The Road to Liberation: Trials and Triumphs of WWII

by Marion Kummerow

“You will have to learn,” Renata said. “This is no time for cowards.”

  Magda rose from the floor and followed Renata out. She had nobody left. Renata and Aleš would be her family now. She was now displaced, with nowhere else to go but to those that had sworn to resist and defy, and perhaps die in doing so.

  III

  October 1942–December 1942

  10

  October 1942

  Danger left a funny meaty taste in Magda’s mouth. It stuck to the roof, thick and syrupy, and sometimes it made her want to vomit. Miles east of Litoměřice, she was supposedly safe in the dilapidated house in the woods. Yet the journey to the next town to scrounge for food was enough to age Magda another year ahead of her twenty-one. And still she pushed against her limits, a constant tug-of-war between her caution and her contempt.

  The bicycle was leaning up against the wall of the local cigarette and news shop. The boy, maybe ten or eleven years old, had ridden past her in the brown garb of a Hitler youth. He had parked the bicycle across the street, taken a stack of newspapers strapped to it, and gone inside. The early-morning fog settled over the muddy road once more. She waited in the falling mist. Two policemen, both anonymous beneath their caps and protected behind the shields that were their uniforms, walked by the building shortly after. Magda bent her head and tugged the headscarf long past the point where she felt certain the mark was hidden. When the patrols had disappeared, she crossed over the muddy road to the bicycle, as skittish and jumpy as a newborn colt.

  Anything Magda could do, Renata had said, anything at all, was a contribution to the effort. So, she would steal the boy’s bicycle instead of hunting for edible garbage.

  Blood pounding in her ears, Magda yanked the handlebars up and pushed the bicycle onto the road. She mounted it and pedaled away, the taste of dates coating her tongue, her back prickling at the image of one of those patrols aiming his pistol at her.

  Just west of the train tracks, Magda rolled the contraption down the bank of the Elbe and pushed it over and into the river. It was a waste, but if she were caught with the stolen bicycle, it would cost her her life. Not because of the bicycle but because the Gestapo would finally have Koenig’s housemaid in custody.

  Magda brushed off her hands and scrambled back up to the road. It was time to search for food. It was how she spent most of her days. Food and clothing were the priority, but she would not go back into that town. She would have to find somewhere else to raid for provisions.

  Stealing from the locals, Aleš had tried to convince her, was a necessity, not a crime. He reminded her that those who collaborated with the Germans were warm inside their homes. With winter coming, Aleš warned Magda that she did not have the luxury of principles.

  North of the river, a hamlet was nestled at the bottom of a dale not unlike any of the hundreds of others in Bohemia, not unlike Voštiny or Lidice. The undulating hilly fields, the serene lake, and the enormous stork nests on the roofs and chimneys were all alike. This hamlet even a little creek that ran beneath a willow tree just like on her great-aunt’s property. Magda squeezed her eyes shut. The pain—the not knowing whether her family had survived the massacre of Lidice—had not eased. The loneliness, the isolation, and the constant danger added to her misery.

  In the hamlet before her, smoke rose from the chimney of only two of the four houses—the one nearest to her and the last one. What did that mean? That only two families remained? Where were the other two then? Magda edged her way to the house nearest to the forest, her teeth chattering as the mist continued to fall, soaking her headscarf. Droplets rolled from her loose collar down the back of her neck.

  It was past milking time, and the families were having breakfast. She would have to wait until they led their cows and goats out to the pastures. She checked the grass. Yes, it was still long enough, still green enough, and maybe a week to go before the animals would be locked up in their stables for the winter. But today they would put the livestock out. Her stomach grumbled, though hunger had become a constant companion. Magda could see that her calves and her thighs were losing their shape. Her waist had diminished as well. The idea of being hurt by Jana’s jokes about growing too plump seemed utterly ridiculous these days.

  The clothes she wore were not hers and her dress was too large, but it had been the easiest one to pluck from the clothesline in yet another nameless village. The coat she had taken from the foyer of a school gymnasium during a tournament—snatched it just like that—must have belonged to someone large. She had grabbed it without thinking and draped it over herself as if it belonged to her, only to discover that the sleeves were many inches too long. She’d quickly rolled them up, hitched the middle into her waistband, and marched out of the building. That had been at the end of summer, and now both items were too light for the coming winter.

  The wooden door of the first house scraped open, and a woman wearing a dark-green shawl over her head came out with a bucket and a small dish. She placed them both by the door. Two small children followed her, a little girl and an older boy. They went to the barn next to the house.

  The smell of woodsmoke reached Magda as she crept nearer. The woman spoke to the children as they entered the barn, but Magda could not make out her words. Hay rustled inside, and a cow bellowed. Then the boy appeared again, picked up the pitchfork that leaned against the barn, and went back inside. The woman led a black-and-white cow out of the barn. It did not look healthy with its protruding ribs and limping gait. Its hindquarters were raw and scabbed beneath the matted hide. The woman pulled on the rope tied to the cow’s horns, and the little girl followed her mother—if it was her mother—out into the field. The boy pitched hay out from the other side of the barn. With just one cow to clean up after, he would not be busy for long.

  Making sure that nobody else was about, Magda sprinted out from her hiding place, through the picket fence, and to the open door of the cottage. She looked down at the bucket and the dish the woman had lain in front of the door. Magda snatched a small piece of soap from the dish and put it into her pocket before going inside.

  The fire in the oven was down to embers, and it was warm. Flies whirled over the empty breakfast plates on a roughly hewn table. One fly bumped and buzzed angrily against a windowpane above a bed. Magda grabbed a crumb of bread off the table—how dare anyone leave that behind?—and tipped each of the three cups to her lips, getting the last drops of milk. A pot on top of the clay oven contained a layer of buttermilk skin along the sides, but her eyes landed on the shape of a bread loaf beneath a clean cloth. She stuffed the pockets of her overcoat with that, tore off a piece, and cleaned the pot of buttermilk with it. She shoved the whole chunk into her mouth.

  No extra clothes were lying about, but Magda would need a warmer cover for her bed. She yanked a blanket off a bed in the front room.

  A hollow step.

  Magda whirled around. The cover slipped from her hands and onto the floor. The boy stood before the doorway in his dingy gray tunic. They stared at one another. He was no older than seven, but by the look of concession, she knew this had happened to him before.

  Magda strode past him. He did not move. She sprinted back into the woods. If he had not been seven, if he had not given her permission—if he had been the enemy—she would not have been able to protect herself. It was not the first time she thought of the apple tree in Voštiny and the guns her brothers had buried beneath the apple tree. She was half a day’s walk away. But she would have to go under cover of darkness.

  Hidden in the orchard outside the house she had grown up in, she waited until the German family went to bed. Someone played an accordion, smoke rose from the chimney, a lamp burned in the window, and a dog was tied up outside the door. Magda treaded carefully around her own property. It occurred to her that her world had been more than simply turned upside down. She had been thrown outside of it. Her parents had likely been killed in Lidice, there had been no word from her brothers, and she was on the run from the Nazi officer wh
o governed the district. And these strangers—these Germans from somewhere—now lived in her home. This was what it must feel like to be dead and to return as a ghost, to be looking in on a life that had gone on without her.

  Once the lights flickered out, Magda crept toward the farmyard. The washing line was still hung up, the apple tree just to the right of it. She dropped to the ground, soggy from all the rain, and as she tested the earth around the southeastern root of the apple tree, hoping for a clue, despair wrenched through her. Her brothers’ guns could be anywhere within the radius. Her knees ached from the cold. Her first attempt turned up nothing. She moved away from the trunk, and using a rock she had found and her bare hands, she dug a second hole.

  She was covered in mud. And then the dog barked from the front of the house. The barking gradually became furious.

  Magda pushed herself up from the muddy hole when pain sliced through the heel of her palm. She bent closer to the ground and patted the spot where her hand had just been. It was the corner of a metal box. A lamp flicked on in the house, spilling light into the side of the yard. A man yelled at the dog. Magda raked her hands around the corner of the box and eventually pried it out of the earth just as the dog’s raspy barking came around. A chain rattled along the ground. It had been let loose. A voice called into the darkness, ordering the dog to protect, to get whatever there was to get.

  Scooping the box against her, Magda fled into the orchard. The dog stopped at the edge of the property. The last thing she made out as she whirled around, wheeling backward, was the outline of someone holding a flashlight. She turned and disappeared down the hill and into the dale.

  “All you were supposed to do was stay out of sight,” Aleš snapped. He paced before her. “How dare you?”

  “How dare you put yourself into danger?” Renata translated.

  As if Magda had not understood why Aleš was so angry. Truly she did. She was asking herself who the hell she had thought she was, pulling that stunt.

  Davide examined the weapons on the table. He was the only one visibly pleased with Magda’s undertaking.

  Renata reached into her satchel and tossed Magda an army tunic and a brown woolen pullover. Magda did not ask where they came from. She did not want to know. Every time the three of them checked on her, they were dressed in an assortment of newly pilfered military gear. Over the last months, Aleš had assembled a Red Army jacket with the insignia ripped off, a German infantry cap, and a pair of jack boots. Renata wore brown breeches and a military tactical strap draped over her like a debutante’s sash. Magda wanted a pair of trousers as well. And new boots. The soles of her shoes were cracked and useless, her socks had holes in them, and her feet were always wet in this weather.

  Wordlessly, Magda unbuttoned her dress, slipped it off her shoulders, and pulled the tunic over her head. It reeked of sweat. She pulled the dress back on over that, then tugged on the pullover while Aleš and Renata watched her. Magda stood before them, taking the two of them in as well. Did they see the kinds of changes in her as she saw in them? Aleš had gray hairs along the edges of his temples, although his hair had been shorn to the scalp, and his face was gaunt. When he spoke, his breath stank, even as far as Magda stood away from him. Renata’s frown lines were deeper, and she had new ones around her mouth. Her hair was matted and dirty, pressed to her head like a helmet. She also seemed to have lost a half a foot in height and girth. Davide, in the meantime, had grown a grizzled beard, and bags had settled beneath his eyes, which had changed color—from hazel to dark green.

  Magda reached for her coat and withdrew the remainder of the half loaf of bread and the knob of soap. “I got this too.”

  She placed them next to Davide, who pulled the trigger of the second revolver, then wiped at it again with his coat sleeve, casually glancing at the loot. The rain picked up outside, and water dripped in from the roof and into the tin pot Magda had placed on the floor near the door.

  Renata considered the items and rolled her eyes. “Keep the bread and the soap. You need it.”

  “And you’ll take the weapons,” Magda said.

  Davide turned in his seat. “I think I can dig up some bullets…” He winked. “Pun intended. We’ll take one. You keep the other.”

  Unearthing the weapons beneath the apple tree had only left Magda with another layer of fear, and the shame that followed that.

  Aleš yanked one of the revolvers out of Davide’s hand and thrust it at Magda. “You are going to learn how to use this.”

  Magda backed away. He considered her. No, she would not keep a revolver. She had been a fool, taken another unnecessary risk. Better the guns go to those who knew how to use them, deserved them, were brave enough to require them in the first place.

  “You can’t hide forever,” Renata said. “At some point, Magda, you’re going to have to face that world out there. It’s the only one we’ve got until we force it to be something different.”

  Magda shook her head.

  Renata strode over to Aleš and took the revolver from his hand before placing it on the table. She then led Magda to the single bed. They sat, the wood frame creaking. They weren’t many—Aleš and Renata, Davide and Father Gabriel were four of a handful of the local Czechs and Slovaks who did what they could both aboveground and underground. But the Nazis had managed to crush the opposition throughout the country. Their little group had very few resources, relying on the hard-to-access roads and the wooded mountains to keep them hidden. And still Aleš and Renata were frustrated—Magda sensed it—that they could not do more. Worst of all, the one and only bridge between the north and south—between Litoměřice and Theresienstadt—had been closed off. Only those with travel permits were allowed to cross. There were only so many fake permits the group could manage, so Davide had become quite the talent with the radio.

  He had to keep moving to avoid being detected by patrols set up to pick up radio frequencies, but his close connections to the railway lines and his contacts in the various train stations had allowed him to create a flow of information.

  “Have you heard anything from or about Eva?” Magda asked. She always asked.

  Renata shook her head. “That’s good news, Magda. Koenig would make an example of her. Even if she was captured elsewhere, he’d put her out on display—either as a poster or, you know, publicly, I mean. The bastard.”

  Magda swallowed the lump in her throat. “Please tell me where Eva has gone with Samuel. Please. If anything should happen to either you or Aleš…” She inhaled and held it until she was in control again. “I need to know where she might be, Renata.”

  Renata looked at Aleš. He looked up at the ceiling, brushed a hand over his head.

  “All right, Magda,” Renata said. “Eva took him into the Carpathians. There’s a remote mountain village near the borders to Hungary and Ukraine.”

  That was a long way to go.

  “She told Aleš she knows someone living there. If she made it, she should be relatively safe.”

  Magda looked up at the leaking ceiling. Nowhere was safe. Ukraine certainly was not. Hungary was an Axis power. And they still did not know whether Eva had even reached her intended destination. She dreaded asking the next question. “What about the Taubers?”

  Everyone shifted before Renata answered. “Davide’s contact keeps track of how many trains are coming and going and from where. They’re going straight into Theresienstadt now but they come in full—beyond full, really—and the ones heading east have picked up in number over the last weeks especially.”

  Magda frowned. “Where are they sending everyone?”

  Renata said, “There are rumors…labor camps, concentration camps…”

  “Death camps,” Aleš said. He leaned against the edge of the table. Davide and he shared a look.

  Magda’s breath hitched. “What do you mean by death camps?”

  Mouth twisted, Renata said, “We can’t confirm anything. We’re not sure but…the children of Lidice? Remember?”
/>   Magda’s heart cracked.

  “Apparently the Nazis have invented a rather efficient…method.”

  “If the rumors are true,” Davide interjected.

  Magda shut her eyes. “Do we even know whether the Taubers are still in Theresienstadt at all?”

  “We do,” Aleš said. “For whatever reason, the Jews from the protectorate have been left alone in the meantime.”

  Magda opened her eyes to check whether he was lying.

  He gazed back at her steadily, raised an eyebrow. “The SS is allowing letters out now, and then we found out that food parcels have been arriving for some people.”

  Magda allowed herself to brighten. “Well, that’s good, isn’t it? That’s something.”

  Aleš cleared his throat. He rubbed a hand over his smooth head. “There are a lot of prominent people in the ghetto. We believe the camp administrators are using it to their advantage. To give the other Jewish families more reason to cooperate.”

  Renata shifted on the sagging bed. “Many of the Reich’s Christian locals and church leaders have been protesting about the treatment of the Jews—”

  “Think about it,” Aleš said. “If a Jewish family receives word from a relative in Theresienstadt, or if news of someone famous—a lecturer, an artist, a celebrity, whoever—”

  “Like Frau Tauber,” Magda said. “She’s well known. And Dr. Tauber, well, he’s known everywhere.”

  “If it seeps out,” Aleš said, “and they claim that they are quite well, then the Nazis can lure the Jews to go with them in a relatively quiet fashion.”

  “How do you know all this?” Magda asked.

  Renata hesitated. “Someone escaped.”

  “What?” Magda straightened.

  “Two brothers, both carpenters from Prague,” Renata said, “were on detail. They were helping with a film set.”