"In 1939," Julian Padowicz says, "I was a Polish Jew-hater. Under
different circumstances my story might have been one of denouncing Jews
to the Gestapo. As it happened, I was a Jew myself, and I was seven
years old." Julian's mother was a Warsaw socialite who had no interest
in child-rearing. She turned her son over completely to his governess, a
good Catholic, named Kiki, whom he loved with all his heart. Kiki was
deeply worried about Julian's immortal soul, explaining that he could go
to Heaven only if he became a Catholic. When bombs began to fall on
Warsaw, Julian's world crumbled. His beloved Kiki returned to her family
in Lodz; Julian's stepfather joined the Polish army, and the
grief-stricken boy was left with the mother whom he hardly knew.
Resourceful and determinded, his mother did whatever was necessary to
provide for herself and her son: she brazenly cut into food lines and
befriended Russian officers to get extra rations of food and fuel. But
brought up by Kiki to distrust all things Jewish, Julian considered his
mother's behavior un-Christian. In the winter of 1940, as conditions
worsened, Julian and his mother made a dramatic escape to Hungary on
foot through the Carpathian mountains and Julian came to believe that
even Jews could go to Heaven.
