Making Bombs For Hitler

by Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch

  We were given half an hour to get up, tidy our beds, use the bathroom and wash in the cold water. The warden herded us to the Kantine, where we were each given a triangle of black bread the size of my palm and a tinful of coloured water the cook called tea.

  I sat between Zenia and Kataryna at one of the long wooden tables and pulled a chunk of bread off my ration and put it in my mouth. It had an odd woody taste, unlike any bread I had ever eaten, but I was starving so I chewed it slowly, washing it down with sips of the brown liquid.

  Zenia bit off a piece of her bread and chewed thoughtfully. “This is made of sawdust.”

  When we were finished, we took our bowls, cups and spoons with us and the warden herded us back out into the open area.

  “Stand at attention,” she said.

  We weren’t the only prisoners. I recognized a person here and there who had been served a bowl of Russian slop the night before. I also saw Luka in one of the rows ahead of me. He stood with the boys from our cattle car, looking as dazed and exhausted as I felt. They each had OST badges stitched onto their clothing. He turned and caught my eye for a brief moment. I nodded my head slightly. He winked, then turned back around.

  The warden made us stand at attention for what seemed like an hour, but finally the door of the main building opened and that same officer from the day before stepped out. He held a stack of forms in his hands. Behind him was a man in civilian clothing. He carried a tripod and had a camera strapped around his neck.

  “If I call your name, step forward.” He read out names from the forms.

  From our barracks he called Daria, Katya and Olesia. A few boys from our cattle car were also identified.

  “You are all under twelve,” he said in a firm clear voice. “You will not be required to work.”

  I glanced over and caught Olesia’s eye. She gave me a faint smile. I think she was glad now that she had given her true age.

  He looked up from his forms and studied our pathetic group. “Is there anyone under twelve here that I have missed?”

  I tried to make myself stand tall, hoping it made me look older. I did not want to be caught in my lie. Besides, I remembered what that woman had whispered to us as she shoved the pail of soup into our cattle car. Be useful or they will kill you …

  Kataryna Pich stood not far away from me. I didn’t want to look at her, but from the corner of my eye, I could see her standing in place as well. She did not step forward.

  “Surely there are more of you twelve and under,” he said. “We have room for at least one more.”

  I could barely breathe, I was so afraid he would order me to stand with the younger children. I did not move. Kataryna stayed where she was.

  I heard footsteps behind me. Tatiana stepped forward. She was definitely older than twelve. “Stand over there,” the officer ordered, pointing to where the photographer had set up his equipment. One by one, each child was photographed. Our warden checked off names on her clipboard after each picture was taken.

  The officer walked down our rows, inspecting us one by one. He stopped in front of me. “Stand with the children and get your photograph done.”

  “I’m thirteen,” I said in a voice that I hoped would be convincing.

  “You’re too small.” He nudged me with his whip. “Go. You won’t have to work.”

  I looked over to Olesia, who stood with the younger children. Her eyes met mine and it was like I could almost read her thoughts. Tell the truth, her eyes said. Admit that you’re younger — it’s safer.

  But I could not do that. My heart told me that she was wrong. It was safer to be older, to be useful. I had to save myself if I was going to save my sister. I prayed that I was guessing right.

  I met the officer’s cold blue eyes, then let my gaze rest on his sharply pressed uniform. One button was just a hair looser than the rest. And there was an inch or so of frayed edge on his collar.

  “You have no seamstress.”

  His hand went to the loose button and he frowned.

  “What would you know about that?”

  “The button simply needs tightening. The shirt — where it’s frayed — that requires a deft hand to fix.”

  One eyebrow rose. His eyes seemed to focus — to notice me as an individual. They moved to the delicate stitchwork around my OST badge. The other eyebrow rose. He touched my badge.

  “You did this pattern?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, well. A little Russian with clever hands. How unusual.” The warden nodded in acknowledgment of his joke.

  I held my breath.

  “After you’re photographed, stand over there.” He pointed to his office.

  The photographer snapped my picture and I walked to the door of the officer’s building. I stood rigidly at attention, my eating utensils clutched in one hand at my side and my face impassive. I watched him designate a few other girls as children, and one more boy from our cattle car. The officer passed by Luka without stopping.

  When he was finished his inspection, he walked over to a waiting policeman.

  “Get these older ones photographed and take them to work.”

  Luka and the others had their faces recorded for the Nazi record keepers as well. After that, they were marched out the gate and onto an idling train.

  Those who had been designated as children stood in a cluster, looking smug. The officer snapped his fingers to beckon another waiting policeman. “These go to the hospital.”

  The hospital? Luka had warned me about it. What would happen to Olesia and the others? My imagination swirled with a hundred deadly possibilities. How I hoped that Luka was wrong.

  As the younger children were led away, Olesia turned and waved. She looked almost happy. I felt sick.

  The officer walked over to me. “So you’re my little seamstress?”

  His mouth curled into a smile but his eyes stayed cold. What had I got myself into? He stepped past me and opened the office door. Was I to follow him? He’d given me no indication. I stood rigid, still at attention, waiting for orders.

  The door closed.

  It stayed closed for minutes. An hour. I kept at attention, fear growing in my belly. My hands were stiff with cold and my feet were frozen blue. The sawdust bread sat like a lump in the pit of my stomach.

  The door opened. The officer’s uniform was unbuttoned. His brow crinkled with an uncomprehending frown. “Aren’t you my seamstress?”

  “Yes, sir,” I said through cold lips.

  “Then get sewing.”

  “Yes, sir.” Did he expect me to sew with no needle and thread and no clothing to fix? Was I to be a magician as well as a seamstress? That is what I felt like asking him. Instead, in as meek a voice as I could muster, I said, “Where should I do my sewing, sir?”

  He walked back to his office and left the door opened, so I could see him pick up a telephone and dial. He spoke firmly to someone, then slammed the receiver back in its cradle. He closed the door and I waited some more.

  A few minutes later, a thick-legged woman with a red face appeared from one of the side streets. She walked quickly towards me. “You’re the girl who sews?”

  I nodded.

  “This way.” I followed her as she retraced her steps. We reached a stone house set slightly apart from the buildings. She pushed the door open and a huge cloud of steam billowed out, enveloping me in its warmth.

  “Get in here quickly,” she said. “I don’t want the heat to escape.”

  It took my eyes a few moments to adjust to the haze. Through the steam, I could see an industrial-sized vat and what looked like mounds of white cotton sheets and towels being swished back and forth in hot soapy water by a huge mechanical arm.

  “This is the laundry,” she said. “My name is Inge and you’re to help me.”

  “I thought I was supposed to sew.”

  She looked at me and smirked. “Oh, you’ll do that too. Once my laundry is done. If your sewing isn’t finished, you’ll be in trouble and I d
on’t care, but if the laundry isn’t finished on time it will be me in trouble, and I do care about that.”

  I wasn’t in a position to argue. I had to make myself useful to Inge — so useful that she’d want to protect me.

  She put her hands on her ample hips and looked me up and down. “You’ll get the laundry dirty in that getup,” she said. “Take off your dress.”

  “But the OST badge,” I said, touching it with my fingers. “I was told never to take it off.”

  “In here you do as I say.” Inge opened a cupboard and took out a bar of soap and a fluffy white towel. “Clean yourself. Quickly.”

  After I had washed in gloriously hot water with real soap, Inge gave me a smock that smelled of bleaching powder. “You’ll wear one of these smocks each day in the laundry,” she said. “You can change back into your own disgusting outfit before you leave.”

  It was back-breaking work, helping Inge lift wet sheets and towels out of the water and put them through a mechanical wringer that squeezed out the excess water. We rinsed them, wrung them out again, then rinsed a second time in a fresh vat of water, then wrung them out a third time. My arms ached from holding up the heavy cloth, but I was warm right down to my toes.

  When the sheets and towels were finally clean, I helped her hang them on clotheslines in an enclosed courtyard behind the laundry house. They wouldn’t dry completely — it was too cold outside for that. But while they flapped in the wind, we started on a second batch of laundry.

  I was light-headed with hunger and every muscle in my body ached from the hard work. Hours had passed and I still hadn’t been allowed to do a single stitch of sewing.

  A whistle shrieked.

  “Mealtime,” said Inge. “Change into your old clothing. Come back from the Kantine as soon as you’ve finished eating.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said, pulling the clean smock over my head and folding it neatly. My lice-encrusted dress felt horrible as I stepped into it.

  Inge looked at me not unkindly and said, “You’re a hard worker for your size.”

  Her words were like a balm to my soul. I was useful. Did that mean I would live? If only she would let me get some sewing done. “Thank you, ma’am,” I said. I grabbed my eating utensils and scooted out the laundry-room door.

  Chapter Six

  Seams

  It seemed much less crowded in the Kantine compared to breakfast. Entire tables were empty and there were only a few people in front of me at the soup lineup. I watched hungrily as the cook filled the bowls of the people in front of me — a Polish prisoner, an Aryan, then me.

  The cook looked at my OST badge and set down the ladle he was using. He stepped over to the vile Russian soup and spooned some of it into my bowl with a different ladle. I looked down at my soup. It was the same as yesterday’s — turnip and water, with maybe a lump or two of oats or potato. He filled my tin cup with some sort of hot dark liquid. Then, “Out of the way,” he said, gesturing with the ladle. “You’re holding up the line.”

  I looked behind me. No one was there.

  I carried my bowl to an empty table and took a seat that faced the entrance. I was hoping that Luka might come in, or maybe Zenia or Kataryna.

  “May I sit here?”

  I looked behind me. It was the Hungarian girl. If she was so disdainful of me being sub-human, why did she want to sit with me? “You don’t need my permission.”

  She set her bowl on the table and sat opposite me.

  She was wearing the kind of uniform that those nurses who separated me from Larissa wore, but this girl’s was grey and frayed from many washings. Even from across the table, I could smell the meat in her soup. It made my stomach lurch with hunger. Why in this whole empty place had she chosen to sit with me? I looked around the room. I was the only one here who was younger like she was. I took a spoonful of my soup and swallowed it down.

  When she took a spoonful of her own soup, I noticed what looked like a spray of fresh blood on her cuff. Where did she work?

  “You didn’t take the train,” she said. “That’s good.”

  “Don’t they come back here for their meals?”

  She shook her head. “It would waste too much time. Workers are dropped off at different spots along the route. Some move rocks, others work in factories. They eat their soup wherever they work.”

  Surely they wouldn’t make Kataryna move rocks? And could Luka or Zenia operate factory equipment? What about the rest of the children? I hoped and prayed that each of them would be able to prove themselves useful.

  “How long have you been here?” I asked, my eyes concentrating on my soup.

  “Six months.”

  I looked up at her in surprise. She didn’t seem as smug as she had the day before. Her eyes — still looking bruised and tired — brimmed with tears. What was her job?

  “My name is Juli,” she said. “What’s yours?”

  “Lida.”

  “That’s a pretty name.” She dragged the back of her hand across her face, drying the tears.

  “Yours is pretty too.”

  A faint smile formed on her lips. “Sorry for being so mean yesterday.”

  I nodded, swallowing down a spoonful of soup. “How long do we have before the whistle goes?”

  “Lunch is sixty minutes.” She filled her spoon with vegetables and a chunk of meat. As it hovered in front of her mouth, she looked at me guiltily. “I would share this with you, but they would shoot me.”

  I nodded. It was kind of her to say. I watched as she shoved the spoon into her mouth and chewed on meat, potatoes and vegetables. How I longed to reach over and take a spoonful from her bowl.

  “Where are you working?” Juli asked.

  “The laundry.”

  “One of the better places.”

  “What about you?”

  “The hospital.” She shuddered, as if she were holding the weight of the world.

  “There were some children from our group who were taken to the hospital this morning,” I said. “Daria, Tatiana, Olesia and Katya — did you happen to see them?”

  Juli looked at me with blank eyes. She didn’t answer, but instead methodically dipped her spoon into her soup again, then placed it in her mouth.

  I set my spoon down and glared at her. “I asked you a question.”

  She chewed her spoonful of soup and sighed. In a voice barely above a whisper she said, “Do not ask about this here.”

  I looked around and couldn’t see anyone who was interested in our conversation. What was it that Juli couldn’t talk about?

  “Is it as terrible as I’ve heard?”

  She didn’t answer, but from the pleading look in her eyes, I knew that I should drop the subject.

  “Eat,” she said. “This is the only break you’ll have until we finish at six. You still need to visit the outhouse, wash your bowl, take it back to your barracks and get back to the laundry.”

  I looked around and saw that others were quickly slurping. I shovelled in the rest of my soup and swallowed, feeling some vile chunks of turnip going down whole. I held the bowl up to my lips and let the last brown drops drain into my mouth. Juli did the same with her bowl. I gulped down the dark liquid in my cup. It tasted different from the morning’s tea, but was awful in its own way.

  Juli hastily stood up and left, as if she wanted to get away from me as quickly as she could.

  When I got back to the laundry, Inge was sitting at a table with a piece of waxed paper opened in front of her. On it were the remains of a devoured sandwich — a couple of crusts, a bit of mustard. She was biting into a second sandwich made of fresh light-rye bread and thick slices of roast pork. The aroma made my knees weak. How I longed to eat those remaining crusts.

  “Go change,” she said, a bit of pork falling from the end of her sandwich as she bit into it. “Then start taking the laundry off the line out back. I’ll meet you there in a minute.”

  The sheets were stiff in the wintry air and they were awkward for so
meone as little as me to handle all by myself, but I was determined to prove that I was useful. By the time Inge had finished her sandwich, I had taken down and folded four of the sheets. She didn’t praise me, but I could tell by her smug silence that she was pleased with how much work I could save her.

  My hands and feet were sore with cold by the time we got the rest of the sheets folded and brought inside.

  “These need ironing,” she said. I followed her into a room beyond the washing area. This one had a tall steam press that reminded me of a coffin with a levered lid. Was she expecting me to operate it? I would need a ladder to get to the levers. Along one wall was an oversized table, which I assumed was for folding the ironed sheets. Maybe I could pull that over to the ironing press and stand on it?

  “While I’m ironing, you shall mend,” said Inge.

  Thank goodness.

  I took the stiff top sheet off the pile and spread it out on the folding table. I ran my fingertip along the frayed outer edge. “Is it the seams that you want me to mend? These are all going to fall apart if they’re not re-sewn.”

  “That’s what you’re here for.” Inge plugged in the huge ironing contraption to let it heat up and then stepped over to my side. “It would be more sensible to do the seams with a sewing machine,” she said. “But they’re all in use making new uniforms for the war.”

  “May I begin now?” I asked her. “It takes time to do this by hand.”

  Inge got a wicker sewing kit out of the cupboard — small spools of thread in different colours and weights, a black velvet needle cushion holding several sizes of needles, and a small thread snipper. The kit looked too domestic for an army.

  Without wasting any time, I pulled a chair over to the big table and sat down to my work. I threaded the narrowest needle from the cushion and knotted the end of my long white thread. I double-folded the frayed edge of the first bedsheet and deftly worked in a narrow chevron stitch, using the edge of my thumbnail as a ruler.

  Inge stood over me and watched. “You’re good at that. Tidy and artful.”

  I nodded my head slightly in acknowledgment of her praise and kept on stitching. If I was going to prove my worth to the officer, I needed to have an impressive amount of perfect work done.