by Olga Chaplin
* * *
In the dead of night German military efficiency brought them to the outskirts of Berlin. Their prison train crept along the tracks, its large front lights dimmed deep blue. Above, and about them, the night sky lit up, as if daylight had hit them. The explosions sent raining shards of light and colour, as if in celebration of a great event. Peter pulled back from the flashing window, could not believe his eyes. The fireball in the night sky was deadly, yet spectacular. He comforted Evdokia and the children, reasoned these explosions were farther than they seemed, and prayed to his Maker that he guessed right. With every carriage door locked, the train would become a molten tunnel, with no means of escape.
Suddenly, more soldiers rushed into the darkened carriage, relieving the guards. An officer yelled commands to the new patrol: water cans, sacks of foodstuffs dumped at the door, then the door locked again. Peter sensed the extreme urgency. If Berlin had been their final destination, then the scaled-up Allied night bombings must have forced a fast change of plans.
The commanding officer shouted his final order for the train to move. It jerked forward, almost recklessly, its great engines forced into faster gears. In the flashing semi-darkness, lit up by the spectacle of the Allies’ bombs, and the orange-red hurricane of fire left below in their wake, Peter could smell the adrenaline-fuelled panic. Their captors were taking them westward again, from one inferno to another. Now, they would be even closer to Allied territory and the unrelenting bombing raids. It would take more than a miracle, now, to survive such a barrage of firestorms and bombs. Peter, deep in his soul, did not believe in miracles.
Chapter 27
At precisely the moment the Allied night bombers emptied their deadly cargo and swooped their retreat out of range of German anti-aircraft fire, a shrieking signal pierced the morbid silence. Like clockwork, German soldiers flung open the carriage doors, shouting orders as they flashed their torches through the darkened carriages.
“Bewegen! Schnell, schnell! Bewegen!” The tension was palpable. There was insufficient time to transfer these prisoners from train to trucks, to reach the labour camp before the next onslaught of Halifax and Lancaster bombers returned, within reach of Berlin and this fringe forest.
In strategic formation, the trucks were already lined up alongside the carriages at this unmarked railway siding, the dim coal-red glow of the sky burnishing a deceptive warmth over the silhouetted trucks, with back supports unhinged, awaiting their human cargo.
Peter sensed the soldiers’ pent-up agitation; he, too, felt the oppressive danger. His nostrils flinched. Even in the chill of night, he could smell the strange mix of sweat and adrenalin of their tensed bodies as they ran through the carriages, could see their twitching jugular veins as they repeatedly shouted orders to evacuate the train. The Allied bombers would return too soon, aim again and again at these vital railway lines and other installations in unrelenting nightly missions to disrupt German war production, their ultimate goal to paralyse the enemy.
“We all want to live,” he thought with a pang, in spite of the incongruity of the situation. “And they’re so young … they, too, are afraid of dying.”
He gripped Mykola’s arms, lifted him into the waiting truck, then little Nadia and Evdokia. Captors, prisoners: all were vulnerable, so close to the railway line. He stood astride, arms outstretched, locking his little family to him. The truck jerked, preparing to move.
As each truck was hurriedly loaded with its human transport and each back support locked, it joined the convoy that was already weaving its way in the dark. Like a night creature with its red bulbous eyes glowing back at the following truck, front lights turned off, the procession of prisoners headed to its hidden destination.
As the convoy wove through the dark, from sealed to gravelled road, Peter smelled the vegetation brushing against the truck on the narrowing road, glimpsed trees that reached higher and higher until, it seemed, the forest had become a canopy protecting them from the bombs and fires of Berlin. He peered into the night, heard the clanging of locks on wire gates. The truck edged forward, motor throttled to idle, waiting its turn. At that moment, he heard the hum. He looked up to the night sky in the direction of Berlin and could just make out, through the gap of the open camp gates, the red glow of burning buildings, scattered around Berlin.
“They’re closing in again … those buildings have become markers for their bombs,” he realised, as the bombers’ distant hum grew closer and became a menacing growl; about to release their lethal tonnage from higher, more confident altitudes, to the despair of Hitler and his OKH.
The truck rumbled forward a few more metres. Peter looked up as the night sky flashed white as anti-aircraft fire shot out from the direction of Berlin. He could now see the hard-wire fence, high above the truck as it passed through the gates, and could just make out the rows of barbed wire higher still, like an illusory glitter of stars reaching up into the night. He pressed his family closer to him. They were saved from incarceration on the train but were now facing another imprisonment, with no prospect of escape, nor of survival, still within range of Berlin’s bombs. He felt the panic, prayed silently as he felt Evdokia and the children clinging to him. There was no knowing how much time they would have together, as a family; no knowing how long any of them would live, from this night on.
* * *
Evdokia pulled at her old jacket for warmth, felt the end of the rough blanket, then realised, in those waking moments, that she had wrapped it over the children as they sank to the concrete floor in the dark. Her body ached with exhaustion and hunger. She peered into the near-dawn dark, trying to make sense of their surroundings. Hundreds of other inmates lay all around her, so lifeless in their exhausted sleep that it seemed, in her semi-conscious moments, as if she had been unwittingly placed in some kind of morgue. She peered further, her eyes searching for Peter, felt the panicked shock as she remembered those last moments of separation, of the men being taken from their families and that last desperate supportive clasp of Peter’s hand on hers as he was forced to join the other men. She caught her breath, suppressing a sob, hid her grief under cover of her jacket. She had to be strong, for the children. She had to remind herself that the German army, authorities, must have some purpose for them, would surely aim to keep them alive, having taken them so far from her Ukraine. She closed her eyes, sleep overtaking her turmoil-filled state.
A shrill siren signalled the formal start of their day.
“Achtung! Achtung! Aufstehen! Aufstehen!” An older, burly soldier waved his juniors along the huge workshop. Like automatons, each repeated the senior’s orders, their rifles, though pointed to the floor, still menacing. Evdokia grabbed the blanket, took Mykola and Nadia’s little hands and queued in line with other frightened women clinging to their children, waiting to be checked by the grim-faced officials at the entrance of the building. Evdokia, in turn, stepped forward, looking away from the steely-eyed official who coldly inspected her suitability for work, waited for his nod before joining another queue.
As the grey dawn emerged, she could now see the full dimensions of this massive structure, with its solid high walls and steel girders that hung parallel along the building, a metre below the ceiling, with great wheels, chains and hooks attached and the conveyor belt and benchtop running almost the full length of the building. She had never seen an engineering factory, had no experience of what it may have produced.
“They must want us to work here,” she thought, puzzled. “But we have no skills in such things. What could we possibly do, all this way from our homes? It’s inconceivable.” She shuddered, as she noticed for the first time that each glass panel of the large windows of this gloomy factory had been meticulously painted black, with no prospect of seeing the sky, or a cloud, or even a green-tipped fir tree. She sighed, controlling her fears for her children’s sake; resigned to a fate unknown, she waited in the queue as, one by one, each woman and child was recorded, and each jacket ink-stamped at the left should
er.
She tried to comfort Nadia and Mykola in their bewilderment and fear. “Everything will be alright,” she lied to her children to calm them. She could not yet understand the significance of the ‘OST’ initials, Hitler and Goering’s ingenious labelling of the ‘Ost-Arbeiters’, their forced labourers from the Ukraine: could not gauge whether it gave them protection from a concentration camp, or was a temporary passport to it.
A chilly wind whipped around them as they trudged, silently, to their dormitory. Evdokia clasped her children’s hands, felt their warmth as they walked the short distance in the forest. The fir trees and heavy foliage blocked out the daylight, yet ironically protected them from the distant drones of bombers somewhere in the distance. She drew on her inner strength, as she carried little Nadia the rest of the way and smiled at Mykola: the children pale-faced, too afraid to say they were hungry, trusting her reassurance.
Another older, limping soldier waved the queue into the dormitory with his rifle while other soldiers allocated a bunk for each woman, in strict order, and marked them off. Evdokia slumped on the lowest bunk, spread the blanket around her shivering children. She prayed the narrow bunk would be their refuge, for how long she knew not.
Chapter 28
The hellish nightmare began with each dark dawn. Like a regimented prison cue, the dormitory siren shrilled its command. Her deep sleep snapped, Evdokia jumped up, reached for the wet rag she prepared each night before sleep overtook her, wiped her children’s faces, kissed them quickly. She managed a brief smile, to try to reassure them that each day was routine, and safe.
“Be good children, Nadia and Kola; be good today for Tato and me,” she whispered, her own anxiety gnawing at her as she watched them run dutifully to the waiting soldier, to be led to their daytime dormitory. She wiped her face with the wet rag, ran her fingers through her long hair, deftly looped it into a bun and straightened her now-loose skirt and jacket. Her inner sense told her she must present well, whatever happened. She had her children and Peter to think of.
Already, all around her in these two months since their imprisonment, women were becoming dishevelled and emotional, some, breaking down entirely, unable to move from their beds or, worse, becoming suddenly hysterical as they worked at their conveyor belt. They were removed without warning, not heard of again, their children left to be cared for by other women in the dormitory. She winced as she thought of these poor distraught women, who could no longer cope with the anxieties of their incarceration and fear of bombs. She felt heartbroken for these children who would almost certainly remain orphans.
Each day, she presented herself ready to glimpse Peter as he and the other male prisoners were lined up outside their dormitory to climb onto the trucks that sent them to the southern outskirts of Berlin to clear the rubble of the bombed buildings: she and her inmates marched to their converted ammunition factory each dawn, as Peter and his inmates were trucked to the destroyed buildings, all returning at dusk, or night. Her only hope was catching a glimpse of him as he stood in the truck, facing her dormitory, straining to see her in the queue as the women were marched to the factory.
She sat at her workbench, in winter’s semi-dark, carefully spread the tiny square of concocted butter onto the piece of black bread with her fingers and ate it quickly, gulped the black chicory coffee a shaky-armed soldier had poured at the queue-line, and then placed her tin mug for safety at her feet. It would be many hours’ wait to the lunch break, at the workbench: the watery vegetable-like soup always insufficient to quell the constant hunger pangs. The evening kasha, though little better, signalled that rest would come: her reward, to share the kasha with her children and to hold them, knowing they were still safe.
The dull overhead lights were turned on. The conveyor belt started. She took a deep breath as she disciplined herself for another interminable day: hour after hour, day after day, of identical work, of some small parts that, however insignificant and innocuous they seemed on the conveyor belt, would find their mark in the future bombs on Allied cities in far away countries. She looked along the conveyor belt and noticed there were a few more vacant places, shivered at the consequences for these missing women. Then, at the farthest end, she caught sight of young Maria, from the Talalaivka journey. They nodded courteously to each other, their eyes still on the conveyor belt. The guards were watching, eyeing them. Her mind shut off from the friendship nod. The guards reported all activity to the camp commandant. Mechanically, she placed another ball bearing into a socket, the smell of grease and kerosene permeating around her, the fumes from a strange orange powder stored in a far corner stinging her eyes, her tears undetected in the gloomy light.
* * *
A thunderous blast shook the dormitory. Evdokia grabbed Mykola and Nadia, fumbled her way in the dark towards the locked door, waited, trembling, with the other panicked women for the soldiers.
“Dear God, may these doors open quickly,” she pleaded inwardly, afraid that they would all perish. She could hear the soldiers, the keys jangling at the locks, smelled the suffocating fumes of the burning factory as their dormitory door was thrown open.
“Hurry! Hurry! We must evacuate! Move now! Move! Move!” the soldiers shouted, their torches beaming haphazard paths for their inmates to follow. Newly recruited cadet soldiers, they feared for their own safety, if not for the prisoners. Clutching the children, Evdokia ran out towards the flickering path. Only then, as the icy droplets of dew shot pain through her did she realise they were all barefoot. She looked about, desperate to glimpse Peter’s dormitory, her heart pounding as she feared they would remain separated.
In the confusion of the darkness, with flames leaping up into the night sky and the crackling of factory chemicals around them, Evdokia ran towards one torch-lit path, then another; then froze. The soldiers’ shouting, their wavering signals, confused her. The past months of imprisonment and regimentation had made her cautious: too cautious. Now, she could not make sense of their conflicting panicked instructions: could not trust them, uncertain whether she and her children were being led to safety, or to their doom.
The din around her began to fade: she felt faint, about to black out. At that moment, a man’s shape stood before her, silhouetted by the reddened night. “Dyna,” Peter’s familiar voice whispered in the dark. His hand grasped her stiff shaking arm that would not let go of the children. “They’re moving us, Dyna … the factory is demolished … they may come back again in the night, the bombers. The commandant is moving us all out right now, before the next attack. Come, now … we are together again … God willing, we will live.”
He looked up into the black night. He could only guess at the Allies’ new ‘carpet-bombing’ strategy, whispered among the guards, which was made even more deadly with the improved American B29 bombers that now almost seemed to hover above the anti-aircraft fire, to Hitler and Goering’s chagrin. He shook his head. The new year of 1944 was almost upon them, the surrounding fir trees soon to be made Christmas-like with the anticipated snow. But these fireworks, from above and below, were lethal. There would be no joy, whichever side of the military divide laid claim to any victories in this harshest of winters.
Peter’s soothing voice, his firm grasp leading her, gave Evdokia hope. Still in a confused state, she followed him as he carried Nadia and comforted Mykola. They took their turn in the long line of prisoners as each truck filled to capacity, and rumbled off into the night to another temporary destination, westward yet again. In the chilly air, as the truck grappled its way along another pitted road, Evdokia grasped her shoulder in a moment of self-protection, felt the rough fabric of the ‘OST’ insignia she had months earlier sewn over the temporary ink-stamp. They were labelled wherever they were taken, within Hitler’s Germany; labelled with his other dictum, ‘Unmenschen’, that excused the feverish zeal with which his underlings Sauckel and Himmler utilised their forced labourers: labels that added a further sting to each proud Ukrainian.
Her heart still pounding
and missing beats as if she might blank out again, she clung to Peter. Miraculously, their little family was united again. But her heart prepared her: at a whim, they could be separated yet again, as they were these past months. She could not be certain her body, her mind, would find the inner strength, the resolve, to go through this trauma again.
High up in the night sky, the loaded Allied bombers droned to their new targets, over-riding her inner moan of despair, her tears at last released as she leant towards her strong, hopeful husband for support.
Chapter 29
Perfunctorily saluting, the SS guard jerked his rifle at his prisoners to step forward. The camp commandant pushed his lunch tray to one side and nodded to the interpreter. Evdokia felt defeated. Her fear was increased by the nausea she felt in her state of pregnancy. She glanced at Maria. There was little use in collaborating a story. And the evidence the SS guards had when they captured them heading towards the tiny Federwader station was proof of their guilt in their attempted escape. She realised, too late, the folly of accepting her friend’s assurance that they would not be followed along the quiet wooded roadway.
“You were caught leaving the camp,” the commandant began, glancing from the files to the women, then back to the files again. “You were preparing to escape … You and your children were dressed for a journey, with your valises … You planned to go to Wilhelmshaven?” He looked sternly at Evdokia, then at her friend. He did not wait for their answer.
“You know the penalties for attempting to escape. They are severe … even for women with children.” Evdokia’s heart pounded within the cavity of her strained body, hunger gnawing at her. She looked at the generous scraps on the commandant’s tray and realised she had not eaten since early morning, having given little Mykola and Nadia her piece of black rye bread for the long walk to Federwader station. Her body, heavy with expectant child, ached for nourishment. She bit her dry lip, felt faint at the thought of punishment for the crime of her desperate attempt to reach Peter’s camp. She had no news of him for many weeks, could not be certain if he was still alive. Somehow, Mikhaelo’s letters continued to reach Maria. She surmised that the men, grouped by the SS as forced labourers, must still be fighting the air-raid fires of Wilhelmshaven, as much in order to stay alive at the behest of the SS rifles as being blackmailed to risk their lives in order that no harm would come to their wives and children in the Federwader camp.