luxury from here out.”

—

In the morning, Irena gives us heavier coats, wool scarves, and an extra strip of bread each. “These were my brother’s,” she says. “He would have helped you too.”

We don’t ask what happened to him. We don’t need to.

The forest is a different world. Pines tower above like cathedral columns. Snow crunches faintly beneath our boots. Branches above are dusted white. Irena leads us between trees, stopping once to brush snow from a birch with a carved star. Then another. Then another.

“I carved these when I was ten,” she says softly. “We played partisans then. Now it’s not a game.”

She stops at a tree with two stars carved side by side.

“I don’t go beyond this point,” she says quietly. “If something happens to me, I can’t give away what I don’t know.”

She touches the tree once more, then looks at us.

“Be safe. Keep walking straight. Samuel will find you.”

She turns and disappears into the trees.

—

His voice is deep: “What fruit do you like?”

“Plums,” I say. “If they’re in season.”

He steps into view. Young, maybe even still a teenager. Rifle slung over his back. His cheeks are windburned red above his scarf.

“I’m Samuel,” he says. “Follow me.”

He leads us deeper into the forest, through frozen gullies and under low-hanging boughs. Once, we pass the hollowed-out shell of a carriage riddled with bullet holes.

Eventually, the trees part into a narrow clearing.

The camp is nearly invisible, tucked beneath netting and branches. Maybe twenty tents are dug into the snow. It feels almost like the courtyard of an apartment building—alive with commotion. People talking. Others working. Even the children are helping, though one or two tried to play.

“This is camp,” Samuel says. “Settle in and I’ll give you more instructions.”

—

That night, under a canvas stitched with patches, we lay close beneath heavy wool blankets. Outside, someone hums a Yiddish lullaby.

“I miss her,” my wife whispers.

“Jana?” I asked.

She nodded.

“I do too.”

We never said goodbye. Maybe no one does in war.

—

Notes

• “No One Says Goodbye” is a historical fiction snapshot based on the Holocaust. While based on real events, the story, characters, and incidents are fictitious.
• Read another historical fiction snapshot from the Holocaust.