The Things We Cannot Say

The story of Alina Dziak is a heroic story of the power of hope in a dark time. The novel asserts the dignity and integrity of the human will through the manifestation of Alina’s hope. When she wonders whether Tomasz has been killed when the Nazis occupy Warsaw, when she hides in the claustrophobic darkness of the farm’s cellar, when she disciplines herself to breathe when she and Saul Weiss hide in a produce crate, when she awaits Tomasz’s arrival at the Soviet-run Polish army camp, Alina clings to a kind of power that gives her the confidence not to surrender to her deepest fears. Tomasz will return to her, and she will not be destroyed by the Nazis. Alina draws on the strength of her family, her commitments to help her friends and neighbors, and her unconditional love for Tomasz, and she rises to the challenge of her conditions. She dares to hope.

Hope, that uncertain and unquantifiable notion that nothing can destroy the spirit, sustains Alina. She cannot not believe Tomasz will return; even decades later in Florida, she never entirely abandons the feeling that Tomasz somehow will return. Throughout the ordeal of the Nazi occupation, despite being separated from the man she loves, despite profound hunger and living with the uncertainty of whether this day might be her last, Alina endures. She withstands the emotional, spiritual, and physical crises caused by the Nazis. Hope is a curious emotion grounded in the flimsiest logic asserted against a mounting body of counterevidence. Hope is the special privilege of the survivor, those who engage circumstances and know (not believe) that things will get better. The novel argues that surrender to hopelessness, cynicism, and pessimism is easy, but transcending to resilient hope is the stuff of profound emotional strength. Although she is Catholic, Alina finds hope not in the comforting promises of her faith but in the certainty in her heart that what she is enduring, the indignities, the suffering, the anxieties, cannot defeat her. That “glimmer of hope” (138) sustains Alina and animates her story.

Alina survives the Nazi occupation of Poland. Hope is one thing, an emotion that can raise a flagging spirit, but actually facing the unrelenting demands of day-to-day, hour-to-hour survival introduces a stark level of brutal sacrifice and the willingness to do much with little despite overwhelming evidence that no effort, sacrifice, or courageous gesture can guarantee survival. Through love and hope, the novel offers themes that can direct and even elevate the daily lives of readers by reminding them to value the presence of significant others and to never concede conditions are as bad as they seem.

Still a teenager, Alina faces hunger; long hours hiding in the cellar without access to water or sunlight or fresh air, or even a bathroom; days without bathing and living in conditions that render any notion of hygiene ironic. A child, she must labor in the fields daily beyond her strength, all the while aware of the crematoria tower of the nearby extermination camp. Her family must accept the meager rations distributed by the occupation army, the indignities of life under their occupation. She must master anger and panic and turn her every negative emotion, every kneejerk reaction, toward the difficult commitment to survive another night, another hour. When Alina’s mother cautiously reveals the secret stock of provisions she has hidden in a basement, which not even Alina knew about, she does so despite the obvious: Should the Nazis discover the stash, she will be executed. The Poles heroically do what they must to survive, and as such, the novel becomes a testimony of a time and place in which the human will rose to fight despite impossible odds. The Polish underground, the elaborate plan to get the canister of film out, the network of supplies maintained by the Poles, all testify to the human spirit’s ability to endure and survive. In the end, that sustains Alina. “I had no power to change my lot,” she admits, “All I had was the breath in my lungs […] If I kept moving forward, I could survive until someone else changed my world” (92).