Making Bombs For Hitler Read online

  How I loved the scent of those lilac blossoms. I breathed in deeply, willing myself to smell their delicate scent. For a moment it almost worked, but only for a moment. Instead of blossoms, all I could smell was rotting straw, bleaching powder and misery.

  Chapter Three

  Russian Soup

  The door opened with a loud shriek. I bolted upright, memories scattering.

  It wasn’t an officer or a policeman, but a tired looking woman with frizzy hair bound up in a bun. She wore a faded dress with an apron over top. She clapped her hands and said, in that kind of clipped Ukrainian that the Germans who lived in my country used, “Quickly, children. You must come with me.”

  She sounded almost kind.

  She had us line up in front of two policemen who sat outside one of the administrative buildings at a wooden table. When it was my turn, one of them took my hand and pressed the tips of my fingers onto a black pad and then firmly pressed my inky fingers onto a small white form. He waved the form in the air to dry the ink, then handed it to his fellow officer, whose fountain pen was poised.

  “Name?” he asked, without looking up.

  “Lida Ferezuk.” I watched him write down my name using German letters instead of Cyrillic.

  “Date of birth?”

  “March fourteenth,” I said.

  He looked up briefly and said, “Happy birthday.”

  Today was March 14? So I was now nine years old. The last days and weeks had been a blur of sadness. My birthday was the last thing on my mind.

  “Year?” he asked.

  “Nineteen …” And then I hesitated. If I told the truth, what might they do to me? Would they consider a nine-year-old to be useless? I couldn’t take the chance. “Nineteen thirty.”

  “Are you sure you’re thirteen?” He looked up, clearly not convinced.

  “Yes, officer.”

  He wrote it in, then looked at me, his mouth curved into a near smile. “Consider that your birthday present.”

  “What is your country of origin?” he asked.

  “Ukraine.”

  “No such place.”

  I watched as he filled the space with Occupied Eastern Territory — a term I hated.

  “Place of birth?”

  “Verenchanka,” I said, then added, “Chernivets’ka region, Bukovyna, Ukraine.”

  He slashed a line through several spots without asking anything. In the part where it specified nationality, he left it blank.

  “Can you put that I’m Ukrainian in that spot?”

  “No such thing,” he said. “You’re finished.”

  Kataryna Pich was the next person in line. I was curious to hear how old she would make herself, so I paused.

  “February sixth, nineteen twenty-nine,” she told him.

  She had made herself fourteen instead of eleven! The officer didn’t question her, but wrote down the year and date with studious boredom.

  “Go to the Kantine,” he said to her as he finished. He looked up at me and said, “You, no dawdling.”

  Kataryna stepped away from the table and the two of us stood in the next spiralling lineup. We had both heard each other lie about our ages. I squeezed her hand and her pale blue eyes met mine. “I hope we guessed right,” she said.

  The moment we entered the Kantine, I could smell the food despite being so far down in the lineup. Meat in gravy, onions, even vanilla? How long had it been since we’d last eaten? A day? Two? Long enough that my stomach had forgotten how to growl. Even before the war, food was not plentiful. It hardly seemed in keeping with the way the Nazis had treated us so far. Perhaps my nose was playing tricks on me.

  Conversations of people lined up with me buzzed in the whispers of many languages. The Russian I could understand by listening carefully. Some of the words were the same as Ukrainian, but others were not. The German I could understand. A German family had lived on our street, but the Soviets had taken them away. I caught wisps of unfamiliar tongues as well.

  I looked around at all the people. Some wore rags faded to dirt grey and others were clothed in tattered party dresses, nightgowns, school uniforms. It all depended on what they were wearing when they were captured. Some wore mismatched shoes or wooden clogs. Most were barefoot. I looked down at my own bare feet, now blue with cold. Wooden clogs would be good. Some of the prisoners wore badges on their clothing — mostly square blue-and-white badges with OST in the middle, but there were some diamond-shaped P badges in purple and yellow. There were no yellow stars like my friend Sarah had had to wear.

  I craned my neck to see if I could find Luka and the boys from our cattle car, but I couldn’t. When we were almost at the front of the line, the warden pointed to a stack of bowls, tin cups and spoons. “Each of you shall take one bowl, cup and spoon. After you’ve eaten, you will clean them and take them to your sleeping quarters.”

  I clutched my bowl, cup and spoon to my chest and stepped forward in hungry anticipation. The wonderful scent of cooking had revived my appetite. Our warden stood at the front of the serving window, her arms crossed and a look of boredom on her face.

  When I finally got up to the front, I smiled at the cook, who stood sweating beside four open vats of soup, three clustered together and one set apart. Each vat had a tidy label painted on the front: German, Aryan, Polish. The one set apart from the others was labelled Russian.

  My mouth filled with saliva as the cook ladled out a bowlful from the German pot, with its chunks of meat, potatoes and carrots floating in greasy thick broth. A person in front of me held out her bowl. After filling it, the cook reached to the table behind him for a dish of vanilla pudding! He gave that to the prisoner as well. I could hardly believe my eyes.

  I waited for the people in front of me to be served.

  When it was finally my turn, I held up my bowl and said, “I would love some German soup, please.”

  The cook barely glanced at me. Instead, he looked over to the warden and raised his eyebrows.

  “Russian,” she said.

  “I’m not Russian, I’m Ukrainian.”

  The warden frowned at me. “Do you see a sign here that says Ukrainian? You’re from the east. You’re Russian.”

  The cook stepped over to the lone Russian pot and slopped some of its contents into my bowl, using a separate ladle. I looked down at the murky brown mess and my eyes filled with tears.

  “Could I at least have some pudding?”

  “We don’t waste precious food on sub-humans,” she said. “Go sit now.”

  What did she mean by sub-human?

  I balanced the bowl and made my way through the maze of jostling people. I found a spot to sit at a long wooden table. I sniffed the soup. A faint rotten smell. I dipped my spoon in and swirled it, trying to figure out what it was made from. The skin of a turnip rose to the surface. I stirred again. A small white curly thing — a worm? Bile rose at the back of my throat. I pushed the bowl away.

  “You’d better eat it,” said a voice in German with an accent I didn’t recognize.

  Sitting across the table from me was a girl not much older than I was. She didn’t wear a badge but she looked like a prisoner. Her black hair had grown out a few centimetres from the shaving she must have received upon arrival. It stuck out like bristles on a hairbrush. How long had she been here? Her eyes looked bruised with exhaustion, but her mouth curved into a faint smile. She dipped a spoon into her own soup with relish and pulled out a small chunk of meat.

  I was outraged. “Why do you get meat and I don’t?”

  “They don’t consider you a valuable human,” said the girl.

  “All humans are equal.”

  “The Nazis consider you sub-human,” said the girl, gesturing with her spoon. “Just look around. There are people from many countries that have been brought here to do labour for the Germans. Some are political prisoners — like me. I was caught distributing anti-Nazi leaflets. Others were captured — like you. The German police and soldiers get to eat the best food b
ecause they are the most valuable humans. They even get vanilla pudding for dessert.” She dipped her spoon back into her soup and placed a chunk of potato on her tongue. She chewed slowly, as if savouring the taste. “But I’m Hungarian and they consider me a valuable human because my government is allied with the Nazis.”

  “What do they consider Ukrainians?”

  She took another spoonful of soup and swallowed it with a satisfied look. “No such thing. Don’t you mean Russian? Or maybe Polish?” Her eyes lit up with excitement. “If you get the choice, tell them you’re Polish. They get better food than the Russians.”

  “I don’t think I get to choose.”

  “Too bad.” She shoved a chunk of meat that glistened with fat into her mouth. She chewed another mouthful of her tasty smelling soup and her eyes met mine. “You’d better eat up,” she said. “Or another Russian will come and steal it from you. All you Russians are thieves.”

  I looked down at my bowl of goop and dipped my spoon back into it. A worm? So what? It was as close to meat as I would be getting for a while. It was important to keep up my strength so I could get out of this place and find Larissa. I filled my spoon as full as I could and shoved it into my mouth, trying not to gag at the awful taste. I kept my eyes locked on the Hungarian girl’s face as I chewed.

  I licked my bowl clean, making sure not to waste the merest morsel of turnip. All too soon, our warden stood at the door of the Kantine. She clapped her hands sharply and said, “Barracks Seven, we leave now.”

  We were scattered at different tables but we all stood and went with her.

  Chapter Four

  Zenia

  “Luka!”

  He stood with some other prisoners in a lineup at the entrance to the men’s bathroom — a wooden building that looked like a small barracks. I was in the line for the women’s bathroom, which was beside it. Luka’s head turned when he heard his name and his eyes met mine briefly, but his face stayed a mask of sadness. He stepped into the bathroom, and a few minutes later, came out. He walked past my lineup and when he got to me, he stopped.

  “Stay out of the hospital,” he whispered.

  “Move!” a policeman shouted at him.

  A billy club glanced off Luka’s back. His eyes widened in pain but he did not cry out. The policeman grabbed Luka’s arm and shoved him back into line.

  What a brave friend Luka was. How had he managed to find out about the hospital? And how kind of him to take such a risk to let me know. It surprised me that the hospital was somehow bad. If I’d had time to think about it, I would have assumed it would be the best place to be … Except … Larissa! It was a hospital-like place where she and I had been separated. Was she still there? Maybe in danger? Now I worried about her even more.

  I was pulled out of my thoughts by a revolting smell that made my nose wrinkle. I looked up — my turn next for the bathroom.

  Zenia was a little behind me in line, so she held onto my eating utensils. When I stepped inside, my bare feet landed in something wet. It was all I could do to keep from gagging. My eyes adjusted to the dimness and I saw six wooden doors. A woman came out from behind one and held the door open for me. Inside was a rough slat of wood with a hole in it. I held my breath and did what I had to as quickly as I could, trying to imagine that I was in my own outhouse at home, which had always been clean and fresh.

  I nearly ran out of there, gulping in the fresh wintry air to clear my lungs of the stink.

  “That bad?” Zenia asked, seeing the look on my face.

  I nodded. She handed me my eating utensils and also her own. It was her turn for the bathroom.

  Little Olesia was lined up behind Katya and Daria outside another small wooden barracks, so I stepped in behind her. Her freshly shaved head was covered with bright red bug bites. There was one long scratch from the barber’s blade under her left ear. Her feet were bare too, but she wore a skirt and a wool sweater — a much more substantial outfit than my own thin dress. She turned to me and sighed. “This place is awful.”

  Just then the line moved forward and we stepped inside the building. It turned out to be our wash house. On the floor was a big metal basin that reminded me of a pig trough. Fifteen faucets came out of a water pipe that ran at waist height along either side of the trough. I turned on one of the taps and cold water gushed out.

  “Is there any soap?” I asked Olesia.

  “Only this.” She handed me a pail of white powder.

  I shook some out onto my dampened hands, but realized right away that it wasn’t soap. It was a harsh bleaching powder that made my hands burn. I quickly rinsed most of it away, but used a small bit to clean my feet. With no shoes or socks and the cold dirty ground, I did not want to get them infected. The bleach stung as I massaged it into the tiny cuts on the soles of my feet, but it felt good to be a little bit cleaner.

  I rinsed my hands off in plain cold water, then used a bit of the bleaching powder to clean my dishes and Zenia’s. There was nothing to dry myself or the dishes with, so again, when I got outside, the wintry air hit me.

  The warden was waiting for us outside our sleeping barracks. She handed Zenia a stack of rough cloth patches, thread and needles. “You must wear these Ostarbeiter patches on your clothing at all times,” she said. “That way, everyone will know that you are Eastern Workers. Anyone found not wearing the OST badge will be shot.”

  She ticked off each of our names on a clipboard as we entered our sleeping quarters. “Tomorrow is Monday. You will rise at four-thirty,” she said sternly. “When you hear the whistle, get up. No dawdling.”

  Zenia gave each of us one of the patches. Now that I looked more closely, I could see that they were made of a coarse white material that had been stamped with striped bands of dark blue ink. In the centre were the initials OST.

  Olesia sewed her patch on hastily, then climbed into her bunk. Zenia finished next. I watched as each girl did the job quickly and fell into an exhausted sleep. I was also tired, but to have a needle with thread made my fingers tingle with memory. Yes, the OST badge was ugly, and what it symbolized was even worse, but Mama always told me to find beauty where I could. Instead of stitching sloppily just to get it over with, I savoured every stitch, taking care to make each one perfectly. Even as it grew dark, my fingers became my eyes and a delicate pattern revealed itself. Thinking of Mama brought forth the image of those lilac blossoms. Hardly realizing it, my fingers created simple petal-like stitches — beauty to surround the ugly OST. If Mama were here, she too would have been able to make even prison clothing beautiful.

  A beam of moonlight shone through a wooden window slat and illuminated Zenia’s pale face, wet with silent tears. I crept over to her bunk and huddled close. There was nothing I could say that would comfort her. I knew that we were all feeling lonely and frightened, but all of the other girls had managed to sleep.

  I put my hand on her shoulder. “Is there something I can do to make you feel better?” I whispered.

  She shook her head. “Nothing can help. I am all alone in the world.”

  I was hungry and cold and frightened, but I could hold on as long as there was a chance that Larissa lived.

  “But how can you know for sure?” I asked her. “There is always hope.”

  Zenia pulled me close. I could feel her hot breath on my ear. “I’m Jewish.”

  I felt like a rock had been thrown at my heart. None of the prisoners had yellow stars.

  It was a miracle that Zenia herself had managed to survive for this long. I remembered when the Nazis came to our town. At first we were relieved that it was not the Soviets, for we thought no one could be as bad as them. My father had been one of the thousands they killed just days before the Nazi invasion.

  My friend Sarah and her parents were just as hopeful as we had been. Germans were civilized, weren’t they? But then they took the Jews and shot them. Mama had tried to hide Sarah and her parents, so they shot my mama too. Larissa and I heard the shots from our hiding place in t
he attic.

  There was only one difference between the Nazis and the Soviets: the Soviets killed by the cover of night, but the Nazis killed in full daylight.

  If the Nazis found out that Zenia was Jewish, would she be killed on the spot? My hand went up to my neck and I caressed my crucifix. I had been powerless to save my friend Sarah, but could I help Zenia? My simple cross was not just jewellery and it was not only a symbol of my beliefs. It was all that I had left of my parents. But it also showed that I wasn’t Jewish. Should I give this to Zenia? Could I bear to part with it? But Zenia had so much more to lose. I had no choice. I had to give it to her.

  I took it off, held it to my lips and kissed it goodbye. Then I pressed it into Zenia’s palm. “Wear this.”

  Her eyes filled with tears but she said nothing. I tried to understand what she must be thinking — that wearing the cross was like denying her family, denying the religion her parents had died for. But she had to blend in. And she needed a reason to live.

  “If you don’t live, who will tell your story when the war is over?” I asked her.

  Her eyes met mine. She looked back down at the crucifix and her eyebrows knitted in thought. Another minute passed. Then she sighed and her eyes met mine. “You’re right.” She slipped the leather necklace that held my crucifix over her head. “Thank you.”

  Chapter Five

  Work

  Somehow I slept. In the background of my dreams I could hear the incessant bang-bang-bang-boom of British airplanes targeting a nearby city with a blanket of bombs. They were so close I could feel my bunk tremble.

  Memories of scents and tastes crowded out the bombs — lilac blossoms, vanilla pudding, wormy turnip soup. A flash of Larissa: fear in her eyes and her arms outstretched. “Lida, please don’t leave me!” I tried to grab her but she was just a dream. All too soon the morning whistle shrilled and I tumbled out of my bunk.