The Road to Liberation: Trials and Triumphs of WWII

by Marion Kummerow

  “Are you going to try and find him when this is all over?”

  “There, that’s it. That’s what I imagine. I imagine finding Samuel.”

  Karol took in a breath, blew it out, creating an icy cloud to float out into the night. “What about having your own?”

  “Then there would have to be a third.”

  He laughed. “You can have four if you want.”

  “No. Then I’d have to have five. And that’s a lot when I do not even have someone to love.”

  Karol was silent for a while as they completed the first circuit. “Have you ever been? In love, I mean?”

  Magda lingered behind him. She did not want to lie to him so up close. “No.” Her heart ached for something as simple as Radek and his first kiss.

  “But why five? Or only three?”

  “There is bad luck in even numbers.”

  “Like in a bouquet of flowers?” he asked.

  “Like in a bouquet of flowers,” she said.

  “The best would be,” Karol whispered into the dark, “if Samuel was reunited with his family.”

  “The best chance for that to happen,” Magda said brokenly, “is if they get the medicine they need to assure that. And the people I thought were my friends are preventing me from doing that.”

  Magda touched the sides of her head beneath the coif, the wimple, and the veil. It was the perfect guise. She was a Catholic nun, concerned about the rumors of disease and epidemics in Theresienstadt. Her convent was sending her to check on whether they might send food and medicine. Beneath the veil was her attempt to create the burned face. She had heated the gelatin, had glued the silk strips onto her face, and with a depression stick—also taken from Dr. Tauber’s office—applied the warm gelatin to her face. After it had cooled, she began applying the makeup. The rouge, the lipstick, and the black kohl that she rubbed along the edges of her face wound to make it look like seared skin. She had to be careful that the whole thing did not peel off her face. Working with the compact mirror had been a challenge, but Magda again went with the idea that all she had to do was create the effect, not perfection.

  She then wrapped the bandage around her head, covering her masterwork, and donned the nun’s habit.

  That half hour on the road to Litoměřice was a battle waged between Magda’s conscience and her heart. She stopped several times, holding the sack cinched at her side, and asked herself, really, what was the right thing to do? Renata claimed that she and Aleš were sure the medicines would not get to the Taubers, but how could they know that if they had not even tried? Whom had they asked? Magda was not satisfied with simple assumptions—she wanted proof. And she told her nagging conscience that was all she was going to do—go ask, get proof. And hope that Aleš, Jakob, Renata, or the Jewish boys did not notice that the medications were all gone. When the group left her alone at the bunker, she took the opportunity. They offered to take her with them—a meeting with another group that was banding together with the R3—but Magda feigned illness and said she wanted to catch up on sleep.

  Aleš and Renata were running the little group of partisans like a small army. And Aleš made it absolutely clear that he expected obedience and that his word was an order not to be disobeyed.

  She could not have involved Karol in her insubordination either. Like the others, he was taking the organization much more seriously as well, reminding Magda that he had served in the Czechoslovak Army, and he did not feel Aleš was taking his job lightly. In the world out there, Karol had explained to her, Aleš was his superior officer, and what Aleš said, Karol had every intention of following. Karol had also added that he was relieved that there was a concerted effort to organize themselves.

  “Be careful,” Karol had warned. “Partisans can be tougher—more strict. They won’t tolerate any bullshit.”

  So everyone seemed to be all right with this, except Magda, and she reminded the nagging voice in her head that she had never signed up for this army. Besides, she was only going to the post office to see whether she could get a parcel sent to Theresienstadt at all. Then she would make up her mind. She would be in and out in a heartbeat. And if she had the proper information—if she could prove Renata and Aleš wrong—what harm would she do?

  Magda could get discovered, that was what.

  The post office was in the town square, and the closer Magda neared Lidická Road, which would lead her there, the more she hesitated. She could just duck into the corner pub outside the castle walls. Wait a little. Maybe get some information as to what was going on in town. Two police officers on motorcycles turned the corner, and Magda watched them drive by. In each of their sidecars was a trunk of some kind or metal locker. They took the left fork into the town center. This was soon followed by a motorcade, and Magda stepped back. Gestapo. One, two, three vehicles. And a truck, the back flaps sealed tight.

  She halted to watch them pass. Something was happening. She turned to face the road where she had come. Maybe she should come some other time, another day. If the square was going to be swarming with Gestapo… She stared at the next car heading her way, two swastika flags on either side of the front hood. She stepped away from the curb and pressed herself up against the wall of a building. The car sped by on the cobblestoned street, Koenig’s profile in the back was, however, unmistakable.

  Now more than ever was a good reason to run back, to return to the safety of the tunnels. But something was telling her to move forward. Now it was a contest between her will and her gut instincts—a whole different field upon which to do battle.

  Magda’s instincts won. She slowly moved forward, the clock tower ahead of her. It was two in the afternoon. As she entered the square near the baroque fountain, she halted once more. Banners hung across the streets. Opposite the long rectangular square, and draped with large swastika flags on either side of the building, was the Reichskanzlei. In the center, where the busses and parades took up space depending on the day, was a high wooden platform—like a stage—with wooden crossbeams and one beam across the entire length of the stage. Two policemen—she spotted the two motorcycles and the metal lockers thrown open upon the stage—were tossing ropes over the beam and tying them. The Gestapo had built a gallows. For whom?

  The motorcade inched its way past a growing crowd of pedestrians before parking between the Reichskanzlei and the gallows. Magda walked along the left arcade, trying to avoid the people stepping out of shops and taking positions beneath the arches to look upon the grotesque display.

  “Sister? Are you all right?” A young mother, a small girl attached to her hand, had stopped in front of Magda. Both had neat blond hairdos and wore clean white blouses beneath their coats. The mother’s eyes darted along the left side of Magda’s face. “You’re…” The woman made a face, swallowed. “You’re not looking… Do you need a hospital?“

  Magda shook her head. “No. I’m just…I’ll be fine.” She touched the side of her face. Her heart lurched when the fingertips came back slick and damp. Magda turned her cheek away from the woman and pointed to the gallows. “Ah, what is happening here today?”

  The woman pulled the child to her. “Criminals. They’re to be hung. Traitors to the Reich.” She hurried past Magda after casting her one last suspicious glance.

  Along the square, the Germans had positioned several sirens and speakers for broadcasting messages. They crackled and echoed across the square. “Citizens of the Third Reich! Our great nation has been threatened and sabotaged by partisans!”

  Magda halted again. A haggard man looked twice at her. The next business was a café. The customers inside were rising, looking through the windows and slowly seeping out onto the streets. At the end of the café, one window looked only upon the coffee bar and a sideboard with a pile of newspapers stacked on it. Magda laid the bag of medicines on the windowsill and leaned in close to peer at her reflection. She clearly saw black and red spots seeping through the bandage and onto the wimple. The gelatin was melting!

  “Dear
God,” she breathed.

  Behind her own reflection, she saw the reflection of the gallows and movement. The crowd was growing thicker and moving toward the Reichskanzlei. Police were directing them all to the front. Magda followed the arcade, holding her hand alongside her face but afraid to actually touch it. She was closer to the gallows now, and she could see that the prisoners were being led up the side stairs.

  Two men, and a third dressed in a black cassock. Father Gabriel! Her heart froze when she saw the two women behind him. Oh God. She knew them all!

  A shop bell clanged violently. Magda registered the tobacco sign. A man—the boxer’s physique clearly outlined by the long black leather coat—stepped out of the door with another officer.

  “It’s an early Christmas present for me,” Richard Koenig announced. “There’s still twelve days left though. That last one could make someone very rich.”

  He stopped not four feet before Magda in the arcade. He held a cigar and bent over the lighter his companion held for him. Magda stood glued to her spot. The Obersturmbannführer puffed at the cigar several times, then lifted his chin and exhaled. He glanced in Magda’s direction.

  She was dead. Her body drained of all its blood. She saw flashes of her life: the dawn sky in Voštiny, Radek’s kiss, her mother’s hug, her brother’s dance when he discovered he had a son, the threshing of wheat, the German motorcade, the laughter at the Taubers’ table, Renata and she whooping at the bottom of the stairs, Samuel in her arms, the birthmark on his right wrist, the crack of a fist against her face, Frau Koenig’s sneer, Robert’s cry when Magda cut him, the deer, Walter—

  “Sister?” Koenig, eyes narrowed, turned to face her.

  Magda blinked. She raised her arm before her face, bent at the elbow, and made the sign of the cross. The voice on the speakers crackled across the square.

  Her gesture was not something that Father Gabriel had taught her. It was something she had seen him do. “Bless you in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.”

  Koenig removed the cigar from his mouth and gave her a slow, steady sneer. “Save that for the women and men up there.” He jabbed the cigar in the direction of the gallows. “They’re the ones in need of salvation today.”

  Magda allowed a quick glance.

  Koenig frowned at her, clicked his heels together, and lifted his hand. “Heil Hitler!”

  With the cigar stuck back in his mouth, he crossed the road and strode toward the gallows. The crowd was eerily silent. His heels rang dully on the cobblestones. The speakers crackled again.

  “Jana Neuhaus! Father Gabriel Svoboda! Jakob Navotný! Yanko Grünwald! And Eva Černý!”

  Magda opened her mouth. No air came. She fell back against the arcade’s column outside the tobacco shop, unable to go closer and unable to tear her eyes away from that platform.

  There were only four nooses. They tied Yanko’s arms to one of the posts. The shot—like a single, stifled firecracker—sent Yanko’s head backward, then it dropped forward. There was an “oh” from the gathered crowd. The Gestapo slipped the nooses on the remaining four.

  Magda balled her hands into fists as the noose came over Jana’s neck. She punched her stomach when Eva offered up her head. All stood still, hands bound behind their backs, waiting as the last verdict was read. And then the earth beneath them dropped. The ropes jerked upward, then down, and then stretched taut and stilled.

  Magda faced the column, needing it to propel her away, to help her finally run. Before her, a poster. The face: hers. The reward for her capture: six thousand Reichsmark.

  13

  December 1942

  Magda ran through the snow-encrusted fields, sliding and slipping over the uneven terrain. She twisted her ankle in the too-big jackboots. She ripped the nun’s headpiece off her head and unraveled the bandage, the makeup and mask gelled to the inside. She dropped to her knees, howled at the sky above her. The sound of vehicles on the road beyond made her dive flat against the ground.

  She turned her head. Trucks were moving up the road, heading for Radobýl Mountain. She saw the soldiers inside the cab, then lined up on benches behind the folded-back flaps. One was pointing a rifle around and making jerking motions. Magda turned her face into the dirt.

  The woods were way ahead of her. Above, the sky was bright blue. The sun was sinking, casting shadows her way, stretching claw-like fingers toward her. She shivered against the ground, the sob building upward, her stomach heaving it all out into one long scream into the frozen earth. She pounded her fists. Jana! Gabriel! Jakob! Yanko! Eva! Eva! But then—she hiccuped—where was Samuel? What would she tell the Taubers?

  Her sobs came to an abrupt halt. She stared at the crystals of snow and ice before her and rolled onto her back. She laughed. Great, gasping bellows of bitter laughter, and she did not care who heard her. They may as well roll over her with their tanks. She laughed harder, clutching her ribs.

  The medicine was on the windowsill at the café.

  She wanted to simply die out there in the field. She could have just let the cold take her as the temperature dropped far below zero. But it was the flashes of lights in the woods before her, the flares that lit up the snowy peaks and fields around her, that made her sit up, pull herself together, her body finally feeling something again. Her muscles quivered with the constant tension. Her bones ached. She leaned over and vomited onto the earth.

  Why could she not die here in the field? What use was it, trying to run again?

  The Gestapo and the Wehrmacht were at the old mining tunnels—she could tell by where the flares were coming. And if they went there, then the dogs would find the subterranean bunker. It would only be a matter of time. They had already found and executed Yanko, and Jakob. She rocked back and forth trying to thrash away the images of the slumped figures. Father Gabriel. The ropes. Eva. Jana.

  Through the noise in her head, she heard two words. The others. The others. The others.

  But where? The countryside crawled with patrols, with dogs, with hunters seeking their prey. With hunters out to win a prize. Six thousand Reichsmark! A fortune!

  She would truly freeze to death in this field if she did not move. On the horizon beyond, an orange glow. That was the village behind Villa Liška. They were burning it to the ground, that abandoned village. Had they found something? Found someone? Or were the Nazi bastards just sending another warning?

  She rose and scrambled across the field. She stumbled into an irrigation ditch, picked herself up, and managed to get into some of the brush. Now that she was moving, her body screamed for heat. She stood and pushed farther toward the mountains, heading north. What had Aleš said about the meeting? They were going to meet near Ústí nad Labem. That was it. That was north. Over the mountains, there.

  The darkness was hell and it was protection. Magda fell to the ground before a stream and cupped her shaking hands. She drank the cold water. Her stomach growled. She could have been moving for an hour. Maybe only fifteen minutes. Maybe it was two hours. Through the woods, she could not know whether she was even heading north. The moon was waxing, and she was navigating in the pitch dark. What if she ran straight into the Wehrmacht or the patrols or whoever was on the hunt tonight? Maybe they were recruits from Ploskovice and the Napola, in a drill like Walter once had done. Either way, they were everywhere.

  She rose and followed the stream. An owl hooted. Something moved in the woods. Magda stood stock still, her blood ice in her veins. And then her heart beat again. She spun around. Again, another sound. She covered her mouth to prevent her breathing from giving her away, and slid down a slope. She clung to a tree and tried to regulate her breathing.

  Footsteps. Definitely not those of an animal, but man. She’d spent enough time in the woods with Aleš and his group to know the difference.

  A voice above her. “Who’s there? I know you’re there. Come out.”

  Magda unwrapped herself from a tree trunk. “Karol? Is that you?”

  �
�Magda?” The shape scrambled down and landed beside her.

  Magda threw her arms around Karol’s neck. “What are you doing here? I thought they might have caught you all!”

  “I could say the same of you.” He reached behind him and withdrew a flashlight, illuminating his face. It was the most beautiful face she had ever seen. “I’ve been on the run and hiding since this afternoon. We returned to find the Nazis had surrounded the mines, and they’re crawling through the hills. What happened? What set the Nazis off?”

  Magda sobbed. Karol pulled her into him. Through chattering teeth, she told him what had happened in the town square. About Yanko first. Then Father Gabriel and Jakob.

  “Karol, they had Jana and Eva too.” She shivered violently.

  Karol took off his coat and wrapped it around her. “What were you doing in town?”

  “I wanted… I was trying to…” Magda wiped her eyes. “Karol, I disobeyed Aleš. I took the medications.”

  His torso stiffened against her.

  “I just wanted to find out whether it would be possible to send the parcel. The nun’s outfit gave me a good excuse to ask, to find out.”

  Karol rubbed her back and shoulders brusquely. “I’m so sorry,” he muttered.

  Magda nodded into his chest. She felt so tired. Absolutely exhausted. And they were far from safety. “Where are Aleš and Renata?”

  “We split up. Davide was with me for a while. As soon as we saw what was happening, he said we’d be safer on our own. He told me to head back north eventually but not right away, just in case. So I’ve been zigzagging through the area.”

  “What are we going to do?” She had nothing on her except the nun’s habit and the coat she wore on her back.

  “I’ve got a gun.” Karol reached into his waistband. “Aleš gave it to me.”

  He placed it into her hand, and she weighed it in her palm.

  “That’s one of the weapons I recovered, isn’t it? It was my brother’s.”