They treated them like kinsmen. They called her sister, and her husband brother. She did not understand it. But she could feel it changing her. She would never be the same.

Ulrike glanced down at her son just in front of her, and then to her daughter at her side, whose tiny hand lay in hers. She gave it an unconscious squeeze.

She hoped the youngsters would in later years remember more from the experience of these weeks than fear. However it all turned out, something deep was at work. She found herself praying for the youngsters, that they would grow to be the kind of people who would serve others as they were themselves being served by the loving hands of God’s family—a family much wider and more encompassing than only the boundaries of their Jewish faith.

Her husband and the rabbi still spoke together, more animated now. The air was punctuated with their gestures. Occasionally she heard one of them laugh.

She could not explain why, but the sounds of their voices mingling as one sent strange rays of warmth through her heart.

69 Even the Petals Have Fragrance

69

Even the Petals Have Fragrance

The eight weary travelers awoke one at a time from a fitful and uneven afternoon’s sleep.

When Heziah came to himself, he saw Jakob standing at one of the windows of the barn, staring out into the gathering darkness. He walked quietly across the wood floor to join him.

This was supposed to be the final leg of their trek.

“Could not sleep—eh, my friend?” said the rabbi softly.

Kropf turned toward him and nodded.

“I suppose I am anxious to be gone from here.”

“It has been a long six weeks. I too will rejoice to sleep more than two nights in the same place.”

The two men fell silent.

The factory worker and rabbi, by common Hebrew heritage, had suddenly been thrown together in this nighttime life-and-death journey across the Poland of their ancestors in which they had suddenly become outcasts. They were the hunted who knew that any day, any night, the slightest mistake, the slightest slipup could mean death to their family. They had learned to depend on one another, to trust one another… and to consider one another brother and friend.

“What will you do?” asked Jakob at length. “What will you do with the box and its contents?”

“If we reach the safe house all will be well. Hopefully it will be protected there for a time. Then I must try to contact the southern network,” replied Wissen. “We must do what we can to get as many as possible across the southern borders.”

“Your wife will object.”

The rabbi sighed.