Making Bombs For Hitler Read online

  With a sinking feeling, I realized I must have slept through supper. “Can someone do me a favour tomorrow?” I said to no one in particular. “Please wake me up so I don’t miss supper.”

  Stiff blankets rustled and there were a few suppressed chuckles.

  “It’s not funny,” I said. “I’m starving.”

  “Silly girl,” said Zenia. “None of us got supper.”

  Her words slapped me in the face. A triangle of sawdust bread and a bowl of watery turnip soup and that was all for the entire day? No wonder Mary had aged so quickly in a matter of months.

  “When I get out of here, the first thing I’m going to do is eat a piece of fresh homemade bread slathered with butter and dripping with honey.” It was Natalia who said that.

  “Don’t talk about food,” said Zenia.

  “I won’t,” said Ivanka. “How can we talk about fresh bread, or butter and honey when we’re all so hungry? I wouldn’t want to talk about the beautiful tortes my mother would make, or soup made with wild mushrooms my brother picked in his secret spot in the woods …”

  My stomach grumbled with hunger. “Can’t we talk about something else?”

  But try as we might, the conversation kept on coming back to food.

  I fell into sleep, dreaming of my grandmother’s poppy seed cookies.

  The blast of the early morning whistle and the next day began. Then the next, the next and the next. They all knitted together with sadness, hunger and cold. We laboured through March and April and into May.

  Each day was much like that first Monday. We would get up in the dark and work until it was practically dark again. Twelve hours was usual, although there were a few who toiled longer. Every few days, more labourers would arrive by train, yet it seemed that the camp always had room for more. On Saturdays we finished at noon, and Sunday, glorious Sunday, we usually had off.

  The higher-class prisoners who didn’t wear the OST badge were allowed to use the train and go into town on Saturday afternoons and Sundays. A few did housekeeping for German civilians and would be fed as payment. Oksana and Marta used the privilege of their P badge to go into town and sell items that we girls in Barracks 7 made in our off-hours — sculptures made of discarded wood with a sharpened spoon as a carving tool, or small bits of embroidery made with thread and fabric I stole from the laundry. The two girls would stand in the streets, hawking our items. It was a dangerous thing to do and money was worthless in the camp, but they could barter for a piece of lard or a chunk of horsemeat, and these little bits kept the rest of us in Barracks 7 alive.

  In the summer months, farmers would wait outside the camp on Saturday afternoons with their trucks. They would take a few lucky souls with them to work in their fields, and since there was no roll call on Sunday morning, those leaving on Saturday afternoon often wouldn’t come back until Sunday night. Juli was one who would go, and so would Natalia. How I longed to tear off my OST badge and go with them. But it wasn’t just the OST badge, it was proper papers, and those I didn’t have.

  For Juli, it was the same farmer who picked her up each Saturday. She told me that Herr Klein and his wife despised Hitler and that they were kind and generous. They insisted that she eat at the table with them and their young daughter and she was served as much food as if she were family. Juli told me that they had two sons in the German army, both fighting on the Eastern Front. That sent chills down my spine. The Eastern Front was Ukraine!

  Juli knew that if she was found smuggling food in, she could be shot, but she took the chance when she could. Once she smuggled in a thick piece of real bread made with rye flour. I wept for joy.

  Natalia didn’t go with the same farmer each week. Most Saturdays she was paid in food and she would share whenever she could. Once she smuggled back a handful of real coffee beans. Each of us in Barracks 7 got at least one. I got two. The burst of flavour when I chewed the beans was glorious, but then all night I tossed sleeplessly, wondering and worrying about Larissa. Had she been taken to a camp like this? How could she possibly prove herself useful? I had worked myself up into such a worried state by the morning whistle that I vowed never to eat another coffee bean, no matter how delicious they were.

  For brief snatched moments on the weekends, Luka and I would sit together behind the girls’ wash house and talk about life before the war. His father had been a pharmacist, but his store had been confiscated by the communists. In secret, Mr. Barukovich had continued to help the sick, and he began teaching Luka the art of mixing drugs.

  “But our neighbour informed on him,” said Luka. “Tato was paraded through the streets as an ‘enemy of the people.’ Some of those he had secretly helped came out to watch. Not that I blame them — what else could they do? He was sentenced to ten years in Siberia.”

  “Where is he now?” I asked.

  “Still there, as far as I know…. Or dead.”

  “Do you have any other family?”

  Luka nodded slowly. “My mother,” he said. “She might be alive, somewhere in Germany. She was taken as a slave labourer before I was.”

  “I want this war to end,” I told him. “Then you can find your parents and I can find my sister.”

  Luka squeezed my hand. “Until that time, let’s watch out for each other. You are like the sister I never had.”

  His words warmed my soul.

  Often, by the time the weekend came, I was so tired that all I could do was sleep. It was a way of briefly escaping the hunger and the cold and sadness. But every once in a while on a Sunday morning from ten until eleven, the Nazis would let us have a recital, and no matter how bone-weary I felt, I always went to listen. It was astonishing how many wonderful singers were at our camp. Some people made crude musical instruments out of pieces of wood and string and metal. I would sit there and listen with tears running down my face and think of my mother’s truth: that beauty could be found anywhere.

  Bare feet and a thin dress is not much to wear in a Bavarian winter, so the warmth of August made me thankful. On the coldest days when we first arrived, I had considered tearing up one of my blankets and making it into warmer clothing, but our warden told us that we would only be issued those two blankets for the whole time we were here, and that could be years. We were not allowed to use them for clothing, and we were to guard them against theft.

  As Inge got used to me she no longer made me spend so much time doing the laundry. I got to sew most of the day, and even though the work needed to be done quickly and well, I was grateful for the clean job and thankful that I was proving myself indispensable. And as the days progressed, it wasn’t just bedding and towels that I worked on. Inge brought in her personal items too, so I darned knitted socks, mended flannel nighties and hemmed silken slips. For the officers, I mended woollen greatcoats and fur-lined hats. As the various kinds of fabric slipped through my fingers, I longed to have some of it for me and my friends. Those socks would feel so good on my feet, and how wonderful it would be to have a clean dress to wear.

  One sticky September day, I got up my nerve and asked Inge if I could wash my own dress in the laundry. Scrubbing it with a stone and using the bleaching powder had worn it quite thin and I was afraid that it would eventually fall apart. What would I do then?

  Her eyes widened in surprise at my request. “If I could let you, I would,” she said. “But how could I let the lice and dirt from your clothing mix in with the laundry for Germans?”

  “But the soap here would wash it all away,” I said. “Who would know the difference?”

  She shook her head slowly. “If Officer Schmidt saw you in an outfit that was suspiciously clean, he would immediately know what I had allowed. I cannot risk it.”

  Chapter Nine

  The Hospital

  One fateful afternoon in October, as I sat in the laundry with sewing on my lap, I heard a whizz-boom-crash that was so close, the ground rocked back and forth. Had a bomb hit the work camp? Inge turned off her giant steam press and ran outside. I followed
her as she trotted between the buildings until she got to the open area. A few policemen had already gathered. Juli was there as well, standing rigid in her white smock, her eyes searching in the direction of town.

  She pointed. “That’s where it hit.”

  I shaded my eyes with one hand and squinted so I could see farther — curls of smoke rising a mile or so beyond our barbed-wire enclosure.

  Officer Schmidt stepped out of the administrative building and walked to where we stood. “It’s the metalworks factory,” he said to the policemen. “I was just notified.”

  Luka and Zenia worked at the metalworks factory! My heart pounded in fear for them.

  Officer Schmidt turned to Inge. “Other buildings in town have been hit as well, so they’re scrambling to provide first aid. Everyone who can be spared needs to get to the entrance. They’ll be bringing the injured labourers back to the camp for treatment and many will need to be carried to the hospital.”

  Inge nodded. “I’ll round up the kitchen workers and stretchers.” She turned to me and said, “Lida, you’re too small to carry any of the injured. Go to the hospital now with that worker —” she pointed at Juli “ — and help her make up the extra beds.” Then she dashed off to the kitchens.

  “Come on,” said Juli, grabbing my hand.

  The hospital was the last place on earth that I wanted to be, but I had no choice. When we got there, Juli held the door open and pulled me in. The first thing I noticed was the strong smell of bleaching powder and I found this comforting. At least it was clean. The entryway was a small room with wooden benches along the wall and a glassed-in reception area beside a second door. Juli nodded to the white-uniformed woman behind the glass and then opened the second door, which revealed a series of rooms on either side of a long wide corridor. I followed her down the painted concrete floors of the hallway, glancing fearfully into each room as we passed. Everything looked so normal. Each room held eight or so wooden beds with straw mattresses similar to the bunks in our barracks, only these were neatly made up with good white cotton sheets, and instead of being stacked in tiers, they were all on the floor. The first room was empty, but in the second, two of the hospital beds were occupied. The man and woman had a uniformity about them — both were gaunt and motionless — looking more like corpses than patients. No nurse or doctor was in attendance.

  “Are those people forced labourers?” I whispered to Juli.

  She frowned and put a finger to her lips.

  Who would hear us? But just then, a couple of nurses and a man in a white coat stepped out of a room at the end of the hallway. The doctor took no notice of us, but carefully noted something on his clipboard as he slowly walked with the nurses down the hallway towards us.

  He looked up as we drew closer to the group. “I see they gave you a girl to help you make up the other rooms.”

  “Yes, Herr Doctor,” said Juli, nodding to him in deference.

  “Do it quickly, then. The train with the injured is on its way.” He and the nurses continued down the hallway and went out through the door.

  Juli took out a stack of clean sheets from the linen cupboard and handed them to me. I followed her into one of the next rooms. I didn’t think anyone would be able to hear us as we worked so I tried to ask Juli again about the patients, keeping my voice low just in case.

  “They’re Germans,” she whispered. “They’re being slowly starved to death.”

  I could barely hide my shock. “Why would the Nazis starve Germans?”

  “They are no longer useful,” said Juli. “The woman was a warden. She has advanced cancer, and the man has a head injury. He used to be one of the police.”

  I continued to make the beds in silence, but my mind tumbled with conflicting thoughts and fears. A hospital was supposed to be a place of healing, but it was at a hospital that my sister was taken from me. At this hospital some patients had been treated for injuries, but healthy children had been killed for their blood. Now here were Nazis using hospitals to kill even Germans they considered not useful. It seemed that everyone was a piece of a big machine, and if you stopped working, you were thrown out. What part of the machine was my sister being used for? She was so much younger than I. How useful could she possibly be? A dozen terrifying scenarios fluttered through my imagination. Could Larissa survive?

  I made a final snug corner on the sheet of the last bed and put my hands on my hips, regarding all of the newly made-up beds. Would this room be used for healing or killing?

  I heard the chugging of the train as it approached. “Let’s go,” said Juli.

  As I walked beside her to meet the train, all I could think of was that hospital. I didn’t envy Juli, having to work there every day. It had to be horrible for her to witness things she had no way of stopping. The image of those two dying Germans was burned into my mind. If the doctors and nurses were supposed to make them die, why such a long process as starving them? My memory flashed back to when I was little and the Nazis had taken all the Jews and shot them in broad daylight. They shot my mother that way as well. It seemed that just as there were different soups, there were different ways of being killed, depending on your nationality.

  The cook and other kitchen workers had gathered at the front of the gate with stretchers. The doctor was talking rapidly to the workers, gesturing with his hands. Close by stood the nurses, waiting for their orders. These women reminded me of the nurses who had separated me from Larissa. Were they here to assist the injured, or were they more interested in sorting through them? I thought of them as big white birds, circling, looking for scraps of meat.

  The train pulled up, and one by one, survivors limped out of the train cars, gashes of red on their scalps and arms. Some held onto each other for support, trying to look less injured than they were. The nurses dispersed among the wounded, assisting those on the spot who just needed first aid — dispensing a bandage here and quick stitches there. Those more seriously injured were seen by the doctor.

  Just then Zenia got off the train. She was cradling her left arm. Her dress hung in shreds and she was splattered with blood, but she was walking. I wanted to help her but Juli held me back. “Don’t call attention to yourself,” she said. “It will not help your friend.”

  The doctor walked up to Zenia and did a quick examination of her arm. “Surface scratches only,” he said. “You’re lucky.” He called a nurse over to dress Zenia’s cuts and went on to someone else. The nurse roughly swabbed the deep scrapes on Zenia’s arm with a disinfectant, then bound it up. “You can recuperate in your barracks,” she said, turning to another worker.

  Zenia’s face was white and covered with a sheen of sweat. I think she was probably relieved that her injuries were minor, but she still looked like she was in pain. She walked to where Juli and I stood. I guess she wanted to prove that she was still useful. I put my arm around her. “Let me help you to our barracks,” I said.

  “No,” she said, trembling. “I’d like to stand here and assist if necessary.”

  The next train car pulled up and the doors opened. Two labourers carried out a third by the arms and legs. I stood on tiptoes and was horrified to see the one being carried was Luka.

  “Stretcher,” said the doctor, waving his hand to the kitchen workers. The cook and his assistant set a stretcher on the ground and the two OST workers gingerly lowered Luka onto it. From where I stood, I could see that the entire top portion of one leg was covered in blood. His arms and face were also spattered, but seemed uninjured.

  “Luka!” I cried.

  His eyes fluttered open and he looked around for me, but Juli held my arm so tightly that I couldn’t run to him. The doctor examined him quickly. “To the hospital,” he said.

  My heart sank. Would he be treated or killed? I turned my face to Juli but she refused to look at me.

  More slaves were taken to the hospital. “I have to go help them,” said Juli, her voice cracking. She left Zenia and I standing there.

  I wrapped my arm
around Zenia’s waist. “No,” she said, pushing me away. “I must walk on my own.”

  Once we were in the privacy of our barracks, she collapsed onto her bunk in a quivering mound of pain. What could I possibly do to help her? I grabbed my own blankets and covered her up, then I got my tin cup and ran outside to get some water. I helped her drink a little bit, and held her until she fell asleep.

  Before the morning whistle, I was woken by Zenia’s hand on my shoulder. “Look,” she said, her eyes filled with tears. She had wrapped herself in one of the blankets. She held out what was left of her dress. Her tossing and turning in the night had caused even more shredding to her already threadbare dress. It was unrepairable and basically unwearable. I tore off the bottom strip of my own tattered dress and stitched that in place to make the top of hers decent.

  At roll call, those who were wounded were given alternate duties. Zenia was sent to work in the kitchen.

  I went back to the laundry, worried sick about Zenia. She wasn’t as physically injured as many were, but I knew that the bombing had shattered her. I was especially worried about Luka. I counted the hours until lunch when I could ask Juli about him.

  Inge acted as if the bombing had never happened. In fact, in the morning she looked happier than I had ever seen her.

  “I’ve received a package from my husband,” she said, her eyes shining like a child’s on St. Nicholas Day.

  She went into her office room and came back with an armful of extraordinary finery: a butter-coloured chiffon blouse with intricate lace at the bodice, a set of six monogrammed ladies’ handkerchiefs and a heavy black fur coat. The items seemed so out of keeping with life as I knew it at the camp, and it made me wonder what Inge did when she left here each day after the six o’clock whistle.