Making Bombs For Hitler (15 page)

A canvas-covered military truck idled at the front entrance. “In,” said the 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 happened 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.

Chapter Seventeen
Shokolad

How I hated that man who came each day and took away the cartridges and brought us our slop. But then one day he didn’t come. Or the next day. Now that he wasn’t showing up, I was aware of his absence. He was our only link to the outside.

We had made all the cartridges that we could but we ran out of gunpowder and cylinders. There were so many cartridges that they filled the box and we had to stack the overflow on the table, but they kept rolling off.

We had no food.

My body had become used to living on our meagre diet, but to survive on nothing was not possible. Each day, every day had been punctuated with that piece of sawdust bread and that bowl of turnip soup. Even with that food, my arms and legs had turned to sticks and my teeth had loosened. Now my feet stank from their open wounds and my knees buckled when I tried to stand. I lay on my lice-infested mat and waited to die, hoping that somehow my sister would live. I lost all track of time.