“Why is this city different? Look at all the goods they have.”
“It’s the Romanians. They’re in charge here.”
“Romanians? Aren’t they Nazis too?”
“Kind of. The Germans needed more troops in Europe, north and west of here, and on the Russian front, so they left the occupation of Odessa to their Eastern European allies.”
“But they’re just as bad! I’ve heard stories . . .”
“Was there ever a war without atrocities? Still, they run things here, not the Germans. Maybe they’re lazier, not so crazy for absolute control.”
“It can’t last. Odessa is a big city, with mountains to the west, where people can hide, and the coast, the seaport. Our Soviet Navy could lock that up and then what? No shipping. No goods, no munitions.”
“True, true. Pravda. But wouldn’t I like to stay a while. A man can make a living here, war or no war.”
Filip slowed down, shifted his suitcase to his other hand. He cast murderous glances at Ksenia’s rigid retreating back, saw Ilya list to one side under the weight of the trunk it was his turn to carry, his toolbox tucked under the other arm. Oh, yes. We can’t stay because we’re going to work on a farm. Isn’t that a stroke of good luck.
He wanted to forget the entire trip, couldn’t wait for it to be over. How he and Ilya took turns with the trunk, which, though small, was cumbersome and knocked against their shins; how the locks on Ilya and Ksenia’s suitcase gave way, and someone produced a length of rope to tie it closed, while the guards prodded the curious crowd and snapped insults and warnings. How they had all missed the evening train out of the city and had to spend the night at the station, propped up against each other, trying to sleep.
Leaving Odessa behind, the morning train took them past fields of wheat and rye, potatoes and cabbage, the country dotted with neat farmhouses alternating with dense stretches of deep loden evergreen forest. Factory smokestacks rose in the distance; warehouses, stone buildings, and churches flashed by the train windows.
It might have been idyllic, a picture of prosperity rising out of orderly, methodical practices and good management, but for the randomly cratered ground, fires smoldering here and there, the sight of women sifting through rubble, toting buckets of broken bricks, tugging at splintered boards. At the railroad stations, bands of boys hawked things taken from wrecked, abandoned houses, chased off by patrolling police only to reappear behind their backs. Why do people have to suffer when their leaders can’t agree? Galina thought, passing a few coins to a skinny boy in an oversized cap in exchange for a pair of apples.
At the Czech border they changed trains, their escort replaced by an SS junior officer and several local police.
“Juden?” the SS man asked, watching the passengers descend to the platform, dragging their things, herding exhausted children before them.
“Nein,” the departing guard smirked. “Ost. Arbeitslager.”
Filip asked himself, Why did they laugh? Ost. East, that’s where they had come from, of course. But Arbeitslager? Work camp? He had seen Ksenia’s letters of introduction. They contained no mention of labor camps. The train must be making other stops along the way, if that’s where some of these people were going. And where is our train? How can we leave with these cattle cars blocking the tracks?
“Filip, look.” Galina tugged at his sleeve. “Those cars are full of people.”
“No,” he said, handing the guard his papers for inspection. “You must be mistaken. They are . . .”
He turned to look, and blanched. Those were not animal sounds coming from inside the windowless cars. They were words. “Water. Please, water.” He stared in disbelief at fingers protruding between the slats, watched a policeman walk along the length of one wagon, crushing those fingers with his baton, to the amusement of the others.
“Stop!” Galina cried out.
Ksenia took her arm, saying, “Hush. You can’t help them.” Together, all four moved to the side of the platform, to the area designated for waiting.
“Where’s this lot from?” one of the officers asked another, pointing at the crowded cattle cars with his chin.
“Prague. Four days ago.”
“All right.” The first one nodded. He unfurled the station’s water hose, pointing the nozzle at the air space near the roof of the car. “Turn it on.”
What followed, the wailing and keening fueled by panic but also by a desperate need for relief, was unlike the sound of any human voice Galina or Filip had ever heard. The captive bodies strained against the creaking sides of the wagon for what, in spite of the force of the flow, could not have been more than a few drops of water. After a few minutes, the first officer signaled to shut the hose off. “That’s enough. They’re only Jews,” he said.
“There are children in there. Can’t you hear them crying?” Galina whispered, tears running down her own face. Filip set down his suitcase and embraced her, holding her head firmly against his shoulder until she stopped sobbing.
Shuddering, she worked herself free of him, wiping her eyes on her sleeve. They watched the officer move along the tracks to an empty freight car. He raised his arm and, with theatrical flair, chalked the word OST in large capital letters on the side.
“Now you,” he shouted at the Russians. “Ostarbeiter. In here.” He angled a narrow board against the open freight car doors and shoved the first of the group up the makeshift ramp. Two policemen formed the rest of the travelers into a ragged line, snorting impatiently while the people struggled to keep their balance and hold on to their possessions. At the foot of the ramp, the SS man handed each traveler a square patch and a large safety pin. “Wear these on your coats at all times,” he commanded. “Sew them on when you reach your destination.”
Filip looked down at the roughly woven patch in his hand. OST, it read, black letters on a whitish ground. “Where are we going?” he asked aloud, of no one. No one answered.
3
ONCE LOADED, THE TRAIN traveled fast, speeding through Austria without incident. The wagon smelled of stale sweat and urine, but it was not especially crowded. Everyone found a spot, sitting on their trunks and cases; some stretched out on the grimy straw-covered floor and slept.
“I wish we could see out,” Galina sighed, leaning her head against the wall, rocking with the motion of the train.
“I wish I had a cigarette.” Filip closed his eyes. He had tried peering between the slats at the flickering landscape but gave up, feeling dizzy with the effort.
“Hmm,” Ilya grunted, without clarifying which desire he shared. Perhaps both.
Sometime in the night, the train stopped, jolting the sleepers awake with a great screeching of wheels on metal tracks. It had grown colder. The car doors opened to let in more people, speaking other languages—Serbian, Czech, others Filip did not recognize—but with the same dazed look as the Russian travelers, the same scruffy luggage and OST patches on their coats.
“What day is it?” someone asked.
“November first if it’s after midnight. Tuesday.”
People shifted about, making room for the new occupants. Galina and her mother found themselves pushed to the car’s open door. “Mama,” Galina breathed. “Snow.”
It fell gently. Huge flakes floated on the air as if chipped from a block of soap; they filled every crevice, covered each surface with a lacy, ever-changing pattern until all the spaces disappeared and everything dazzled against the dark.
What was it Maksim had said? Cold and wet. You’d tire of it in a week. The words rang clearly in her head, as if her brother had just spoken them. She could hear the disdain in his voice, see his hand pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose. Rest in peace, she thought. But you were wrong. Who could tire of such beauty?
“Step back,” a gruff voice commanded. The door slammed shut, a heavy bolt thudded into place. Galina closed her eyes to the murk, the ceaseless sighing and swaying of the human cargo, holding the image of pristine whiteness against her eyeli
ds, until, still standing, she fell asleep.
A convoy of open trucks took them from the station to the outskirts of Munich, speeding through the city at sunrise. Filip admired the architecture, shocked by the signs of wanton destruction; he spotted the towering steeple of a Baroque church, a flock of birds rising through the gaping hole in its roof, the surrounding area reduced to rubble.
In the side streets, he glimpsed narrow passageways lined with squat two-story houses, small windows and painted doors, every roof covered with red tiles, wisps of translucent chimney smoke hinting at breakfast. Even with so much damage caused by enemy bombing, it was a medieval fairy-tale city, and he wished he could step in, even for a little while, and sample its daily routines, mingle with its residents. “Why are we at war with these people? What do we want from each other?” He said it under his breath, but Ilya, standing at his side, heard.
“If I were a younger man, I would be fighting them. But my lungs—” he stopped, his chest heaving in painful spasms of dry coughing.
“Don’t let them hear you,” Ksenia cautioned.
“What? Saying I would defend my home? There’s no shame in that.”
“No. Don’t let them hear you cough.”
“It’s only the cold air.” Ilya waved a dismissive hand.
They all knew it wasn’t the cold air, that he had defended his country as a younger man, in the Great War, against this very enemy, that he’d soldiered through clouds of mustard gas that left him, along with thousands of other survivors, permanently, incurably impaired. “At least, you should not smoke,” Ksenia persisted.
“Ai, Mama. Would you deny me every joy?”
Leaving the city behind, they watched the Bavarian countryside roll out: a cluster of painted cottages here, followed by a pine thicket, the cantilevered branches dusted with early snow. Then fields, farmhouses of stone and timber, barns, outbuildings. There was less bomb damage here; perhaps the area had fewer strategic targets.
They sped past an old man in a green cap leading an old horse pulling an even older wagon, saw him move to the side of the road to let the trucks pass. In the distance, stooped figures of women dotted the fields, digging the last of the year’s potatoes. Will there be enough farm work for us, Ksenia wondered, with winter coming?
By afternoon, they had reached the work camp, its boundaries marked out with double rows of barbed wire enclosing some newly built barracks and several previously existing structures. Processing was rapid, methodical.
“We have letters, from your Lieutenant Berg, in Yalta,” Ksenia held the documents out to the officer at the table. “For farm work. We volunteered.”
“Ja, klar.” He glanced at the pages, dropped them onto a stack at his elbow. “Of course.”
They were permitted to stay together, assigned, along with nine other families, to a low building that had once been a beer hall. The darkly paneled walls and wood floor still held a smoky, yeasty, not unpleasant aroma, though all counters and furnishings had been stripped out.
“Each family will stay in its own space,” the escorting corporal decreed, pointing to a grid of white lines painted on the floor. Clotheslines above the lines crisscrossed the room from wall to wall. “No cooking. Lights out at ten. Up at six. Sharp.”
“Are we to sleep on these?” Galina toed a stack of burlap-covered straw mattresses in the family’s allotted space, some stained blankets folded on top.
“As you see,” Ksenia said. “Help me with these blankets. It’s good we have a corner space.”
They draped the blankets on the clothesline, giving their “room” a semblance of privacy. Others were doing the same, talking in low voices among themselves. Children ran around the hall, weaving in and out of every grouping as if laying out the rules of a new game.
Supper, dispensed outside the kitchen door, was thin cabbage soup and a slice of grainy bread. For breakfast, the same bread, harder now, only made edible by soaking in bitter acorn “coffee” muddied with a bit of milk.
An open-bed truck took them and another thirty or so people, then, to an industrial area several kilometers away. The sun hung dully in a leaden sky that promised more snow.
“Heraus, alle,” the guard commanded when the truck stopped in front of a large factory. “Schnell. Everybody out.” It was a four-story rectangular building, not unlike a latter-day castle, with what looked like rounded grain silos at each corner for turrets and many tall, narrow windows cut into thick stone walls.
“What do they make here?” Filip asked the truck driver, who looked barely old enough to drive.
“Zement,” the boy replied. He jumped into the cab and slammed the door. “Cement.”
4
“SLOW DOWN.” THE MAN at Filip’s side plunged his shovel into the bin but came up with only half as much coal as it could hold.
“What?” Filip paused to wipe his face with his sleeve, then started in again, his shovel fully loaded, moving twice as fast as his wiry neighbor.
“Slow down. Po malu,” the other said again after the overseer went by. “Unless you’re eager to help the Fascists build more bunkers.”
It didn’t take Filip long to cultivate the illusion of working hard while producing little in the way of results; he quickly learned how to put his back into each shovel thrust but pitch fewer and fewer coals into the blazing furnace. Hadn’t his father often chided him for laziness? Now, this natural inclination served him well.
It was a dangerous game. If the factory fell short of production quotas, if it failed to deliver the required amount of cement on time, everyone suffered the consequences. Shorter rations, longer hours, tighter, more vigilant supervision, and, of course, no end of verbal abuse seasoned with the occasional beating.
The violence was almost entirely arbitrary. Anyone, at any time, could feel the crack of a baton against his head or back; shoving and kicking were so commonplace as to be barely noticed, by workers and guards alike. Whether the misdeeds were real or imagined made no difference.
Some misdeeds, like the bucketful of steel shavings and rusted nails that found its way, bucket and all, into the stone crusher, were real enough. The sabotage went unnoticed until the metal, melted by the kiln’s intense heat, fouled the morning’s batch, requiring cooling down and thorough scrubbing of the machinery before work could resume. The entire workforce endured two days without food, then half rations for another week, while working sixteen-hour shifts with no days off for a month.
“We can survive this,” the men said with grim satisfaction to one another. “But, damn, it feels good to slow them down, even a little.”
Filip had gone to the infirmary with a high fever the day the guards took their revenge. He returned to work an hour later, dosed with aspirin, to find Savko, a young Macedonian, dead on the floor.
He started to ask, but read the warning in the other men’s eyes, each going about his task with unaccustomed efficiency, stepping around the body with care. The guard shoved Filip’s shoulder with the flat of his hand. “Take his boots off. Then get back to work. Your sick day is over.”
Filip bent over the dead man, trying to ignore the blood pounding in his ears, willing his fingers to stop trembling. The boots were poorly made, the cheap leather scuffed and cracked; spots of mildew blossomed on them like buds on a vine. Jammed onto Savko’s bare feet, they were a tight fit. The left came off without too much effort, but Filip struggled to work the right one free, rocking it from side to side, kneeling on the grimy floor to get a better grip. When it gave way, the edge caught and broke a blister on Savko’s heel, oozing a snail’s trail of pus onto Filip’s hand.
The foot was still warm; the skin showed smooth and tawny between crusted patches of embedded dirt. Filip recoiled. He wiped his hand on the man’s pant leg, suppressing the bile rising in his throat. He felt faint with fever. To steady himself, he glanced sideways at Savko’s face. He’s only a boy, Filip realized, shocked to see the first tendrils of an adolescent beard curled against a dimpled chin
.
In the truck heading back to camp, the men started talking. “He was crazy, that Savko. They’re all crazy, the Makedon. Wild,” said one, referring to the mountain people from Macedonia
“Why crazy?” another man asked. “Aren’t they all Yugoslav now?”
“Bah. Yugoslavia is not a country. Just a patched up mess of people the French and British couldn’t tell apart, so they lumped them all together and washed their hands of the southern Slav problem. And mark my words: you’ll see how the whole stew will disintegrate once their man Tito dies.”
“Dictators have big heads but small shoes,” the first man declared cryptically. “There’s always another one ready to step in.”
“But—” Filip tried to cut in, but the older men ignored him, caught up in their discussion, each eager to outdo the others in explaining his version of the world.
“Now the Serbians—” the first man started, shaking a calloused finger at the assembled circle, ready to make his point.
“Wait.” Filip, his patience at an end, raised his voice. “What happened? Will someone tell me?”
“You don’t know? Savko was up on the scaffolding, monitoring the paddles that stir the slurry. The guard was on the other side, his back turned, watching us worker ants below.”
“They like to do that,” someone observed.
“Yes. Well, he turned around just in time to see Savko pissing into the vat. Shot him in the head, on the spot.”
Filip dropped his head into his hands. He had noticed Savko; there was something intriguing in his perpetual scowl, something that appealed to Filip’s own guarded nature. They might have been about the same age, but Savko already had the outsized hands of a farmer or laborer, so unlike Filip’s own. He looked at his hands now, revolted by the weeping scabs, the cracked nails, the skin caked with coal dust and grime, which no amount of washing seemed to remove.
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