B2-39 · The Last Message

The Last Message

Warsaw, August 1944. On the twenty-ninth day of the Uprising, Ola was fourteen years old and had already forgotten what it was like to sleep in a bed. She was a messenger for the Home Army. Her mother thought she was helping in a field hospital, and Ola had decided that it was better that way.

That evening, her commander called her into a cellar in the Old Town. He handed her a small folded paper and told her to sew it into the lining of her jacket. It had to reach a commander in the city center before morning, and there was only one way to get there: under the ground, through the sewers.

"Have you ever been down there?" he asked.

"No," she said, and tried to smile. "But I've always wanted to see where the rats live."

Her guide was a boy called Janek, perhaps sixteen, with a cap that was too big for him. He had been through the sewers twice before. He lifted the heavy cover in the middle of the street, and they climbed down an iron ladder into a darkness that smelled worse than anything Ola had ever imagined.

"Hold my belt," Janek whispered. "And don't speak. The Germans throw grenades into the openings when they hear voices."

"How long will it take?"

"Four hours, if we're lucky." He was quiet for a moment. "If we're not, it doesn't matter how long."

They walked bent over in water that reached their knees. Ola thought of her mother, who would be standing in the queue for water at this time, and of her little brother, who had made her promise to bring him a piece of sugar.

After two hours, they stopped to rest. Janek took something out of his pocket and pressed it into her hand. It was a sugar cube, wrapped in a piece of newspaper.

"I can't take your food," she said.

"It isn't food," he answered. "Sugar is for courage, not for hunger. My mother always says so." In the dark she could not see his face, but she knew he was smiling.

Keep walking, whatever happens, Janek had told her before they went down. Somewhere under Krakowskie Przedmieście, there was a bang above their heads, and the tunnel filled with dust and shouting. When the dust settled, Ola's hand was holding nothing. She called his name once, very quietly. Then she remembered his words: Keep walking.

She walked on alone, counting her steps so that she would not have to think. At the end of the tunnel, hands pulled her out into the gray morning light. She was so dirty that the soldiers laughed, and then they stopped laughing when she tore open her jacket and gave them the message.

She asked everyone about a boy called Janek with a big cap. Nobody knew him. Five weeks later, the Uprising ended, and Warsaw was burned almost to the ground.

Ola survived the war. She became a teacher, got married and had two daughters. She never told them about the sewers. She gave the sugar cube to her little brother, but she kept the piece of newspaper in a book for sixty years.

In 2004, when the Warsaw Rising Museum opened, her granddaughter took her there. They walked slowly past the photographs, the weapons and the red-and-white armbands, until Ola stopped in front of a wall of young faces.

One of the boys had a cap that was too big for him. Under the photo, there was a name, Jan, and a date: he had died on August 30, 1944, in the sewers under the Old Town. He had been sixteen.

Her granddaughter asked her what was wrong. Ola took the old piece of newspaper out of her handbag, put it carefully on the floor below the photograph and stood there for a long time. When she finally spoke, it was only three words.

"Thank you, Janek."