Gunpowder. Grains that looked like the explosive but weren’t …
“What would —” Natalia began, then stopped.
We all looked at her.
“What would happen if we put some dirt into the bombs?” said Natalia.
My heart nearly stopped beating. What a bold thought. “They wouldn’t work so well, is my guess,” said Zenia. She still hadn’t eaten the sugar on her palm.
“How would we sneak it in?” asked Kataryna.
“The same way I brought in the sugar,” said Natalia. “In our pockets.”
We looked at each other solemnly. Could it work? Would we be caught? It was hard to know.
Was it worth the chance? Definitely.
Kataryna looked at Natalia, her eyes alight with a new idea. “If I ease up on the hammer machine early,” she said, “I think the bombs would fail to snap together all the way. They might fall apart instead of exploding.”
“We have many ways of ruining the bombs,” I said. “But we are watched. Always watched.”
As fall turned towards winter, we noticed subtle changes all around. Bombs had been falling all day and night for months, but now the sky was black with Allied bomber planes. We heard that entire German cities had been destroyed. At the work camp, some of the policemen hung up their uniforms and left. The ones who stayed became even more cruel than they had been. It was like their war losses were our fault. Once, when Officer Schmidt was annoyed by a prisoner’s answer at roll call, he cocked his gun and shot the man on the spot. We were all afraid to breathe.
On our way to and from the city, I would look out the window and try to make sense of what I saw. Waves of ragged refugees walked through city streets. Some were starving like us, but others looked like they had recently been well fed. The few Germans who still rode on the train with us would whisper among themselves and I would try to listen, to find out what was going on. From what I could hear, the Soviets were pushing the Nazis back. As the battleground moved closer to us, whole villages and towns were being destroyed. People who survived fled west — away from the fighting — but farther into Nazi territory.
One icy evening in November when I stepped off the train after work, Juli met me, her eyes rimmed with red.
“I have something for you,” she said. “Come quickly.”
She grabbed me by the hand and pulled me along to her barracks. We stepped inside. It was empty save for us. She knelt in front of her bed, which was a bottom bunk close to the heater at the back, reached in and drew out a pair of worn leather shoes that were made for a woman.
“Put these on and let’s get out of here before anyone else comes in.”
Shoes were like gold in the camp. Where had Juli got these? I didn’t stop to think about it, but slipped my feet inside. They were roomy, but I didn’t mind. My feet were swollen and the shoes felt warm and solid. I followed Juli out the door, stepping gingerly, trying to re-teach myself how to walk in shoes.
I noticed a truck idling by the entrance to the hospital.
“What is that truck for?”
Juli’s eyes filled with tears. “Don’t go there.”
But of course I did.
The back of the truck was stacked with the gaunt bodies of dead slaves, many with faces frozen in painful contortions. I recognized one as the woman who had replaced me helping Inge in the laundry. She was barefoot. I looked down at my feet and knew where my shoes had come from. My heart felt like it could burst with guilt. Here I was, benefiting from someone else’s death.
“Better you have the shoes than they get buried,” Juli murmured.
I said a silent prayer for the woman whose shoes I wore, then looked at the others in the truck. They were mostly strangers. Where had these people come from and why were they now all dead?
“What happened?” I asked Juli.
“The Nazis are retreating in the east, and camps there are being overrun by the Soviets.” She nodded back towards the truck. “The Nazis shipped those prisoners away from a work camp just before it was liberated by the Soviets. The prisoners arrived on a train this morning, starving and nearly frozen. Officer Schmidt decided that they wouldn’t be useful workers and he didn’t want to waste food on them. He ordered the cook to put poison into today’s Russian soup.” She blinked back tears. “All of the eastern workers who were in the camp today have died.”
Even though my stomach was empty, bile rose in my throat. Should I be thankful that my friends and I had our soup at the factory instead of at the camp? Should I be thankful for my shoes? It was mere chance that I wasn’t one of those corpses on the back of the truck.
“I had heard about these mass poisonings before, but it seemed so impossible, even for the Nazis, I thought it was a rumour,” said Juli, brushing away a tear with the back of her hand. “I’ve been told that is why the Russian soup always has a separate ladle.”
I looked down at my new shoes and then back towards the truck. “The Nazis will pay for this,” I vowed to Juli. “They should think twice before asking slaves to make bombs.”
Chapter Fourteen
Scrap of Light
When 1944 arrived we did nothing in the camp to mark the new year. Maybe the camp guards and the police had extra food. Maybe they toasted each others’ good health. For us it was a usual Friday night. I went to bed and tried to sleep. I tried not to think of the possibility of spending another year making bombs for Hitler.
Ukrainian Christmas Eve was the following Thursday, and those of us in Barracks 7 sang hymns together as we lay in our bunks, shivering under our covers. Just a year ago I had been with Larissa and my grandmother. Back then I thought things couldn’t get worse. I was an orphan, after all. Looking back now, I realized how I should have been thankful for all that we had — not much food, no parents, but a roof over our heads and the love of our grandmother.
As January blizzards blew outside, I was grateful for my shoes. The man behind the glass stopped paying so much attention to us. He would bring in the daily newspaper and read every page. I would glance over and see him engrossed in the latest news from the Front, not looking our way for fifteen minutes at a time. Every once in a while he would leave. Sometimes he would be gone for only a minute or so, but there were times when he was gone for half a day.
We sensed the war was turning very bad for the Nazis. Some of the changes were subtle: German supervisors in the factory simply stopped showing up. In their place would be German housewives who seemed wholly unprepared for the job they were supposed to do, or boys in Hitler Youth uniforms, who were eager but untrained. I lived in hope that the man behind the glass would abandon his post as well, but although his absences became longer, and he paid scant attention to us while he was there, he always seemed to eventually come back.
But we had the opportunity for sabotage in those times that he was gone. Each morning now we filled our pockets with dirt from the camp. Even with the supervisor reading the paper, it was possible to slip my hand into my pocket and fill the metal bowl with dirt instead of gunpowder.
Natalia’s trick could only be done when the supervisor was gone. She would dampen the inside cavities of the bombs with the icy fluid. The gunpowder that was inserted after that was spoiled — we hoped.
One morning we came in and the supervisor was gone. On his desk was a day-old newspaper and a dirty coffee cup. Perhaps he would finally not come in at all. We used his early absence to sabotage bombshell after bombshell. Natalia gave the barrel of gunpowder a good soaking with her cooling fluid. She sprayed fluid all over the straw-like Kordit as well. We made the bombs out of this destroyed material, and included scraps of paper upon which Bibi wrote in several languages, Dear Allies, this is all that we can do for you now.
Shortly before lunch the supervisor came back. We had just closed up one of the tampered bombs. I had a hard time keeping my face serious, I felt so exultant. I was positively giddy with the fact that we had succeeded in destroying so many bombs. Had he bothered to glance into our
room, he might have noticed the Kordit glistening, but he didn’t look. Instead he opened up his briefcase with trembling fingers and began frantically stuffing papers into it from his desk. Without glancing at us even once, he left, stray papers fluttering behind him.
With him gone, we continued to make fake bombs. At midday we joked together as we hung up our smocks, then washed up as usual. I was grateful when the kitchen worker came in with our soup. So many Germans seemed to be fleeing. Our turnip soup was not filling, but it was the only thing keeping us alive.
Just as I held a spoonful of watery turnip to my lips, the room was enveloped in a loud boom. A gust of air whooshed in from above with such force that it blew me off my chair. My spoon flew out of my hand and smacked against the wall. I scrambled to my feet, trying to make sense of what had just happened. When I looked up at the ceiling, my heart stood still. Where grey ceiling tiles should have been, there was a huge star-shaped hole. And that’s when I looked immediately below the hole — our table. Sticking up in the middle of it was the narrow end of a small bomb, fins pointing upward.
Time stood still. For one long moment I stared at that bomb, comparing it to the ones we were making. This was similar in size and colour, but teardrop-shaped instead of oblong. All at once I came to my senses. This was a bomb that had been dropped on us. It hadn’t exploded … yet.
“Out!” I screamed. “Now!”
The other girls seemed as stunned and confused as I was.
I scrambled to my feet and ran to the door that connected our room to the catwalk above the factory. I pulled on the handle. Mercifully, it was unlocked. Zenia, Mary, Bibi, Natalia, Kataryna and I all flew out, yanking the door closed behind us. We stumbled down the catwalk as quickly as our feet would take us. When we were nearly at the other end of the factory, the ground shook so violently that I was knocked off my feet, my friends tumbling around me.
I turned to look. The force of the explosion had blasted our lunchroom door off its hinges. Hot air and flames licked down the catwalk towards us.
“Get up! Up up!” screamed Kataryna, pulling on my arms. I stumbled to my feet, as did Zenia behind me. Mary was the farthest down the catwalk and she got to the exit door first. She pulled it open and we all tumbled out into the main entryway of the factory and collapsed in a heap, smoke billowing out behind us.
Hands pulled at us. Air-raid sirens blared, but I could hear the rumble of bricks and mortar falling around us. All at once I gulped in cold fresh air. I looked up and counted. All six of us were there. We had miraculously survived the bombing.
Young boys with Hitler Youth arm bands herded us away from the building and told us to stand with factory workers from the main wing. We milled about, shocked and frightened, blood trickling from our wounds.
I took huge gulping breaths to calm myself and willed myself not to cry. Zenia and Bibi were standing a few feet apart from the other workers, pointing to part of the factory. I turned to look, and gasped. One third of it had been bombed flat. And where our bomb room had been was now a hollowed-out shell. My first thought was one of frustration — all those sabotaged bombs had been destroyed. All that trickery for nothing. My second thought was exultation. Maybe the bombs didn’t get used, but I was sure we had saved many labourers’ lives here today because of watering the gunpowder. But then I wondered: how long would it take the officers in charge to realize that had those bombs been real, they’d have exploded when the Allies’ bomb hit, and the damage would have been far worse than this? What would they do to us when they realized what we had done to the German bombs?
I looked over at Zenia. She met my eyes and nodded slightly. She was wondering the same thing.
“You. Out of the way.”
I looked up. A Nazi officer with an impatient frown on his face was pushing his way through. His black dress uniform was crisply pressed and his boots and brass were so polished that they sparkled in the sunlight despite the smoke. He seemed out of place in the burning rubble.
“You, and you —” he pointed to a couple of the older Hitler Youth. “Get the first-aid kit. You,” he said, turning to a factory supervisor, “where is the fire hose?”
Kataryna limped over to where I stood and leaned heavily against my side. “I’ve sprained my ankle.”
In the haze of the smoke, I saw slashes of red. Natalia’s scalp had been cut, and Mary’s hand.
A long black car sat idling at the entrance of the factory. The officer’s, I assumed. I watched as the glass in the rear window rolled down. A woman, her blond curls styled to perfection, stuck her head out. “Franz,” she called out. “We will be late for the rally.”
The officer glanced her way, then waved his gloved hand as if warding off a fly.
The woman’s head disappeared in the depths of the car.
A young girl with blond braids looked out the window. She said something to someone inside. A second blond head appeared.
The sight of her stopped my heart. But where had I seen her before? Right at that moment, she squinted. Her eyes locked onto mine. A look of panic transformed her face and she stretched out her arms to me. She said something that was lost in the tumult, but her lips seemed to say, “Lida, please don’t leave me …”
Was I dreaming?
I waved, too stunned to even take a step towards her.
She waved back.
Suddenly both blond heads disappeared. I could see the woman scolding them as the window rolled up.
Could that have been Larissa? My Larissa? But in the car of a Nazi officer? No. How could it possibly have been my sister?
Chapter Fifteen
Alone
With the factory bombed out, and complete chaos all around, there was nothing for us to do. Did that mean that we were useless? I hoped not. We were loaded onto the train in haphazard fashion — wounded and uninjured all together — and taken back to the work camp. Zenia sat beside me. Bibi and Natalia huddled together across the aisle, whispering in low voices. There were so few people on the train that Kataryna was stretched across one of the benches fast asleep. Mary sat by herself, staring out the window as the wrecked city and bombed-out countryside chugged by. I think we were all still in shock from our close call with death.
My mind was spinning with the image of that blond girl. Could it have been Larissa? Was my mind playing tricks on me? If it was Larissa, at least she was alive. But alive and living as a Nazi?
It would be better for her to be dead.
I was confused and exhausted, hungry and sad. I closed my eyes and rested my head on Zenia’s shoulder.
A deafening double-bang jolted me awake. The train shuddered to a screeching halt. My eyes flew open. Kataryna fell off her bench with a thud. For long moments nothing else happened, but then the compartment filled with billowing smoke. Another bomb? Had we been hit? I ran to the door and pulled on the handle, but it was bolted from the outside. I pounded on it, shouting, “Let us out! Let us out!”
A young boy in civilian clothes but with a Hitler Youth arm band ran up to our door. He stretched up his hand but he was too short to reach the bolt. Smoke enveloped us. I watched out the window as he pulled himself up the ridges on the door as if he were climbing a tree. He unlatched the bolt, then jumped back down onto the ground, running to the next car to open that door the same way. I pushed our door open and fresh air rushed in. Zenia helped Kataryna up off the floor and we all tumbled out, stumbling and tripping in our haste to get away from that train as quickly as we could. I looked up and down the tracks, and saw many gaunt and weary slaves, frightened and tired, some still bleeding, being ordered about by boys who didn’t seem much older than I was. It was complete chaos. The six of us stood in a cluster, not knowing what to do.
“I’m not sticking around,” said Mary. In one swift movement, she tore off her OST badge and threw it onto the ground. She tugged Bibi by the arm. “Come on,” she urged.
Bibi ripped off her badge too, and the two made a run for it.
Where wo
uld they go? There was no place safe from the bombing, and escaped slaves could be shot on sight, but I envied their bravery.
I turned to Zenia. “Should we go too?”
She had a terrified look in her eyes. “I don’t know what we should do.”
In our relatively new blue flannel dresses, we looked less like slave labourers than many of the others, but our scraggly hair and gaunt appearance was a clear giveaway. We were close enough to the camp that we could see the guardhouses. Natalia looked from Zenia to me. “I’m not standing around here,” she said. “That train could explode any time now.” She looped her hand through the crook of Kataryna’s elbow and they slowly began to walk in the direction of the camp, Kataryna limping with her sprained ankle. I followed them. Zenia followed me.
Walking with slippery shoes in the winter is difficult, so I kept my eyes to the ground and tried to avoid the slicks of ice. The four of us were just one link of a chain of people slowly making their way back to the work camp, the smoking train to our side. When we passed the engine car, I paused for a brief moment to stare. The way the bomb had smashed into it made it look like a toy train that a willful child had stomped into bits. Flames licked along the sides and black oily smoke filled the air in a tall spiral above it. I covered my mouth and hurried on. Natalia was right — the whole thing could explode at any moment. With each shivering step I took, I thought of that pampered girl who looked like my sister.
When we finally reached the camp entrance, I felt like a walking block of ice. It was mid-afternoon and still light out, but the camp was brighter than daylight. It took me a moment to realize that flames dotted numerous points in the camp. A bomb had hit here too?
Juli ran to our straggling group as we passed the gates, “You’re safe!” she cried. “I can hardly believe it.” She wrapped one arm around me and another around Zenia.
“The camp was bombed as well?” I asked.
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