Juli nodded. “Your barracks was demolished. Thank goodness it was empty at the time.”
“What else was hit?”
“The laundry,” said Juli. “Inge is dead.”
I felt a lurch of sadness in my heart. Inge had sometimes been kind.
“The officers’ mess was also hit,” said Juli. “But none of the officers was killed.”
Terrible as it may sound, deep down I wished that the mess could have been hit during mealtime. It would have given me great satisfaction if at least some officers had died while they were stuffing their faces. As we walked past the flaming mass of wood that had been the officers’ Kantine, a slave dashed out of the burning building, his hair smoking and a bundle cradled in his arms. I heard the crack of a rifle shot. The man fell, scattering the items he had been holding — half a ham and a few raw eggs. I looked in the direction that the shot had come from.
Officer Schmidt glared at us and cocked his rifle. “I’d think twice about looting,” he said.
All that food going up in flames while people were starving. It seemed obscene.
Juli led us to the hospital. “I’m going to give you first aid myself,” she said. “The doctor and nurses have fled.” She ushered us into a room that was so crowded with wounded labourers that there was barely room on the floor for us to sit, but I was thankful nonetheless. All those people meant the room was warm.
Juli brought over a basin of water and a bottle of disinfectant. She cleaned surface scratches on my face and scalp that I didn’t even know I had, then she gingerly removed my thin shoes and washed my feet with warm water and disinfectant. As they thawed out, I could feel sharp needles of pain on the soles of my feet, my ankles and in the joints of my toes. My feet were puffy and red, but at least now they were warming up. When she was finished, she took a clean white bedsheet and tore it into strips. “Wrap your feet in this before you put your shoes back on,” she said.
“You’re going to get in trouble,” I said, taking the strips from her and holding them to my face. They were soft and warm and they smelled of soap, not bleach.
“The Nazis are fleeing,” said Juli. “I’ve heard whispers that the Front is close. We’ll need to get out of here or there will be fighting right on top of us, but right now you should rest and get your strength up.”
She cleaned and disinfected Zenia’s scratches, then wrapped Kataryna’s ankle and worked on Natalia. The three girls cuddled up together and were soon fast asleep.
My feet had been sore and swollen for so long that even loose strips of cloth felt agonizingly tight and I couldn’t sleep. I sat up and looked around me. So many of us and we were all in danger.
With half-opened eyes, I watched Juli tend each new person who tumbled in to the treatment room and collapsed on the floor. I marvelled at her stamina and her compassion. I also wondered about who was left guarding us at the camp. Most of the Nazis had fled, Juli said, but Officer Schmidt was still out there. I could still hear the occasional pop pop pop. Was he shooting people at random?
When Juli was finished treating everyone, I thought she would lie down and get some needed rest, but she left the room. I tried to stand up but the rags were too tight, so I unwrapped the cotton from my feet, slipped on my shoes, then followed Juli down the hallway without her noticing me. She stepped into a small back office at the very end. I remembered this room as the one that the nurses and doctor had used. When she came out, she was holding a pistol and she had a determined expression on her face. She looked up and gasped in surprise when she saw me standing there.
“What are you doing with that gun?”
“What needs to be done.”
She spun the ammunition cylinder. “It’s loaded.”
“When did you learn about guns?”
Her eyes met mine. “There are many skills I have that you don’t know about.”
She walked down the hallway, passing me without so much as a pause, and walked out the front door.
“Juli. Don’t —”
She flicked her hand at me dismissively and strode quickly, gun in full view at her side, to the open area of the camp.
I tried to keep up with her, but my sore feet slowed me down. I got to the far end of the open area and leaned against the corner of a building. My heart was in my mouth as I watched Juli keep walking.
Officer Schmidt strutted out of one of the still-standing buildings on the other side of the grounds, rifle at his side. His eyes went from Juli’s face to the pistol in her hand. A wave of shock passed over his face. “Put the gun down, girl.”
“I don’t take orders from you anymore,” said Juli. She pointed the pistol at his head.
Officer Schmidt’s eyes widened in surprise. “Oh, you’ll obey me. Put it down now.”
He raised his rifle. In a flash Juli aimed the pistol and pulled the trigger. A loud bang cracked through the air.
Officer Schmidt jerked back. He stumbled a little bit, and tried to regain his balance. A patch of slick wet marked his uniform just below the shoulder.
Juli wasted no time. She pulled the trigger again. This time she missed him by a long way. I saw a spiral of smoke some distance behind him where the bullet hit the ground.
Officer Schmidt smiled. With cruel deliberation, he aimed at Juli and squeezed the trigger. At that very moment, I heard a double boom. Juli and Officer Schmidt both fell to the ground. This time I could see blood on his cheek. I ran to Juli. A blossom of red stained the waistband of her white smock. Her eyes locked on mine and she smiled. “You’re safe now. Get out of here.” Her eyes went dim.
“Juli, please wake up!” I fell to her side and tried to gather her in my arms, but her muscles were slack and she felt surprisingly heavy. That’s how I knew she was dead. I gently closed her eyes with my fingertips, and scrabbled in the snow for a handful of dirt. I couldn’t bury her, but I could not leave her here without a prayer for the dead. I sprinkled the dirt over her body and prayed the words I knew all too well.
My heart was filled with so much sadness, but I knew I had to act quickly. Juli had sacrificed her life so we could escape, and I owed it to her to try. I kissed her forehead. “Thank you, Juli. You are braver than anyone I can imagine.”
I got up onto my feet and stumbled back to the hospital as quickly as I could, dark thoughts weighing me down. On the day that I discovered that my real sister might now be a Nazi, I had lost Juli, the sister of my heart.
I opened the hospital door and stepped into the corridor, the warmth enveloping me like a blanket. I heard alarmed murmuring from the treatment room. Juli was no longer there to help the wounded. I would escape, but first I needed to help any that I could. And Zenia. Would she escape with me? What about Kataryna and Natalia? I had to find out.
I stepped into the treatment room.
“Over to that side,” said a boy wearing a Hitler Youth arm band, holding a rifle that dwarfed him. He pointed the barrel right at me.
Chapter Sixteen
Lace Curtain
The corner that he ordered me to was crowded by slave labourers who hadn’t been injured too seriously. A boy wearing a man’s Wehrmacht uniform stood at the other side of the room, hovering over the severely wounded.
Zenia was not in my group. Nor was Kataryna or Natalia. I scanned the wounded group, but they weren’t there either. Where had they gone?
“All of you, out of the building,” said the boy with the rifle. “And I don’t want any trouble.”
At gunpoint we marched in a scraggly single file towards the entrance of the camp, our way punctuated by burning buildings belching out smoke, and with the bodies of workers who had been shot for trying to plunder or escape. When we passed Juli’s body, the girl behind me gasped, then let out one long sob. Officer Schmidt’s body had already been removed and we passed that spot in silence. All that was left to show where he’d died was a splotch of blood in the muddy snow.
A canvas-covered military truck idled at the front entrance. “In,” said t
he boy. “Make it fast.”
I squeezed into a spot on the floor in the far back corner of the truck bed. The dozen of us were sardined so tightly that I had to hold my knees to my chest. It was impossible to protect myself from being bumped, but each time it happened, the person who bumped me would look up with forlorn eyes and apologize. I knew I wasn’t the only one who was hurting.
Once the truck began to move, the canvas covering flapped in the wind, letting in the chilly winter air, but also letting us see the night sky. Against the black were darker silhouettes of planes. I knew they were dropping bombs. The countryside was unnaturally light with smoke and licking flames. I could see the worried faces of my fellow prisoners illuminated. I asked no one in particular, “What’s going on?”
A man in the far shadows said, “They’re taking us to another work camp.”
A toothless woman who looked vaguely familiar scrutinized my face. “Aren’t you Lida, the girl who sews?”
I nodded.
She pulled something from around her neck and handed it to me.
My crucifix.
“Where did you get this?”
“Your friend gave it to me just before she and two other young girls escaped.”
My heart felt like it had stopped beating.
The woman grinned. “Oh yes, dear. A dozen or so got out. Mostly men, but also those three girls. They managed to sneak out just before those stupid boys dressed as Nazis showed up. Your friends were frantic to find you, but they couldn’t wait any longer. The one girl took her crucifix off and asked me if I would give it to you if I ever saw you again.” She touched my cheek. “Didn’t think I would, but here you are.”
I slipped the necklace over my head and felt the warmth of the cross against my chest. My friends had escaped! Please, please be safe! This crucifix had kept Zenia safe all these months and now she was wishing that safety to me.
This bit of metal was a link to my past and a talisman of good luck for the future. I held my hand over the cross and closed my eyes. Tato had made the strap out of shoe leather, but the crucifix itself was ancient. It had been passed down from eldest child to eldest child in our family for generations. Having it around my neck again made me feel that those spirits of past generations were watching over me, giving me strength. Much as I would have liked to curl up and die, it wasn’t my right to do so. I was the oldest person left in our family, and it was my responsibility to find Larissa. It shamed me to think that just hours ago I had questioned her method of staying alive. Who was I to judge her? Hadn’t the Nazis taken me as well? We were all cogs in their evil machinery, even those young boys dressed up as soldiers.
“Why are they moving us?” I asked the woman.
“The Front is just a few miles away,” she said. “I don’t suppose they’re trying to save us. They likely just need slaves deeper inside the Reich.”
I slept fitfully to the smell of diesel, sweat and disinfectant. I dreamed of a blond girl dressed in pink. Her eyes were round with fear and her hands reached out to me. “Save me, Lida!” she screamed.
I woke up with such a jolt it took me a few minutes to remember where I was. The army truck bumped and swerved across rough, bombed-out, pothole-filled roads, throwing those of us in the back painfully against each other. How long had we been travelling? Hours, I was certain, not days. The bomb at the factory had blasted the soup out of my hands, so the last time I had eaten had been the sawdust bread at breakfast. I should have been hungry, but I was beyond that. Had I eaten since then, I might have thrown it up.
When the truck finally stopped, daylight poured down through the openings in the canvas flaps, showing the Allied bomber planes in stark relief against the blue sky. The back of the truck opened with a loud screech and clunk.
“Out. All of you. Now,” a Nazi policeman ordered, his rubber truncheon raised threateningly.
I stumbled out on numb feet and nearly fell to the ground, but by sheer force of will I stayed upright. I reached out and grabbed the toothless woman’s arm so she could lean on me as she got out. We all needed to look healthier than we were. It could mean the difference between a work camp or a shot to the head.
I looked around, trying to figure out where we might be. We were at the edge of a village or town. Tidy timber-framed cottages lined either side of a cobblestone road, and a squat stone church sat just beyond, surrounded by an old graveyard. The mountain range in the distance made the scene seem almost idyllic. Was this a place that had not been touched by war?
But once the policeman ordered us to walk, I began to notice the familiar pockmarks on the sides of houses and on the road — those could only have got there with repeated bombings, yet the houses still stood. Ice-slicked cobblestones were a challenge, but I balanced as best I could, praying that I wouldn’t twist an ankle.
As we walked, I noticed movement behind a lace curtain in the window of one cottage. The lace was pulled back and a rosy-cheeked housewife stared out at us. I met her eye briefly, then the curtain abruptly closed. What was she thinking? Perhaps it was an everyday occurrence for her — emaciated slaves being marched down the middle of her street. Perhaps she didn’t think about it at all anymore.
At the end of the street was a low stone structure built into the side of a hill. It looked as if it might have been a large horse stable at one time, or maybe an old factory. Three of the four walls were built into the rise of the hill. The toothless old woman, perhaps seeing that I looked puzzled, said that such places were attractive to the Nazis. After all the Allied bombings they had endured, they sought out structures like this that had natural defenses.
The policeman stepped up to the door of an ancient cottage beside the building and banged on it. We twelve tired workers stood on the cold cobblestones and waited, wondering what fate had in store for us now.
A civilian with a moustache opened the door. I could smell the steam of food from inside — sharp cheese, onions, fried eggs? My stomach lurched in hunger.
The policeman said, “I have your workers.”
The man didn’t bother getting a coat or jacket. In his white shirtsleeves, he stepped out and inspected us, one by one. “Hold out your hands,” he said to me.
I did.
“This one is fine.”
He examined each of us the same way, and passed us all until he got to the toothless woman. When she held out her gnarled fingers, he flicked his hand like he was brushing away a fly. “Too old.”
“I’m not,” said the woman. “I am a good worker. Stronger than I look.”
The policeman took her roughly by the arm. “I’ll get rid of her,” he said to the man.
I knew that the woman was not that old at all. When you’re fed nothing but turnip soup and bread made of sawdust, it is hard to keep up your strength. My guess was that she was no older than that housewife who had watched us through the lace curtains.
As she was led away, I wondered if the housewife would watch and judge.
The man walked along the front of the low building and directed those of us deemed suitable to follow him. The far end of the building looked like it had sunk into the earth from the weight of the hill behind it. There was a set of stone steps leading down to what looked like a wide root-cellar door. He went down the steps and opened it.
“This is where you’ll be,” he said, waving us in with his hand.
The smell of misery hit me first. It was one that I was all too familiar with: a combination of unwashed bodies, no fresh air and bad food. It took my eyes some time to become adjusted to the dim light, but as shapes emerged, I realized that I was standing in some sort of machine room. There were individual presses and sanders like I had seen at the metalworks factory, but these seemed not so modern. As my eyes got more used to the dimness, I noticed filthy straw mattresses lined up against the walls. I could smell the open barrel in the corner before I saw it.
We weren’t the first people to work in this hidden place, but I hoped we would be the last. What had happ
ened to the ones who had been here before us? By the smell of the room, they weren’t long gone.
“You will sleep here,” the man said, pointing to the mattresses. “That is your toilet.” His hand indicated the open barrel. “Food will be brought in twice a day.”
He walked over to a long table and picked up a shiny metal cylinder that looked like an oversized bullet. “This is what we’re making here.”
It was like a nightmare repeating itself. He showed us in great detail the steps involved in making the ammunition. My assignment — again — was measuring out the gunpowder. Only this time I was tamping it into small cartridges instead of bombs.
“I inspect every cartridge each night,” said the man. “If I find any defective cartridges, one of you will be chosen at random to be shot.”
I looked around at the ten others who shared my fate. I was the youngest by far. We were a sorry group of starving, broken ghosts. How many of us would survive long enough for the war to end? My hand went up to the crucifix around my neck. This man had not asked us to remove any metal. He didn’t seem to care if we were all killed in one big blast. I was glad to have my crucifix with me. It made me feel protected by the spirits of my family. And if there was a spark? So be it.
How long did we stay in that prison? Time blended into one long nightmare. Not once were we allowed to leave the building. At night as we lay on the lice-infested mattresses that had been used by many slaves before us, I tried to get the others to sing, but they were too tired. The only things that sustained me were my hopes and dreams. No one could take those away from me.
Day after day, when the man came in, the scents that clung to him were my only calendar. I inhaled the humid leaves of autumn, then drank the dry bouquet of fresh snow. Slush came next. Was winter nearly over? I waited for the scent of lilacs, but it never came. Only mud.
I dreamed of little Larissa often. In time, that horrible image of the girl who looked like her in that Nazi car faded from my memory. Instead I thought of earlier times — especially that one time when she sat on my shoulders in the spring so she could reach the tallest blooms of our lilac tree. I willed the heady memory of lilac perfume to replace the odour of oppression. I thought of the friends I had met since I had been captured — Luka and Zenia, Natalia and Kataryna. I hoped that they were safe. I longed to see them again, even once, just to know that they had survived. I prayed for Juli’s soul and I felt guilty that she’d died for my freedom, yet I was still a captive. I hoped that somehow I would make her proud of me.
Making Bombs For Hitler Page 11
