Karolina's Twins Read Online Free Page A
Author: Ronald H. Balson
obtained a signed contract from a Warsaw investment group and we were packing to move.â
âAnd Karolina?â
âOf course I had already spilled the news to Karolina right after my father and I had our talk, but she hadnât asked her parents yet. She went home that night and asked her mother, who, shockingly, approved. But when her father came home that weekend, he put his foot down. âNo way,â he said. âItâs all crap, this war hysteria. Just a bunch of German blowhards. The Scheinmans are Polish. Theyâre not going to like those stuck-up Parisians, Karolina. Theyâll be back soon. Things will be better then.â
âKarolina was heartbroken. We were heartbroken. She was part of our family. My mother called us the Two L sâLena and Lina. I was losing my best friend. Karolina kept begging her father. All around us, our social circles were disintegrating. Families were making plans to move. Some just packed up and headed east to Ukraine or Romania. Some went south to Slovakia. Every day another one of our friends would say good-bye. But Karolinaâs father wouldnât change his mind.
âOf course, as he pointed out, not every family was moving. Some were in denial and foolishly believed in Polandâs military defenses or the alliances with Britain and France. Some had no money and no way to leave. Karolinaâs father had decided his family would stay in Chrzanów. He was saving his money in Warsaw and he intended to come back and reopen his tailor shop.
âI cried. Milosz cried. I didnât know who heâd miss more: Karolina or Madeleine. But Karolina and I made a secret pact. As soon as I was settled in Paris, she was going to run away, take a train and join us. I was going to send her the money. Milosz overheard us and threatened to tell our parents if she didnât promise to bring Madeleine, but I donât think that thought ever entered her mind. She wouldnât go anywhere without her dog.â
âBut your family never did move to Paris, did they?â
Lena slowly shook her head. âSadly, no. The buyers, the Warsaw consortium, couldnât raise the money. Because of the Depression and the impending threats from Germany, the bank wouldnât consummate the loan. The buyers begged us for time to raise the money and pleaded with my father not to sell to someone else. But there was no one else. It was now June 1939. My father couldnât move without the sale proceeds. So we waited. And hoped.
âOn September 1, 1939, Germany invaded Poland. Seventy thousand Poles were killed and almost seven hundred thousand were taken into custody. At six A.M. , Stukas strafed the nearby railroad station. We heard radio broadcasts of German bombings and we knew that our plans to move were off the table. In retrospect, it probably wouldnât have mattered if we had moved to Paris. Hitler invaded France the following May, and Paris fell on June fourteenth. I doubt our fate would have been much different in Paris. Anyway, three days later, on September fourth, German trucks rolled into Chrzanów and soldiers occupied our town without a fight.
âThe Nazis settled in like the deep winter snow and just as cold. And they never left. Their numbers seemed to increase every day. The SS and Gestapo didnât arrive until a little later, but the German army was bad enough. The first thing they did was to take prisoners. Men only. They arrested Jews and non-Jews alike.
âSoldiers came into the store in the late afternoon and pulled my father out from behind the register. The more prominent you were, the more likely youâd be taken. If you hesitated, they shot you. One older man named Chaim, who was hard of hearing, failed to immediately follow a command to halt and was shot dead in the middle of the street.
âThe Germans locked the Jewish men in the synagogue and the Catholic men in the church. The overflow was locked in
âAnd Karolina?â
âOf course I had already spilled the news to Karolina right after my father and I had our talk, but she hadnât asked her parents yet. She went home that night and asked her mother, who, shockingly, approved. But when her father came home that weekend, he put his foot down. âNo way,â he said. âItâs all crap, this war hysteria. Just a bunch of German blowhards. The Scheinmans are Polish. Theyâre not going to like those stuck-up Parisians, Karolina. Theyâll be back soon. Things will be better then.â
âKarolina was heartbroken. We were heartbroken. She was part of our family. My mother called us the Two L sâLena and Lina. I was losing my best friend. Karolina kept begging her father. All around us, our social circles were disintegrating. Families were making plans to move. Some just packed up and headed east to Ukraine or Romania. Some went south to Slovakia. Every day another one of our friends would say good-bye. But Karolinaâs father wouldnât change his mind.
âOf course, as he pointed out, not every family was moving. Some were in denial and foolishly believed in Polandâs military defenses or the alliances with Britain and France. Some had no money and no way to leave. Karolinaâs father had decided his family would stay in Chrzanów. He was saving his money in Warsaw and he intended to come back and reopen his tailor shop.
âI cried. Milosz cried. I didnât know who heâd miss more: Karolina or Madeleine. But Karolina and I made a secret pact. As soon as I was settled in Paris, she was going to run away, take a train and join us. I was going to send her the money. Milosz overheard us and threatened to tell our parents if she didnât promise to bring Madeleine, but I donât think that thought ever entered her mind. She wouldnât go anywhere without her dog.â
âBut your family never did move to Paris, did they?â
Lena slowly shook her head. âSadly, no. The buyers, the Warsaw consortium, couldnât raise the money. Because of the Depression and the impending threats from Germany, the bank wouldnât consummate the loan. The buyers begged us for time to raise the money and pleaded with my father not to sell to someone else. But there was no one else. It was now June 1939. My father couldnât move without the sale proceeds. So we waited. And hoped.
âOn September 1, 1939, Germany invaded Poland. Seventy thousand Poles were killed and almost seven hundred thousand were taken into custody. At six A.M. , Stukas strafed the nearby railroad station. We heard radio broadcasts of German bombings and we knew that our plans to move were off the table. In retrospect, it probably wouldnât have mattered if we had moved to Paris. Hitler invaded France the following May, and Paris fell on June fourteenth. I doubt our fate would have been much different in Paris. Anyway, three days later, on September fourth, German trucks rolled into Chrzanów and soldiers occupied our town without a fight.
âThe Nazis settled in like the deep winter snow and just as cold. And they never left. Their numbers seemed to increase every day. The SS and Gestapo didnât arrive until a little later, but the German army was bad enough. The first thing they did was to take prisoners. Men only. They arrested Jews and non-Jews alike.
âSoldiers came into the store in the late afternoon and pulled my father out from behind the register. The more prominent you were, the more likely youâd be taken. If you hesitated, they shot you. One older man named Chaim, who was hard of hearing, failed to immediately follow a command to halt and was shot dead in the middle of the street.
âThe Germans locked the Jewish men in the synagogue and the Catholic men in the church. The overflow was locked in
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