Making Bombs For Hitler

by Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch

  I pulled the shirt from under my pillow and sat on the edge of her bunk. “I have a surprise for you, Zenia,” I said, holding it out.

  She looked at the cloth and asked. “What is that?”

  “Open it,” I said, barely able to contain my excitement. I shook out the shirt so that it opened.

  Zenia’s eyes widened. “You didn’t steal that, I hope.”

  I shook my head. “Inge gave it to me. A present for my stitch work.”

  “That is wonderful,” said Zenia. “It is so much better than the tattered dress you’re wearing.”

  “But Zenia, this is for you!”

  Zenia propped herself up on her elbow and stared into my eyes. “You cannot give this to me. You worked so hard for it.”

  “Your dress is falling apart,” I said. “You need this more than I do.”

  Zenia blinked back tears. “She should have given you something for yourself — a pair of shoes, or something to eat.” She looked down at my scab-encrusted feet. “Maybe you should rip this into strips to wrap your feet with.”

  “You know they wouldn’t last long,” I told her. “Besides, I want you to have this. I have a good smock that I wear all day when I’m working, and it’s clean in the laundry, so my feet are healing. Do you want to be walking around naked? Your dress is not likely to last much longer.”

  “Thank you, Lida, thank you.” Zenia reached out and gripped my hand. “We can save what’s left of my own dress for patching.”

  She slipped into the shirt and even though she was taller than me, it was still huge on her — we were all not much more than skeletons, after all. She took it off. We were trusted with needle and thread, but not scissors, so I carefully tore off the sleeves so I could adjust it, then picked apart the seams on either side of the shirt so I had one big piece of cloth and two smaller pieces. With the big section of material from the back, I stitched a sleeveless dress for Zenia. I was in the midst of all this sewing when the other girls entered the barracks.

  Kataryna picked up the two front panels of the shirt and held them up to me. “There’s more than enough to make yourself a new dress out of this. Do you need the buttons?”

  I shook my head. While I finished up Zenia’s seams, Kataryna picked at the button threads with the sharp end of a sewing needle. Once the buttons were all removed, she stitched the two front sections together. My sleeveless dress needed to be several inches shorter than Zenia’s, which meant that there was plenty of cloth left over. We worked at it gingerly so the cloth would tear straight.

  With these bits and scraps of sturdy blue flannel, plus my old dress and what was left of Zenia’s old outfit, Mary and the others were able to patch their own clothing. Every single girl in Barracks 7 got a bit of cloth. I fell asleep with a smile on my lips for the first time in a very long while. It had been a good day. I dreamt that my mother was bending over me, brushing my forehead with her lips. “Beauty can be found anywhere,” she whispered.

  I longed to open my eyes and see my real mother, hovering over me, keeping me safe. The dream was so real that I could almost feel her warm breath on my cheek. Mama’s face dissolved and was suddenly replaced by Luka’s. “Stay safe, little sister,” he said. His lips continued to move but I could no longer hear the words.

  “Luka!” I cried. “What are you saying?” My eyes flew open.

  The image had been so real that I almost expected Luka to be hovering over me, but he wasn’t there. I was thankful that I had gone to see him in the hospital, to know that he was safe. Dreams can so quickly turn to nightmares, after all.

  Chapter Eleven

  Roll Call

  The next day at roll call, several prisoners complimented the girls of Barracks 7 on our nice clothing. It thrilled me to see everyone look so happy.

  Officer Schmidt made us all stand at attention for longer than usual. It was drizzling rain and we each stood rigidly. My feet ached from the damp.

  The rain didn’t bother him, though — a soldier scampered behind him as he walked, holding a huge black umbrella over his head.

  My new blue dress was soaked through and every bone in my body ached. I was looking forward to drying out in the laundry.

  Officer Schmidt walked up and down our rows, examining each of us carefully, making note of the new patchwork. When he got to Zenia, he stopped.

  “Your dress. Where did you get it?”

  Zenia lowered her eyes and looked at her muddy feet. “A friend gave it to me.”

  He grunted. He continued his inspection. When he got to me, he stopped again.

  “Nice dress, little seamstress,” he said. “That one shirt went far. Why didn’t you keep the whole thing for yourself?”

  My mouth refused to form words. Officer Schmidt continued to stand in front of me. “Speak up,” he said.

  “It makes me happy to share,” I blurted.

  And then the officer did something that shocked me. He smiled. He rested one finger on my shoulder and said, “You were getting a bit too comfortable in the laundry. You have a new assignment.”

  He reached into the depths of his uniform jacket and pulled out an Ostarbeiter identification paper. He handed it to me, saying, “Today, you go on the train. You will need this.”

  It was the first time I had seen my own identification paper. I knew from the other girls that we were supposed to have them with us at all times if we left the compound. Getting caught without papers could mean death. Since I had always worked inside the complex itself, Officer Schmidt had never given my OST paper to me before.

  I folded the paper quickly and slipped it into my dress pocket to keep it relatively dry. I was devastated that he was moving me. Inge treated me well now and it was so pleasant in the laundry. To go into the city was something I dreaded. It was bombed regularly, after all.

  Officer Schmidt read out a list of newly reassigned labourers, including Zenia, and told us that the policemen on the train would have the listings of our new jobs.

  A whistle shrilled as the train approached the gates. “You are dismissed,” shouted Officer Schmidt.

  I stood in the long lineup to get on the train. There were two policemen under a lamppost at the gate. One ticked off people’s names on his clipboard as they passed him. The other stood with a rifle casually leaning against his shoulder.

  When it was my turn, the policeman’s brow crinkled. “You’ve not travelled to work before. What is your name?”

  “Lida Ferezuk.” I took out my identification paper and showed it to him.

  He scanned the list of names on his clipboard. “Ah,” he said. He pointed to a train car that was four units down. “That’s the one for you.”

  I walked along a well-used path beside the tracks until I got to the correct train car. I was expecting it to be a cattle car like the one we arrived in, but this car had two rows of wooden benches and an aisle down the middle. Most of the seats had already been taken, and as I looked around for a place to sit, I was surprised to see regular people in the car: a grey-haired civilian with his coat unbuttoned, revealing paint-splattered overalls; a plain looking woman with her hair twisted in a bun, wearing a feathered green hat that looked like it was meant for someone else. Beside her sat a young girl whose blond curls spilled out over her blue sweater. That girl reminded me so much of Larissa that I had to look away before I began to weep.

  “Lida! Here!” Zenia’s voice. I scanned the car. There she was, sitting near the back by herself. Across the aisle from her sat Kataryna and Natalia from our barracks. Mary, the school girl I had thought was a teacher, sat in front of her with an older labourer whose name I didn’t know.

  I made my way down the aisle and sat beside Zenia, setting my bowl, cup and spoon on my lap.

  After having an assignment away from the others for so long, it was a nice change to be with some people I knew, and of all the girls in my barracks, I liked Zenia the best.

  “We’ll be together,” I said. “Won’t that be wonderful?”

>   Zenia regarded me, one brow arched. “There is no such thing as wonderful here.”

  “You’re right, Zenia. But I am still looking forward to working with you.”

  “Yes, that is a good thing. Let’s just hope our new jobs aren’t too difficult.”

  The last to get into the compartment were two policemen. One of them slid the door shut and a policeman outside bolted it. The train shuddered and screeched and soon we were speeding away. I watched out the window, hungry for a view of something that wasn’t surrounded by barbed wire.

  The train stopped at stations along the way and I watched through the window as policemen with clipboards would approach the train. The labourers would be herded out, and a policeman from the train would give a sheet of paper to the new policeman, who clipped it to his board and checked off the workers one by one. Some of them were loaded into the backs of trucks and others walked in single file, led by a German in civilian clothing.

  Zenia had been travelling this route for some time. “Who are those people taking the labourers away?” I asked her.

  “Factory owners, quarry managers, business owners,” she replied.

  “I thought we were forced workers for the Nazis.”

  “These businessmen pay the government for the privilege of using us,” replied Zenia bitterly. “I am sure they find it quite a convenience to have slaves.”

  Her comment made me wonder what these regular Germans thought about us. Did they think we had done something wrong and were being punished? Or did they even know that their government captured people from other countries and made them work for Germany?

  As our train idled at a later stop, we watched as a cluster of near-dead men who wore yellow stars on their striped rags were forced into the back of a truck by a soldier with a billy club. We were treated terribly, but one glance told us these Jewish people had it even worse. Were they fed at all? A shiver ran down my back, as if someone had stepped on my grave.

  Our stop was the last. The whole time I had been on the train I hadn’t heard the sound of bomber planes overhead. It wasn’t because they had stopped, but because the train’s chugging was so loud. As soon as I stepped outside, the familiar high-pitched whine of American bombs was all I could hear. The ground trembled when one hit and I would see a puff of smoke in the near distance. It didn’t matter how often I heard bombs, I could never get used to them.

  I stepped in line behind Mary and waited to be processed. The sun was shining over the top of a mountain range in the distance. These sharp grey rocks were nothing like our mountains back home. Ours had gentle rolling slopes covered with trees and grass. These jutted up into the heavens like weapons.

  As I waited in line, I felt the folded ridges of my identification paper in my pocket. I could not lose this. I pulled it out and for the first time took a good look at the photograph. Was that really me? It was less than a year ago, but I looked so young and innocent. Aside from the whip slash on my face, the shaved head and the bug bites, I had looked almost healthy. I put my hand up to my cheekbone where the cut had been. The wound had closed over, but the skin was so thin that I could feel each of my teeth. I put my hand up to my hair. It was longer now, but standing up in tufts. Washing it with the harsh bleaching powder and cold water was essential to keep the lice away, but it burned my scalp and matted my hair.

  The paper was snatched out of my hand. I looked up. The policeman.

  “You are Lida Ferezuk?”

  I nodded.

  He found my name on his list and put a check mark beside it. “You go over there to Frau Zanger,” he said, pointing with his pencil to a woman in a tailored blue suit.

  I tried not to stare at her, but it was hard not to. First of all, the only other women at the train station were either frumpy looking mothers with children, or they were slave labourers. I could tell by the cut of this woman’s suit that it was custom-made to show off her narrow waist. The material was expensive — I suspected it was a fine woven wool from England. Mama once had a customer who got her clothing from England, and she would bring it in to us for alterations. Frau Zanger’s outfit reminded me of that woman’s.

  The policeman showed her his clipboard and together she ran through our names: me, Kataryna, Zenia, Mary, Natalia and a woman I didn’t recognize, named Bibi. “Very good,” she said in German, but with an unfamiliar accent. “And you’re sure these all have steady hands?”

  The policeman flipped through the pages in his clipboard. He pointed to one name. They both looked up at Zenia, who had removed the bandages on her arm, but the scratches were still vivid. “I don’t know why they gave you one who is injured.”

  “If she’s not any good, I’ll just get rid of her.”

  “Yes, ma’am. I do know that these six were all hand-selected for you. Should I load them up?”

  “Yes, Hans. I’ll meet you at the factory.”

  She walked up to a long black car that was idling beside the station building. A uniformed man jumped out of the driver’s seat and ran to the back door on the opposite side, opening it wide just as she got to it. He closed her door once she stepped in, then he got back in and sped away.

  The workman loaded the six of us onto the open back of a pickup truck. The truck bed was wet with rain and there were no benches, so we had no choice but to sit down in the puddles. We huddled together with Zenia in the middle to keep her from falling on her scratches as we were driven away from the station. What had we been hand-selected for?

  As we were driven through the busy city streets, I could not see a single building that had been untouched by bombs. I watched in awe as we passed a husband and wife sipping tea at a kitchen table in a second-floor flat — only the flat had no walls and no ceiling. Below them the building was in rubble as well. I guess they were thankful they at least had a kitchen.

  From the camp, I had listened to the American and British bombs going off non-stop since I had arrived there. But listening to bombs in the distance was quite different from witnessing the damage close up. I knew we were in more danger here in the city, but I was exhilarated to see that the Nazis weren’t doing so well. How I longed for the war to be over. Then I could find my sister and we could both go home.

  The driver manoeuvred around fallen stonework from a bombed church, which sent us careening to one side in the back of the truck. I tried to keep Zenia upright, but when I lost my balance, she landed painfully on her injured arm. I watched clean, well-fed men and women wearing decent clothing walking along on the sidewalks, stepping through bombed fragments of lumber, stone and brick. Looking at them made me feel dirty and insignificant. None of them seemed to notice us at all. I guess they had got used to seeing truckloads of scrawny labourers passing by.

  The truck pulled up to the entrance of a large U-shaped building made of yellow brick. It seemed to have miraculously escaped most of the air raids, although an outbuilding was nothing more than fresh rubble of twisted metal and brick. The large arched windows of the main building had all shattered and were boarded up with wood. Shards of glass still hung from parts of the framework like jagged teeth. I suspected that damage was just from the ground shaking rather than a direct bomb hit.

  “Oh no,” said Zenia. “I was hoping to be assigned somewhere else.”

  “This is the metalworks factory that was just bombed?” I asked.

  “I was working in there.” She pointed to the flattened outbuilding.

  What part of this factory would we be working in? How long would it stay standing? I had heard that factory buildings were a magnet for bombs.

  “It’s safer than you think,” Zenia said, reading the look of fear in my eyes. “The main building has been marked on the roof with the symbol for Hospital and it has largely escaped the bombing. I bet my building got hit by mistake.”

  The workman opened up the back of the truck. We got out and he ushered the six of us through the front entrance. I was grateful to be in a dry place, but I wished I was back at the laundry. We stood i
n a reception area. To one side was a glassed-in office, with a large double-sided desk. Two healthy looking blond women faced one another, one pecking at a typewriter with two fingers, while the other tackled forms, one by one, filling them out with a pen.

  Frau Zanger had one hand clasped around the knob of a battered wooden door that stood beside a larger door. She was having a heated conversation with a woman in a wraparound white smock. The woman’s head was bowed respectfully, but her hands were clenched at her side. Frau Zanger stabbed one finger in our direction and said to her, “I don’t care how much other work you need to do. You will train these workers now.”

  Then she turned to us. “In there, all of you,” she snapped.

  She opened the door and ushered the supervisor and us up the stairs and into a wire-mesh second-floor catwalk. She didn’t follow us. Down below we could see the metalworks factory as the day shift came in and the night shift shuffled out. Although we were a storey above the machines, we were still enveloped in the mechanical thrumming, banging, clanging and grinding. Even the wooden floor of the walkway vibrated. I looked down at one contraption that had a huge sledgehammer device on a swinging arm. I watched the labourer at that station place a piece of metal down on a flat tray. The mechanized sledgehammer slammed down, turning the metal piece into the shape of a small bowl. As the sledgehammer rose again, the worker swept the stamped bowl onto a conveyor belt and placed the next piece of metal in the same spot on the tray.

  It seemed to me that it would be easy to have a finger or a hand on the tray at the wrong time, yet the worker was using her bare hands. The force of that sledgehammer could send bits of metal into her face, even her eyes. I guess it didn’t matter to the owners.

  The metal bowls travelled down the conveyor belt and were picked up by women operating machines with spinning stone wheels. As they smoothed and ground the sides of the metal bowls, they were enveloped in a cloud of dust.