Mila 18 - Leon Uris [148]
The Ursuline Sisters have always been sympathetic and have taken as many children from us as they possibly can. They have enlisted similar help from the Sisters of the Order of the Lady Immaculate and the Sisters Szarytki of the municipal hospitals in Warsaw.
Gaby has rented flats for three more of our runners (code names: Victoria, Regina, Alina), whose main job is to supply money to hidden Jews.
Andrei tells me her flat on Shucha Street contained a windowless alcove two meters deep. A bookcase was built across it on hinges. Andrei says it is impossible to detect there is a hidden room behind the bookcase.
Zygielboim and Schwartzbart in London radioed us that fifteen thousand dollars had been dropped for us to the Home Army. Tolek Alterman was able to get only $1650. We have put an urgent priority on establishing our own direct contact with England.
Gabriela traveled to Gdynia (where her father was a key engineer in building the port) to see an old friend, Count Rodzinski. He is almost unique, a sympathetic nobleman. His estate includes several kilometers of coast line and he owns several boots. He made a successful trial run to Karlskrona, Sweden. This could be an enormous break for us. From his estate we can smuggle out key people, and from Sweden we can bring in American funds as well as visas and passports. (Our forgeries here are expensive and crude.)
What could we accomplish with a thousand Poles like Gabriela Rak—or a hundred—or two dozen?
ALEXANDER BRANDEL
Of the two, Father Kornelli was far more nervous than Gabriela Rak as they sat in the anteroom of the office of Archbishop Klondonski. The room had a bare, cold, dark, musty appearance. The walls were lined with expressionless statues.
Father Kornelli was young and highly excitable, one of a handful of priests moved to action by the happenings in the ghetto. To him it was a simple basic rule that the saving of lives was the carrying out of Christ’s work.
Monsignor Bonifacy opened the door to the archbishop’s office. “His Grace will see you now.”
Archbishop Klondonski studied them from behind his desk. He was a square, squat man with blond hair, blue eyes, and rugged features that revealed his Slavic peasant ancestry. He was deceptively simple in appearance.
The monsignor, on the other hand, was a thin, gaunt man with slender, even delicate features and dark, penetrating eyes which hinted a shrewd, probing mind.
Gabriela and Father Kornelli kissed the archbishop’s ring, and he waved them into chairs opposite him. Monsignor Bonifacy slipped into a chair across the room, watching, listening, unnoticed.
“Gabriela Rak!” Klondonski said expansively, in the manner of a politician running for office. “By chance the daughter of Fryderyk Rak?”
“Yes, sir.”
“A fine man. A great Pole. I remember him when he was one of the engineers building the port of Gdynia. I was a young priest at the time, not much older than Father Kornelli. Gdynia was my first parish.”
Gabriela studied his open pleasantness and calculated it was a ruse with which he disarmed his visitors.
“If I am not mistaken,” the churchman continued, “he met an untimely death in Switzerland.”
“Your Grace has a phenomenal memory.”
“And your mother—and sister, was it?”
“They live in America.”
“A good place these days. Great Pole, your father. Now, tell me about yourself, young lady.”
“After finishing my schooling I returned to Warsaw and until the war I worked as an aide in the American Embassy. I am now teaching at the Ursuline Convent.”
“Ah, yes.” He leaned back in his chair, smiling like an amiable Friar Tuck, reasonably assured her request would be nominal and in the nature of a personal favor. “And your problem,