by Jana Zinser
“Don’t eat that. You stole it from your people,” Helga said. “If they catch us, they will kill us.”
“They’re going to kill us anyway, and I think we should have it rather than a Nazi.”
“I will not die over chocolate. It’s not dignified,” Helga scoffed.
Lory snatched the dusty pieces of chocolate off the ground and tossed them into her mouth. “My people would want me to have it,” she said, as she chewed the sweet chocolate.
Helga had not eaten adequate food for a long time, and what little hair she had was falling out. The once plump woman was now very thin. She turned and marched off. Suddenly dizzy from her explosive rage and the smell of chocolate, she collapsed.
The guard pointed his gun at Helga. “Get up! Schnell!”
Eva ran to her side. The guards paused.
“Mutti, get up! You must get up!”
“I can’t,” Helga said.
“Then prepare to die a very undignified death,” Eva whispered angrily.
Helga glared at her but rose slowly. Eva helped her to the camp infirmary. It was contradictory to all logic for the Nazis to have an infirmary at a place where they routinely killed people, but nothing at Reinigen was logical. It served their purposes to use patients for their unsanctioned medical experimentation, and to hide their cruelty to the outside world by pretending to give medical care.
Hans and Stephen practiced football kicks in the hostel yard. “What do you think happened to Eva?” Stephen asked.
“She’s probably bossing Hitler around,” Hans said, “like she did us.” “Remember when she wanted to attack the Nazi and save the librarian?” Stephen asked, as he side-kicked the ball.
They looked at each other.
“She’s probably dead,” Stephen said, sadly.
Hans nodded and sighed, and ran after the ball.
CHAPTER 41
THE FINAL SHOWERS
(July 1943)
Shortly after their arrival many months before, Eva had been moved, along with Lory, into the kinderlager in order to supervise the younger ones. The children’s barracks were separated from Dr. Braun’s medical camp by two rows of barbed wire.
The trains unloaded cars of new prisoners each day, and the ovens dumped out the remains of prisoners each night. It was a constant factory of death, and no one was spared the fear that their turn was next. There were almost eighty thousand prisoners at Reinigen Camp. Sometimes family members didn’t see each other for months, even years, if they stayed alive that long. Sometimes they never saw them again once they entered the camp.
Eva looked forward to the occasional glimpses of her father. He was looking older and so much thinner. Sometimes, she barely recognized him, because so many of the inmates looked alike: dressed the same, skeleton-thin, and bald.
It wasn’t until sixteen-year-old Eva was on her way to work that she finally saw Eddie as he stumbled out of the medical building. She barely recognized the pale-faced mute with a zombie walk and an overwhelming sadness, as if his emotions had been emptied, as the perpetually enthusiastic Eddie.
Eva waved her arms, trying to get his attention without the policeman noticing. She whispered, “Eddie? Eddie? Is that you?”
Eddie jerked forward. He stared right at her but didn’t respond.
“Eddie, it’s me, Eva, Hans’s friend from Berlin. What did they do to you?”
Dr. Braun walked out and steered Eddie back into the building.
“No,” Eddie said, almost unintelligibly to Dr. Braun. Eddie tried to twist away from him. “No, it hurts. I need my Mutti. Where is she? She said she would find me.”
Dr. Braun nodded to his medical assistant, a pinched-faced man with a disapproving snarl, wearing glasses and dressed in a white lab coat. The sour assistant, whose face resembled a dried apple, roughly pulled Eddie back into the medical building, as Dr. Braun hurried out of the camp.
Ramona grabbed Eva and pulled her into the barracks. “Do you know that boy?”
“I used to,” Eva said.
“What’s wrong with him?”
“I think his joy has been extracted.”
Otto, who worked in the processing building most of the time, had not seen Eddie again after the first day when he saved his life, and he did not know that Eva and her family were there, either. He assumed Eddie had been spared a horrifying death and to seek him out would have been dangerous for both of them.
That morning, Otto turned toward the medical building and walked into the medical office to collect reports. He stopped abruptly when he saw Eddie twitching violently, strapped to a table, and screaming as electrical probes shocked him.
“Unstrap him, immediately!” Otto said, trying to control his anger.
“I just got him hooked up again,” the assistant grumbled.
“I am to escort him to the infirmary.”
The assistant unhooked the wobbling Eddie from the electrical probes. Otto quickly helped Eddie, who was shuffling like an old man, walk out of the building.
Otto maneuvered Eddie, his legs almost dragging, across the medical camp, by supporting him under the arms. “Eddie. It’s Otto. Do you remember me?”
Eddie looked at him, as drool spilled out of his mouth, and blood dripped from his nose and ears.
“It’s me. Otto. I’m so sorry, Eddie. Come with me.” Otto helped Eddie walk across the yard. A bucket tumbled toward them. Otto stretched out his foot to prevent it from hitting Eddie. He kicked the bucket like a football, and it spun rapidly away.
“Otto?”
“That’s right, Eddie. I’m sorry they hurt you. I’m so sorry, but it’s okay now, I’ll find your mother for you,” Otto said.
Eddie eyes lit up. He finally understood. “Mutti? Thank you, Otto.”
They reached the door to the gas chambers.
“Go on in, it’ll be okay,” Otto said.
Eddie wobbled and leaned on Otto. “You are my best friend.”
“That’s right, Eddie. That’s right,” Otto said, holding the door.
Eddie walked into the crowded chamber. Otto walked in after him.
“You’re going to take a shower too?” Eddie asked.
“Yes, Eddie. I’m very dirty.”
The door shut and locked.
The gas whooshed out for those destined for death.
In the crowded chaos of the death herd, no one noticed or even cared about the handsome ex-football player turned Nazi policeman and death camp guard, or the kind, adoring young man whose innocence was not the least of the things that had been taken from him. All Otto and Eddie had were each other, two unlikely comrades as they waited to die, their final escape from the control of the Nazis.
CHAPTER 42
THE DULL GRAY OF DEATH
(January 1944)
One winter morning at a nearly empty Regents Park in London, Hans and Stephen played football. The cold rain had frozen on the lawn, and the ball made a crunching sound as it hit the icy blades of grass.
“What if they never come back fo
r us? What if they all die?” Stephen asked.
They kicked the ball back and forth down the field. “We’ll have each other. We will always stay together,” Hans answered.
“That’s all we have now, anyway,” Stephen said.
“Last night, I dreamed Eddie was sitting on the moon, watching us play football and cheering. He seemed so happy,” Hans said.
Bert waited, as the children walked by from the camp kinderlager. Eva spied him.
“Papa?”
Bert motioned to her and slipped a round object into her hand. He smiled. “Happy birthday, my little mouse.”
“It’s my birthday?” Eva said.
Bert nodded. “Best day of my life.”
“How can you say that, Papa?”
“I believe good things, unexpected wonders, can come from imperfect situations.”
Eva smiled. “Thank you, Papa. Thank you for saying that. I love you.”
Bert blew her a kiss.
Eva moved on, following the line of children. She towered above the heads of most. She was almost eighteen now. To lighten her own load, Ramona had put Eva in charge of the kinderlager, but unlike Ramona, Eva was not cruel. The children looked up to her like a big sister.
Eva clutched the orange. In winter this was an obvious sign of eternal optimism, an orange blossom of hope. She quickly slipped it in the pocket of her baggy work dress. To be found with such a precious item would surely be death, but when death was a daily companion, it didn’t seem such a huge risk.
That night, after everyone was asleep in the kinderlager barracks, with Lory, seven, on one side of her and Inge, a ten-year-old skeleton of a girl on the other, snoring softly, Eva pulled out the orange and smelled it. She rubbed her hands over it and kissed it.
The sweet, almost forgotten smell of the orange awakened Inge. She sniffed. “Is that really an orange?”
“Yes, isn’t it beautiful?” Eva said.
Lory turned over and stared at the orange. It really wasn’t even a very good orange. It was wrinkled and no longer firm. It had lost its sweet tenderness a long time ago. It was just an orange peel, containing what used to be the promise of a fragrant fruit.
“Did you find that in the warehouse?” Lory asked.
“No, it’s from my father,” Eva whispered.
“You still have a father?” Inge asked, more amazed. Eva nodded.
“Can I have a piece of it?” Inge held out her thin hand, so pale it showed the blue veins through her skin.
Eva shook her head. “It’s a birthday present. I want to make it last, maybe tomorrow.”
Eva clutched the orange to her chest and fell asleep. The precious birthday orange remained unpeeled.
“Happy birthday, Eva,” Inge said, as she lay awake next to her, too hungry to go to sleep.
The next morning, Ramona entered the kinderlager barracks and prodded Eva, Lory, and Inge with a billy club. “Get up, lazy girls! Roll call! Appell!” She moved on to jab the other children.
Eva stirred. Inge, lying next to her, was stiff and colorless. Eva nudged her as Lory scooted away from her.
“Inge’s dead. She never woke up,” Lory said, whispering the horror of the quiet death that took Inge away without a sound, right beside them as they slept.
Eva nodded. “Drag her out to roll call, or they will hold us outside for hours. Today, even the air is frozen.”
Lory and Eva struggled to carry their dead friend outside the kinderlager barracks. They carefully laid her on the snowy ground, next to them, to be counted. When Ramona ended roll call, she yelled, “Dump that dead one in the new ditch, and get to work!” She turned on her heels and left.
Eva looked down at the pale, lifeless Inge. She pulled the shriveled orange out of her pocket and placed it in Inge’s cold hand, an offering too late to change the course of death. Eva wept, surprised there were any tears left.
The other inmate matrons picked up Inge and threw her in the newly dug ditch not too far outside the camp. Eva’s birthday gift from her father fell from Inge’s lifeless hand and landed in the ditch, a bright orange contrast against the dull gray of death at Reinigen Camp.
CHAPTER 43
PRESS FORWARD ON ALL FRONTS
(June 1944)
At the Cohens’ house on 16 Poppleton Circle, Becca, twelve, and Priscilla, fourteen, shared a chocolate bar in tiny bites to make the precious, dark, rationed sweetness last longer. Doris and Harry sat on the couch. Mrs. Daniels turned the knob on the radio, her flabby arms swinging.
“D-Day, June 6, 1944, marks the end of Hitler’s domination, as Allied Forces invade Normandy, France, and push for Western Europe’s liberation,” the radio announcer said, solemnly, but with a lilt of hope.
They cheered. Becca danced around and spun Priscilla in her chair.
“We have far to go, but let us pray this is the end of Hitler’s invasions. If we can press forward on all fronts,” the radio announcer said, “victory may be near.”
“Rumor has it that the Allied Forces have broken the Berlin code. If that is true, it won’t be long,” Harry said.
“Not a moment too soon, aye,” Mrs. Daniels said.
“No turning back now,” Harry said. “Kill all the Germans!”
Becca stopped dancing. Her joy disappeared.
Peter, Mica, and Sloan ate stale bread in the underground room beneath the forest outside Soblin. “I’m telling you, now is the time to sneak inside the camp and blow it up. Things aren’t going well for Hitler. He is distracted by failure, since some incredibly brilliant commando cracked his undecipherable Berlin code, and the Allies are serving him defeats. If we strike now, his power will crumble even more. If we don’t strike now, they will kill everyone in the camps out of fear of the Allied Forces invasion,” Peter reasoned.
“How did you become such a reckless aggressor?” Mica asked.
“I learned from a farmer I once knew,” Peter answered. “Strike when they are weak and never relent.”
“What you are asking is certain suicide,” Sloan said.
“Let me ask, are you ready to suffer and give your life for the Resistance?” Peter asked, repeating the question Sloan had asked him at the English pub. “Rebels die young, you know.”
Sloan smiled and turned to Mica. “Well?”
“If you two are dead, there is no need for me to live. I’m in,” Mica answered.
“Young rebel, we are in agreement. Plan your big, incapacitating sabotage of a death camp and say your prayers.”
“Which one will it be?” Mica asked.
“Reinigen, at Lodansk,” Peter said, choosing the camp where Eva was imprisoned, if she was still alive.
“So, it is decided; we shall die together,” Sloan the Bear said. “I wish we had some ale. A big fat barrel of it.”
“There will be plenty of time for that when Hitler concedes defeat,” Peter said.
“I hope your actions are as bold as your words, foolish rebel meat-man,” Sloan said.
Mica looked at Peter. “T
hen a big rebellion it is.”
Peter nodded and smiled.
“It was nice knowing you both,” Sloan joked.
CHAPTER 44
BE BOLD
(January 1945)
Sloan, Mica, and Peter carefully mapped the Reinigen Camp so each building was clearly identified. They visited several times to get the visual lay of the camp at Lodansk. To infiltrate the camp and blow up the buildings, they would have to know it by heart.
Before she was arrested, Iron Isha had spoken to two people who had escaped Reinigen in an old potato wagon used to carry the corpses from the camp and dump them in ditches. She’d quizzed them for days as she helped them cross the border into safety. She’d recorded the smallest details of the camp, including even the shaft where the poison pellets went down into the gas chamber. Peter used those notes to add detail to his map. He knew every inch of the Reinigen Camp.
At their last reconnaissance mission, Peter, staring at the vast and secure camp from a safe distance away at a farmer’s barn, thought that Eva might still be captive at the prison. If she wasn’t there, if he was too late, it would be too heavy to bear. Each camp explosion would be a personal tribute to his old friend, Eva, and to the fact that without the Kindertransport this would certainly have been his fate as well, or worse.
Peter went to get the scarce explosive material by visiting his Soblin sewer explosive expert. He also wanted to learn how to make a better petrol bomb; the botched Berlin Headquarters attack still weighed heavy on his mind.
In the sewer, hearing that Martha had died from dysentery was surprisingly painful. Peter could see that Abraham was crushingly lonely for his housekeeper, who had become his unofficial wartime sewer wife. Abraham said he could no longer obtain the ingredients to make the clever bombs he had always concocted.