ZOFIA KUBAR
109
was a wild chance that they might be in the city. Fantastic as it
seems - I scarcely knew them - I decided to look them up.
Both Jan Panicek and Henryk Nowak were listed in the
telephone directory I consulted in a cafe. I tried Panicek first, at his
camera store. His pleasant, boyish face showed real surprise when I
walked in: Jews were supposed to be dead or in concentration
camps, not walking around on the Aryan side. I explained why I'd
come. He was very frank. He told me that since he was of Czech
origin, born in the Sudetenland (which the Nazis considered part of
Germany), he had applied for
Folksdeutsch
(ethnic German) status.
He had German customers who sometimes visited him at home, and
couldn't risk helping me.
I left thinking things could be worse: a
Folksdeutsch
was sup–
posed to denounceJews. But I didn't think Panicek would betray me.
I was learning to be grateful to people not only for what they did for
me but also for what they didn't do against me.
Twenty minutes later I knocked at the door of the house where
Henryk lived with his parents. He opened it-a sturdy, rather bluff
young man. He seemed frightened to see me but he was friendly,
and I felt better. I couldn't stay there, he said. His parents were sym–
pathetic to Jews but would not endanger themselves. However, he
had a girlfriend, Danka Dunin, who lived in the country in Zbojna
Gora, about thirty miles from Warsaw. Perhaps she would take me
in. She lived alone in a villa belonging to a
Folksdeutsch,
the boss of
the city sanitation department where Henryk and Danka both
worked. Danka lived there rent-free in return for caretaking. The
owner rarely showed up.
I waited while Henryk picked up Danka at work, so that he
could sound her out about me, then met them both at the railroad
station, as arranged. Danka was slender and very pretty; she had
dark, curly hair and lively brown eyes. I thought that she could be
charming if she wanted to be, but now she looked me up and down
in a sharp, unpleasant way and said curtly "She can come with me."
We took the train to Radosc and walked two miles on. sandy
ground to Zbojna Gora. The name of this hamlet means "Bandit's
Mountain" in Polish, but it looked lovely and peaceful. The house
stood at the edge of a deep wood. There was only one other building
in
sight, across a country road.
It
seemed an ideal haven.
[The author's stay in Radosc was not to be an idyll. Shelter
followed shelter, with constant threat of exposure and narrow es-
