AGATHA
AGATHA
Ela, my dearest daughter.
I will no longer be in this world when you read this
letter. I don't even know if you'll read it at all because I don't know if I'll
leave it to the notary guy.
Dearest Ela. You have always been our support and our pride.
Just like your elder son, Tot. When he got a professorship at the university,
you wondered why Mother and I were giggling. It was funny that it was that
university. But we decided that the professor could not be longer called Tot,
only by his name.
You have probably been surprised that when Grandfather
and Grandmother died, this house was inherited not by the Mother or me but by
you.
I know you have always had clashes with the Mother,
but it was she who told Grandpa that it would be all right only in this way.
Now, this property is completely yours. As it always
was. Even more, than you can imagine.
Grandfather got it from the Gaul family when they got
an order to move into the ghetto. With all notary papers.
Grandfather and Grandmother forbade us, and the Mother
used to say not to wake the wolf. Because what happened cannot be undone.
When the Gaul relative came here a few years ago, we
gave him only the mezuzah, which was once placed on the Gaul's door. But we
didn't say anything else.
I even went once to Father Musial, who baptized you,
to confess.
But he said that it is a matter between me and God.
But when Mother died I made a decision.
You always knew that your mother was my sister Agatha,
who was shot by mistake during the occupation. This we have never hidden from
you. We have raised you, and you have always been our beloved daughter.
Even if the Mother was hard for you, it was only
because of the grief.
I would like to tell you about Agatha, your mother.
She was always a little weird. She had only one friend
at school. The Gaul's daughter, Gena. They were such close friends that either Gena
slept at our place or Agatha spent all the time with Gena at the Gaul's home.
We were even a little mad at her because she began to speak Jewish to us.
The Gauls were not that religious. They kept their
holidays and the Sabbath, but without any exaggeration. They treated Agatha
like she was their second daughter. All neighbors were puzzled by the situation
and said that Agatha is probably some changeling.
The girls finished school and Gena just married when
the Germans came.
When the Gaul family moved into the ghetto, it wasn't
so severe at first, and Agatha often visited Gena there. At first, Gena had
also visited us, but it has stopped when she got pregnant. Then it got worse
because they have even stopped issuing the passes from the ghetto. Gena was
sent to some work just after she gave birth to the baby. She was still weak
after that and the Gestapo man beat her unconscious because of that. She was
brought almost dead home, and the baby was unattended because the Germans had
already taken the old Gaul's away. When Agatha slipped into the ghetto, she
took the child to our place.
We had this baby for almost six months when it
happened. Gena didn't get better, and she asked Agatha to see her child the
last time. Agatha, that stupid girl, agreed. She went into the ghetto with Gena's
child. And when Agatha was passing the hole in the wall on her way from the
ghetto, the patrol spotted her. I got it to know, because Gena's husband, who
followed her out, had somehow sent us a letter from the ghetto. The policemen
thought that it was a Jewish woman, who wanted to escape from the ghetto, and
they just shot her.
Poor girl did not die right away. When one of the
policemen approached her, she told him that if he had God in his heart, he had
to deliver her child to us.
And he came with this child and left immediately.
This child was you. That's why we could never tell you
who your father was.
After this letter, we have not heard anything from him
or Gena.
And the ghetto was emptied for people. They probably
took them to Treblinka concentration camp. Only some corpses remained there.
Ela, my love. This is how I settled my account with
God.
May God protect you.
Your loving father. John.
Alex
Wieseltier
April 2020