Samuel Bak remembers
Mother knocked on the door and we heard the footsteps. A thin, stooped, apparently elderly woman showed up in the doorway dressed in grey working clothes. Her grizzled hair could be seen from under a dark wrap. She let us in and closed the door. She gasped and embraced us. And then she pressed her hand against her lips: “Whisper”.
It was sister Marija. She had changed so much since I had seen her. Where did her habit to smooth out the folds of white and black fabric, which made her so unearthly, disappear? Her face had undergone incredible changes during the last two years. Only the light in her eyes remained.
She quickly locked the door and took us across a small courtyard lumbered with all sorts of crates and former monastery furniture. She took us to a small room, which could be accessed directly from the yard. The smell seemed familiar. I took off my hat. A dim lamp hanging from the vaulted ceiling shed some light on old church stools. She stroked my hair and asked us to wait for her. A few minutes later she returned carrying black bread, a jar full of something that looked like butter and a cup of steaming chicory coffee. “You’ll have to wait for me again. I have to lock you, but don’t be afraid – it’s for your own safety. Don’t make a sound. Give me a quarter of an hour, no more.”
When the doors opened once again and Marija came in, she was more erect than before. “Most probably I will be able to help you. But we have to be patient until it gets dark.”
She came back two hours later escorted by three men. They were dressed in tattered dark clothes and had weird coarse linen slippers on their feet. One of them, a thin man with a pair of glasses and shaven head, approached my mother showing that he knew her from before. He whispered something in her ear for a long time. Marija, was pressing her finger against her lips indicating me to keep silent. A few minutes later, they waved us to follow them. Marija stayed behind and said: “I will be seeing you. But you have to take off your shoes before you leave. You’ll have to carry them”. (P. 42)
We would see Marija every night. She would knock silently on a wooden balk. Three knocks were a sign for us to remove the bundles of books stuffed into our tunnel. She would always bring us some food, necessary pharmaceuticals and, most important, good news that Germans were losing on all frontlines and that the days of our misery would soon be over. Her optimism and courage fuelled our energy which was vital for our survival. Marija would clean Rosenberg’s HQ. This allowed her to watch the Germans and ensure that no one detected us. (P. 46)
