by Jana Zinser
Peter took out a match and lit it. The fuse sizzled and finally caught. Then it went out. He lit another match and touched the fuse, but the match extinguished. He lit another, and it again sputtered into flame, then went out. He was wasting precious matches. He felt the fuse. It was completely soaked from setting it down in the snow earlier.
He quickly took out another pine bomb. He hesitated, overwhelmed with what he had done. Now he would not have enough bombs to blow up all his targets. Even with the two petrol bombs still in his pouch, it would not be enough explosives.
Nazi officers, shouting orders, ran through the camp. An officer ran past Peter and stopped. “Open the gas chambers! The children are waiting! Commandant Radley’s orders!”
Peter slammed the pine bomb against the officer’s head. The officer slid to the ground. He quickly lit another pine bomb, a dry one, and threw it into the officers’ building. It exploded. Peter cheered, as if he were watching Stephen and Hans at a football game at Dovercourt.
Across the camp, the reception building suddenly exploded in flames. Sloan had hit his target. Peter carried the remaining three pine bombs, although one fuse was too wet to light, and ran to the gas chambers.
He saw the children waiting their turn in line to be killed. This was a problem. He could not destroy the gas chambers if the children were there. The line of children was so long that from where he approached, he could not see the children in the front. So Peter did not see Eva huddled with a group of children near the gas chamber’s entrance, determined to be the first to die, to show the children courage.
Peter walked up to the children waiting at the back of the line.
“You must leave, kinder. I am not a Nazi. I am a rebel. Today, you will be free!” Peter said. “Run to the barracks.”
The children, thinking it to be a trick, moved slowly away from the Nazi. They had been fooled before. The idea of freedom was no longer something they could understand, and rebellion and rescue were as foreign as warmth and comfort. To hear these words from a Nazi was certainly a lie.
The children at the back of the line didn’t listen to Peter the Nazi’s words. They remained in line, waiting for the command to enter the gas chamber. That cold, strange night, they had accepted their final fate and were in line to die. Nothing could scare them anymore.
Peter knew time was crucial, and his last three targets were still standing. He decided he would run and blow up the crematorium and the warehouse. When he could find Sloan and Mica, who were not dressed as the enemy, he would get them to rescue the children. Peter planned to come back to blow up the gas chamber. He could not risk it with the children in line.
He ran toward the crematorium. The gas chamber would have to wait until last, and he hoped the chaos would prevent anyone from carrying out the order.
Bert, searching for Eva, ran up to the empty kinderlager barracks. In the background, the guards’ stand and camp entrance exploded. He saw the burning skyline of buildings and looked around frantically. He saw the children waiting to go into the gas chamber.
He ran and grabbed Eva at the front of the line, and hugged her.
“What’s going on?” Eva asked.
“I don’t know, but you must run and hide! We have been spared,” Bert said, barely able to catch his breath. “They say the rebels are here.”
“You mean we are to disobey orders?” Eva asked, unbelievingly.
“Yes, emphatically,” Bert said, nodding.
“What about you, Papa?”
“I’m going to check on your mother. Take the children back to the barracks. Don’t worry, I’ll find you,” Bert said.
Eva motioned to the other children. “We are saved for today. Follow me!” she shouted, and remarkably, they followed.
Peter had studied the map and knew the camp well. He soon reached the crematorium. Since his first bomb had a wet fuse, and he’d had to use a second to blow up the Nazi officers’ building, he only had two remaining usable bombs and the two petrol bombs. He still had the warehouse they called Kanada as one of his targets. He would blow up the crematorium and come back later for the gas chamber when there were no children by it. Hopefully, the wet fuse would be dry enough by then and take the match, he thought.
He lit a pine bomb and tossed it into the crematorium. The building where so many people had burned was being incinerated by a Jewish butcher’s son. There was something near justice in that rebellious act, and Peter could feel the joy of destroying evil fill his soul. He felt more powerful and fearless with each explosion across the camp.
Eva led the children toward the barracks. Several police guards were gathering people for the death march. “Line up. The camp is being evacuated. Anyone refusing will be killed!” a policeman by the barracks ordered.
She motioned to the other children, and they changed direction. “Go quickly. We will hide in Kanada,” she said quietly. She ran into the warehouse, followed by all the other children whose new acts of defiance made them shake with fear.
The children hid, squeezed behind the huge mountain of suitcases at the warehouse. Ramona opened the door. She saw Eva pull the smallest child back behind the suitcases.
A Nazi officer entered right behind Ramona with a gun pointed at her head. “We will march them all out of here. No one is to be left if they can walk. I need all inmates outside immediately,” he said.
Ramona hesitated, and then nodded.
“That means you.”
“Me?” Ramona asked.
“You didn’t really think you would be spared, did you? All clear in here?”
Ramona hesitated. “All clear,” she lied. Only when she was faced with her own death did she finally take an action on the side of her people.
Looking for Helga, Bert hurried boldly up the steps of the camp infirmary, a place he had not been allowed to enter.
Suddenly, he was jerked from behind and pulled back down the stairs. He was herded into a thick line of thousands of prisoners being led on foot out of the camp by the remaining well-armed guards. The Nazis had to get rid of the evidence of their evil. If they just killed the prisoners, the bodies would tell the world of their crimes. The inmates had to be removed completely to leave no proof of the Nazis’ inhumane and torturous prison.
Bert turned to a man next to him. “What’s going on?”
“The rebels are here. They are throwing explosives. One is even dressed as a Nazi. The commandant is evacuating all prisoners.”
Bert turned. “Eva,” he whispered to himself, “stay hidden.”
The Nazi officers drove a seemingly unending line of more than twenty thousand prisoners on a death march out of the camp and through the snow into the Polish countryside. It would have been more, but the increased gas chamber loads had significantly reduced the number of inmates in recent months. The Nazis were efficient at killing.
On the death march, some inmates had no shoes. One inmate dropped dead before even getting out of sight of the camp. The rest just stepped around him, callously conditioned to accept sudden death.
Bert and another inmate stopped to move the dead man to keep him from being trampled. Eric and Borg saw the
line pause and stomped over.
“What is the problem?” Eric demanded. They parted the inmates and saw Bert picking up the dead man. He was so thin he didn’t weigh much, but was cumbersome in his lifeless lankiness.
“Keep moving, or you’ll end up like him,” Borg shouted with the uncaring voice of the Nazi he had been trained to be. But he trailed off at the end, uncertain of his conviction.
The line moved slowly around them. Eric and Borg picked up the dead man and tossed him to the side, out of the path, not with sympathy but with efficiency.
Borg grimaced. He looked at the line of prisoners stretching as far as he could see. “Where are we going?” he asked Eric, cold and weary, walking beside him.
Eric pointed ahead. “It doesn’t matter. We will go until they tell us to stop.”
“Who will tell us to stop?” Borg asked, finally questioning the madness. “It is only us.” He looked around and shook his head. “But it won’t be me, anymore.” He took off running across the field.
Eric, unused to anyone questioning the Nazis, stared after him. Then, the fog of confusion lifted, and his Nazi sensibilities clicked in. He pulled out his gun, aimed it at the fleeing Borg, and shot. Borg, at last on his way to his own freedom and finally giving in to a long simmering rejection of his murderous people and his own actions, stumbled and fell face down in the snow. He was dead at the hands of his own people, for disobeying a Nazi command.
“I hate cowards,” Eric muttered, as he continued moving forward with the death march of prisoners.
Bert realized the murder of one of their own revealed how desperate and weak the Nazis had become, and he knew his time for escape was now.
A herd of slow-moving cows, a few yards away, watched the Reinigen camp death march pass by, as they nudged the frozen ground looking for any surviving grass stubble. Bert reached down quickly and scooped up several ice-covered stones. The frozen rocks burned cold in his hands.
He glanced around. The Nazi guards were still focused on the unmanageable job of marching the line of people as far away as possible from the rebellion and the advancing Allied military forces. Bert maneuvered to the outside of the huge line by shuffling behind people and sliding over, avoiding any attention. He watched as they marched closer to the herd of cows, who casually accepted the Nazi intrusion through their frozen field.
Bert bounced the rocks in his hand, listening to them click together. He raised his hand to throw them, but a black-and-white cow raised her head and mooed loudly. Bert pulled his arm down. The cow bobbed its head back down, pushing the snow with her cold nose, looking for something to eat.
Bert took the quiet cow moment and heaved the stones into the bushes at the opposite side of the long marching line. The police guards turned and fired where the rocks landed. The prisoners all ducked as bullets riddled the empty frozen bush.
While the guards were distracted, Bert slipped out of the death line and dove into the herd of cows on the other side. The Nazi police turned back around, after they realized it was just a leafless bush they had riddled with bullets. The cows mooed.
“Hurry up! Move out! We’ve got a long way to go!” Eric shouted.
The miles of prisoners trudged on, leaving Bert hiding among the mooing, hungry herd. The cows ignored him and went about their bovine business of chewing what little frozen grass they could find. Bert could still see the camp in the distance, smoke rising from the rebel explosions, but he waited there, until the remaining line of inmates filed out of sight.
Bert left his cow cover and headed back to camp. For years, he’d dreamed of escaping Reinigen. Now, when it was finally possible, he was returning back to camp for Eva, and Helga, still in the infirmary, if there was enough of her left to save.
The door to the Reinigen Camp warehouse swung open. Quick, heavy footsteps sounded as someone searched the room, stopping beside the suitcases. The children huddled in fear as the footsteps came toward them. Eva looked up, ready to defend their moment of freedom.
The footsteps rounded the corner. It was Bert.
“Papa!” Eva cried.
“Oh, Eva, my princess, I’ve found you. I was so scared when I saw the barracks were empty. Come out, children. The rebels are here. The camp has been emptied. We will be free!” Bert said.
The children emerged from behind the suitcases. Booted steps sounded behind Bert.
A young Nazi officer loomed over them. The camp had not been emptied of all Nazis. Just when freedom seemed so certain, they would be killed amongst the stolen last possessions of their people.
The Nazi officer stared at Eva. He trilled three high-pitched whistles. Then he smiled, and his whole face changed. It was Peter.
“Eva, it’s me, Peter. I have come to set you free,” he said matter-of-factly.
Eva stood very still, her mouth hanging open. “Peter? It was your whistles I heard!”
“Yes,” he said, at last coming face to face with the girl he had dreamed of for so many years. “I hoped you were still here. I hoped you could hear me.”
She looked him up and down. “Peter! You’re a man,” she said. “What are you doing in a Nazi uniform?”
“It is the best way for a rebel to hide. We’re blowing up the camp,” Peter said. “The Allied Forces are only a few days away.”
“A rebel in a Nazi uniform?” Eva asked. He smiled and nodded.
She looked at Bert. “Peter’s a rebel, Papa!”
Bert walked over, put his arms around Peter, and buried his face, wet with tears, in his shoulder. “Peter, your father was right. You were destined to save the Jews!”
Peter smiled. “I left my violin at home this time, Herr Rosenberg. Explosives seemed more effective.”
Eva laughed, ran to Peter, and hugged him. “Thank you, Peter!”
The children crept out from around the piles with looks of horror, as they watched Eva hugging a Nazi officer.
“He is not a Nazi, children. It is only his disguise. He is one of us,” Bert reassured the children, as his daughter looked up at the handsome boy of her childhood.
“So, we are free?” she asked, as if the idea was unbelievable, and the words had a hard time forming in her mouth.
Peter nodded. “Today is the Nazis’ last day at Reinigen.”
The children cheered.
“Have you seen my mother and sister?” Peter asked haltingly.
“No,” Eva said sadly, shaking her head.
Peter looked at Bert. “The Levys or Vogners?”
“I have not seen them,” Bert said.
“I saw Eddie, but they had done terrible things to him. There wasn’t any Eddie left,” Eva said.
“So many are gone,” Bert said. “They marched everybody who could walk out of camp.”
“We need to vacate this building. Get all the children out. Send them to the barracks or the medical clinic. All other buildings will be destroyed.”
Eva hurried to the door, then stopped, and turned back. “Have you seen Stephen and Hans?”
“They are living in London and are the same as you remember.”
Eva sighed and smiled. “Tell them I’m sorry I missed the train.”
Peter nodded. “I will.”
“You were safe in England. Why did you come back?” Eva asked.
He looked at her and shrugged. “I had to do something.”
She smiled, and tears ran down her face. “Peter,” she called to him, “will you find me after the war?”
“Well, I still owe you a ride in a garbage truck, and believe me, it’s worth it.” He smiled at the thin, haggard girl who still looked beautiful to him. “Unless you have plans, I’ll find you after I blow up the rest of this prison and get out of this Nazi uniform.”
She smiled and laughed. “I have no other plans.”
Peter nodded to Bert, standing beside Eva. “Nice to see you again, Herr Rosenberg.”
“It’s my pleasure, son,” Bert said, with tears in his eyes. “You’re strong like your father, a very brave soldier.”
“Thank you, sir.”
Eva turned to the kids. “You heard the handsome rebel. Run to the barracks and wait,” she said. “We will all be free again!”
“What does free mean?” a young boy asked another boy.
“It means food,” an older boy said.
Eva and Bert followed the children out.
Peter smiled. He hadn’t been this happy since his father had given him his violin, when life seemed so simple, and Hitler wasn’t killing Jews. He sighed, but this was no time to be nostalgic.
When everyone was out, he reached into his pouch and got the last good pine bomb. He lit the fuse, tossed it into the pile of stolen belongings, and ran through the door just before Kanada exploded, blowing away the remnants of so many destroyed lives.