Hunger Winter

by Rob Currie

  After he left, Els sat with the bright overhead light still on and guards making plenty of noise to be sure she couldn’t sleep. They kept up the racket until many hours later when a different guard entered her cell and informed her the appointment had been postponed.

  Two nights later, the Germans told her she must stay awake and await questioning at midnight. Shortly after the three o’clock shift change, they told her she could go to sleep. Immediately, she grabbed her little heart of stone from the corner where she’d hidden it, curled up on the mattress, and slept.

  The next morning they questioned her without warning before breakfast, but she told them nothing. That afternoon, they took her to a room with a bar on the wall high above her head. They tied her hands together and connected them to a rope, which they looped around the bar. After an hour, Els’s arms ached and throbbed. Just when she thought she couldn’t take it anymore, a guard brought a plate of bratwurst and sauerkraut and set it on a table along with a glass of water. “Here is your dinner,” he said. Els’s mouth watered, her nose twitched, and she couldn’t take her eyes off the food.

  “Hey!” Els yelled at him as he left. “You forgot to untie me!”

  The man stepped toward Els. “No. I didn’t forget.” A few minutes later he returned with a chair. “It’s too bad you didn’t want your food.” He held the plate to his nose and inhaled deeply with his eyes closed. “Ahhh.” He twirled the fork as he chewed, eyes locked on Els’s. She returned his stare, keeping her face as blank as she could. After he left, Els’s arms ached and her stomach growled.

  With her arms still trapped in the air, her mind went to work. In the first few days after Els’s arrest, she had focused on not breaking under pressure and talking about Papa. But now a new fear largely replaced the first one, like a cold, chilling fog that pushed out a previous weather system. Now Els feared she wouldn’t make it out of this prison alive. Would she die of disease due to poor nourishment? Or would they execute her for not talking? She grimaced. The Gestapo’s prisoners often melted into what the enemy called “night and fog.” Perhaps Els and the other prisoners here were just phantoms waiting to die.

  Els should have seen her arrest coming. When Mama died, something inside her had snapped. Mama’s passing wasn’t directly the Nazis’ fault, but Els had decided to take out her feelings of loss and anger on the enemy. By day she worked in the permit department of the city government so she could pay the bills, but by night she gave herself to Resistance activities. At the time, Els saw their activities as a heroic struggle against a mighty enemy that the Dutch were certain to eventually defeat.

  But not now. Els’s body was gaunt, and her filthy hair was matted. Now she saw the war as a grim struggle to survive against an enemy who wanted to choke the life out of her country—and out of Els. Every day the starvation diet and harsh treatment sapped her strength. As she stood now with her arms above her head for what must have been hours but felt even longer, her arms and legs screamed for relief. “Ohh,” she moaned.

  A guard entered the room. He untied her hands, and her arms collapsed to her sides. He ordered her to a room where a cigar-smoking interrogator motioned for her to sit. Exhausted, she fell into the chair.

  The questions weren’t new, but the fact that the man blew smoke in Els’s face throughout the long conversation made it much more stressful. Both of her hands were unbound on the table in front of her, and she waved at the smoke to clear the air, but in spite of that, she soon coughed and her eyes burned. For the hundredth time, the man inhaled deeply on his cigar, the tip glowing bright red. A moment later, he exhaled and suddenly jabbed the cigar down on the back of Els’s hand.

  She screamed as she yanked her hand back. Pain shot up her arm. She rubbed and squeezed the forearm of the injured hand to try to distract herself from the unbearable burning sensation.

  “Maybe now you’d like to talk,” the interrogator said to Els.

  She doubled over in pain, cradling her burned hand in her lap. “Ohh, ohh,” she said as she rocked back and forth. Tears sprang from her eyes. She hung her head and wiped both eyes with her uninjured hand. She grimaced in pain again and hugged herself as if that were the only comfort she could get. She gave a small nod. “I—I would like to talk,” she whispered. “I will tell you everything you want to know.”

  The interrogator smiled and poised his pen. Els looked down at the floor and then up at the man again. Suddenly she sat up straight. She took a moment to gather her strength and savor what she was about to say. “I will tell you everything you want to know,” she said, with eyes narrowed and voice determined, “as soon as you have been convicted of war crimes and the whole world knows the awful things you have—”

  “Silence!” he roared. “How dare you lecture me! Guard! Cut her rations in half!” Turning back to Els, he snarled, “Soon your empty stomach will make you talk.” He stormed out of the room, and a guard took Els back to her cell.

  Weak with fatigue and hunger, Els fetched the pebble from the corner of her cell. She normally only held the little stone overnight, but she needed to feel it now. She needed what it had come to mean to her. After a while, she tucked it into her shoe to hide it from the Nazis.

  Just before bedtime another interrogator visited her. “Since you won’t talk, interrogations are over. There is no further chance of mercy from the Gestapo. All that remains is for you to be sentenced.”

  He moved Els to a smaller cell. The walls were covered with writing. She read, “Jacobus is the son of Gerrit. Cornelia is the wife of Petrus.” Some fifty people had scratched their names into the concrete, leaving a mark to prove they’d been there. And they mattered. Els felt a lump in her throat. Where were these people now? The last message read, “I defy Hitler,” but the name was obscured by a large, head-high bloodstain.

  The next day, in the early afternoon, a guard charged into Els’s cell. He pointed the bayonet on his rifle toward the hall. Something in the guard’s facial expression told her she wouldn’t be returning to the cell. Ever. She feigned rising to her feet but collapsed with a loud groan, her hand covering the stone in the corner of her cell. Then she doubled over with a long, hacking cough, putting her hand over her mouth and slipping the pebble under her tongue. Finally, despite being weak with hunger, Els willed herself to a standing position. “Where are you taking me?” she asked.

  “Your sentence has been determined,” he said.

  Wrapping her tattered blanket around her shoulders, Els trudged down the hall, following other prisoners also being moved. Outside, the stiff, chilly breeze flapped her blanket, and she clutched it tighter around her. Guards formed the captives in a row, spaced one meter apart in front of a brick wall. More guards stood on the opposite side of the small fenced yard with rifles.

  “Nooo!” cried a man next to Els. “They’re going to—”

  “Halt die Klappe!” a soldier shouted. A light rain fell. Els put her hand on the shoulder of the man who had cried out. His weeping intensified to wailing. “Nooo!” he cried, turning one way and another as if appealing to some unseen authority.

  “All of you are guilty of crimes against the Third Reich,” an officer announced. “You have been sentenced, and now you will pay for what you have done.”

  He looked at the soldiers. “Ready,” he shouted above the din of prisoners begging for mercy. The soldiers clutched their rifles.

  With her tongue, Els maneuvered the small stone in her mouth between her tongue and cheek so she could project her voice. She cleared her throat, and she sang as loudly as she could in her weakened condition, “Grant that I may remain brave, your servant for always,” she began. Several prisoners joined her in singing the national anthem. “And may defeat the tyranny which pierces my heart.”

  “Wait!” the man next to Els cried, looking at the officer. “I’ll talk. I want to see my family again!” Stretching his arms in front of him, the bedraggled man slowly approached the officer. When he got within two meters of the German, he s
topped. “Pleeeeease,” he begged, then his words dissolved into sobbing.

  “Take him inside. If he lies or won’t answer a question, you know what to do.”

  A soldier led the man away. In the pause that followed, some prisoners screamed, others wept openly, and some said nothing.

  “Ready!” the officer shouted again.

  Thunder boomed, and the rain fell harder. It wasn’t supposed to end like this. The Gestapo was supposed to realize Els would never talk, and they’d let her go. And then she’d somehow find Dirk and Anna.

  “Aim,” the officer said. The soldiers raised their rifles.

  Els clenched her teeth. They could take her life but not her spirit. She ran her tongue over the smooth surface of the stone in her mouth. With her eyes fixed on the soldiers, she raised her right hand to her forehead in a farewell salute to her family. Goodbye, Papa. Be safe, Anna and Dirk. Keep your hopes up and—

  “Put your weapons down,” the officer ordered the soldiers. “Let this be a lesson,” he said to the prisoners. “Your life is completely in our hands. If you had simply answered our questions, you would have been set free to rejoin your families. But instead, where I send you, you will be at the mercy of new interrogators, whose methods are, shall we say, very effective.” He turned back to the soldiers. “Take them away!”

  As soldiers led them through a gate, Els’s mind raced. She’d been delivered from death, but what lay ahead? Nothing the moffen had in mind for her could be good. Her legs trembled as rifle butts and curses herded her and the other prisoners into the back of a Gestapo van. Unseen hands slammed the back door and locked it with a metallic clank.

  The captives collapsed on the floor from physical and mental fatigue, but they soon found their voices. One man said that because his family had hidden Jews, soldiers gave them only twenty minutes to gather a few essentials before being taken into captivity. In addition, the Nazis gave their house away to new residents and ordered the man’s children to arrange bouquets of flowers for the newcomers. A murmur of sympathy rippled through the group.

  A woman said the Gestapo had arrested her for naming her pig Hitler. With voices hoarse due to their emaciated condition, the captives howled with glee, and happy tears flowed. When the merriment ebbed, someone said, “I bet your pig had better manners than Herr Hitler,” and the laughter exploded again.

  “And I bet the pig had a better mustache, too,” Els added. She laughed so hard her sides soon hurt. It was good to feel human again.

  Minutes later the van stopped, and the door swung open. Rain still poured down.

  “Where are we?” a woman asked as she peered at a large building.

  “Nowhere we want to be,” Els answered. She lowered her voice. “Stay strong. And don’t tell them anything.” Heart of stone.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  GERMAN CHECKPOINT

  NORTH OF NIJMEGEN

  NOVEMBER 26

  DIRK’S HEART POUNDED, and his palms grew sweaty as the checkpoint came into view. On the right stood a narrow guardhouse, about a meter taller than a grown man and with a doorway just large enough for the two soldiers who stepped out of it. A long metal bar stretched across the road, blocking traffic. On the left stood two soldiers holding rifles at waist level, pointed away from Dirk and his approaching car. At least they’re not aimed at us for now.

  “Heil Hitler!” Fleischer called in a formal tone to a soldier who approached the car. “I am Colonel Fleischer.”

  Dirk pretended to scratch his forehead with his hand to hide his youthful face from the enemy.

  “I am authorized to conduct an exchange,” Fleischer said. “I am bringing a young Dutch girl, who is the daughter of the mayor of Nijmegen”—he pointed to Anna, who was still asleep—“across the bridge to Nijmegen in exchange for the son of General Fromm, who was captured by the Resistance.”

  Dirk wanted to look at the soldier’s face as he listened to Fleischer. Was he believing the colonel, or was the situation about to turn deadly? But he didn’t dare show that much interest or risk exposing his face.

  “I’ll have to check on this,” the soldier said. “We’ve not been given any word about it. Our strict orders are to not allow anyone through our checkpoint during the night.” He strode back to the guardhouse.

  As soon as he entered the guardhouse, Fleischer spoke. “Drive now! Before they realize the story’s not true,” the colonel hissed.

  “Not yet,” Dirk said out of the side of his mouth.

  A soldier on the left side of the checkpoint took several steps toward the car.

  “Get your gun ready,” Dirk told Fleischer.

  “It’s been ready.”

  A soldier stepped out of the guardhouse, moved closer to the car, and peered into the vehicle.

  “Now!” Dirk said. With one hand he clenched the steering wheel and with the other he turned on the lights—the secret weapon! When he popped the clutch and jammed his foot on the accelerator, the engine roared, and the car leapt forward.

  “What are you doing?” Anna cried, woken by the commotion.

  The soldiers yelled in response to the blinding light and the car surging toward them. Fleischer stuck his gun out the window and fired in the direction of the startled Germans. The one who had been nearly in front of the car dove out of the way. Two soldiers scurried out of the car’s path, shielded their eyes with one hand, and fired their guns with the other. But their shots were wild. The car crashed through the metal bar which had blocked their way.

  Dirk’s eyes darted back and forth between the road ahead and the speedometer. Twenty kilometers per hour. Twenty-five. If he could drive fast enough, they might make it. He’d surprised them with the headlights. Hope surged in his chest. But the enemy soldiers were still shooting, and they were close.

  Anna screamed.

  Fleischer shot back several times. Thirty-five kilometers per hour.

  “Dirk!” Anna cried.

  “Stay down!” Dirk and Fleischer said.

  The gunfire continued, and at least one bullet shattered the rear passenger window.

  “Dirk!” Anna shrieked.

  “Are you all right?” Dirk shouted.

  “I have glass all over me.”

  “Stay down! We’re almost to the bridge.”

  “I’m scared!” Anna said.

  Fleischer fired repeatedly in the direction of the guardhouse. He reloaded, smoke from his gun swirling in the car.

  Dirk shifted into third gear as more shots rang out from behind them. Fleischer shot back. Forty-five kilometers per hour.

  But as the car sped forward, the bridge drew near. Dirk’s jaw dropped, and his eyes grew wide. He saw a meter-high barrier made of lumber across the entrance to the bridge. They were so close to freedom, and now this! “Nooo!” he said as he took his foot off the accelerator. “What should I do?” he shouted.

  Fleischer glanced over his shoulder at the barrier. “Floor it!”

  “But—”

  “Do it!”

  Dirk’s foot hovered between the brake and gas pedal. The car slowed a bit. Shots from behind pinged off the back of the car. What should he do? The wrong choice would mean injury or death. He mashed his foot down on the accelerator.

  Back up to forty kilometers per hour. Forty-five. “We’re going to crash! Stay on the floor, Anna!” he shouted.

  How thick was the barrier? Was this how it would end, less than two kilometers from the safety of the American army? The instant before impact, Dirk shut his eyes tight and braced himself. Fleischer covered his face with his arms. They both hollered in fear.

  The sedan crashed into the wood with an explosion of noise. The car broke through the barrier, but the impact crumpled the hood, jolted the vehicle, and reduced its speed to a crawl. The sudden slowing hurled Dirk and Fleischer forward with violent force.

  “Ow!” Dirk cried. His chest smashed against the steering wheel, and his forehead smacked the windshield. Jolts of pain shot through his torso and head.
Everything hurt. Really hurt. He wheezed as the blow forced the air from his lungs. He opened his eyes.

  “Dirk!!!” Anna wailed.

  Chunks of lumber sledgehammered the hood and slammed into the windshield, which shattered, spraying Dirk’s face with razor-sharp shards. Finally, the car came to a stop.

  “Agh!” Dirk spit out glass and tasted blood. Should’ve kept my mouth shut.

  “What happened?” Anna cried.

  “Restart the car,” Fleischer said as he wiped traces of blood from his lower lip. “Get your speed up again to ride over the remaining boards.”

  “Stay down, Anna,” Dirk said as he turned the key.

  The engine turned over but didn’t start.

  “Did we wreck the engine?” Dirk asked. He swallowed hard.

  “No. Try it again!”

  But when Dirk turned the key, the engine sputtered more weakly than before.

  “It’s not working,” Dirk said. His breath came in short pants as the gunshots behind them increased.

  “It has to. Try again,” Fleischer said.

  Bullets ricocheted off the bridge structure around the car.

  As Dirk reached for the key, his right hand shook, but by an effort of will, he grabbed the key and closed his eyes. This was their last chance.

  He turned the key. The engine coughed.

  “Come on. Come on,” Fleischer urged.

  The engine sputtered.

  “Push the accelerator!” Fleischer shouted.

  The car started. Dirk shifted into first gear, and the car moved forward. But with the headlights broken, he strained to see the road ahead.

  “Faster! And keep your head down!” Fleischer said. He fired back. “They’re close now.”

  “I’m scared!” Anna cried.

  “Stay down!” Dirk and Fleischer roared in unison.

  A bullet narrowly missed Dirk and buried itself in the middle of the dashboard.

  Fleischer returned fire, grunted, and clutched his left shoulder.

  “Did you get hit?” Dirk asked.

  “Go faster!” Fleischer urged, still gripping his shoulder.