A knock on the door—a neighbour enters. Irena. Her ever-laughing eyes are worried. One of her close neighbours (a senior civil servant, a thinker, a poet), having departed from Warsaw during the military operations, left his three-room flat under her care. There are items of high value there, especially the priceless library. Rumour has it that such premises will be seized by the Municipal Board. Fearing that they would place inappropriate people there, she seeks advice from us—what to do, how to secure the flat.
We look at one another in unison. In our minds a thought occurs: if only we could put the fire victims there.
But they are not members of the Co-operative.
We share the matter with Irena, and she seizes upon it. She advises us to tell the Co-operative that the victims of fire in question are our close friends, since they are Jews, just like us.564 And she will try to get the flat allocated for them—of course—if we vouch for them. And so it happened.
[6] Three days later, they arrived in a droshky: two worried, miserable elderly people (they had been well-to-do only a month earlier) with a daughter and two suitcases containing the few things rescued or donated by relatives.
The first night. A new problem. They have no bedding. In the rooms they have been given there is only one bed. Consultation with neighbours. How to help these people. They cannot use the donations collected on the estate—they are not members of the “Glass Houses” Tenant Association.565 It is impossible to organise a collection specifically for them at this time. Too late an hour. What we managed to give ourselves is not enough.
We decide to turn to Mrs Si., the head of the Sanitary-Emergency Centre, who is in charge of things donated for the wounded in September, including bedding, linens, and even a large cot.
But is she going to give us such things? She might refuse. In any case, we must go. We go to her.
To my surprise, Mrs Si. immediately gets up from the table (she was eating supper), takes the Centre key and goes to get the things we need.
