Chapter 8: Binyamin and Talia

In March 1941, Bulgaria joined the Axis Powers. In April 1941, Yugoslavia and Greece were invaded by Bulgaria and Germany, supported by Italy, to secure the Balkan Mountains. In June, Germany crossed the Soviet Union side of Poland to invade Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia. Once occupied, Germany began the invasion of the Soviet Union. Finland allied itself with Germany to invade the Soviet Union to recapture lost territory. Some historians say Hitler was the only man whom Stalin ever trusted, and he invaded his country and massacred his people. Many Polish Jews fled to the Soviet Union when the Germans invaded in 1939. In 1940, the Soviet Army massacred Polish Jews and officers, who were held in a camp as prisoners of war, in the Katyn Forest near Smolensk in Russia on Stalin’s orders. Their bodies were found later by the Germans in April 1943. Once Germany invaded the Soviet Union, many Jews were moved from the Crimean Peninsula and other places further away from the front lines by the Soviet Army. The Soviet Army acted swiftly, arresting Polish refugees and Jews; some were Soviet citizens in their homes and even on the street, and they were sent in cattle cars to labor camps in Siberia. The journey was grueling without much food or water, and the toilet was a hole in the floor. Once in the camps, the people were given food and medical care. Despite the harsh conditions of the journey and camps, the dictator Stalin, after ordering the murder of Jews and Polish officers in the Katyn Forest, did, in fact, save thousands of Jews from the Nazi death squads and from being shipped to death camps in Poland.

Stalin also moved many of his ammunition factories east of the Urals to protect their supply lines to fight the invading Germans. The Russians were known for their scorched earth battle tactics dating all the way back to Czar Peter the Great, such as poisoning wells, slaughtering animals, and burning crops so the enemy could not use them. This time, they took apart their factories and physically moved them away from the Germans. Hitler failed to expect those moves when he had his troops invade. Hitler also failed to provide winter uniforms for his troops when the invasion began in the summer. Soon after, the German Afrika Korps supported Italian forces in Libya, Egypt, and Tunisia. On the 1st of September, all Jews over the age of six in Germany and controlled areas were required to wear a yellow Star of David patch on the left breast side of their outer clothing. The young people became alarmed that they were being marked. The elders tried to calm their fears by saying it was just something they had to do now. In the Middle Ages, Jews had to wear pointed hats, were expelled from towns, accused of poisoning wells during the Black Death, and were forbidden to own land. Jews have been persecuted by the Christians of Europe since the Middle Ages; they think nothing of it. “And many Jews were murdered in the Middle Ages too. The Crusades. The Black Death. The Spanish Inquisition. The French Inquisition. Riots murdered Jews during the German Federation after the Napoleonic Wars. Czarist pogroms murdered Jews in Russia fifty years ago.” blurted out Talia.

“Talia, please hold your tongue. You are scaring the children. I am trying to get us visas, but every Jew in Europe wants one too. The Depression made other countries overwhelmed by caring for Jewish refugees, so they rejected the crowds who wanted to go, like Cuba and Switzerland. We must focus on surviving this war. We must remain calm and finish hiding our valuables at the Catholic church, as Anshel did. Remember to always wear comfortable shoes in case the Nazis erupt into another pogrom, capturing people off the streets to put into concentration camps like the Night of Broken Glass. I will try to save as much money as I can from my job in case the American consulate grants me an interview. I do not know any Christians who would help us hide. Hiding in someone’s house could get them arrested as well for helping us, so I hate to ask. I do not want to hide in a Catholic church and endanger all those nuns and monks. If we stay together, we should be able to get through this war. Say your prayers tonight to keep us safe, and pray that Great Britain and the Soviet Union do not fall to the Nazis also. So many countries we could have moved to have declared war against Germany, joined the Axis Powers, or got invaded by them. What else can I do, Talia?” Binyamin replied.

In Berlin, the Reich Association of Jews sold the required Jewish star patches for ten pfennigs each, with Jews allowed to purchase three at once and receive replacements via clothing rations. The stars had to be kept clean and always worn. In October, the Jews of Germany were banned from leaving the country. Binyamin wept as their last chance to legally immigrate perished. He had too much pride and honor in his veins to ask the Catholic nuns for illegal paperwork and transportation to escape, or cut his beard to look less Jewish. He dutifully went to work and saved money, hoping something would change so they could leave Germany after this war. His mother started to show signs of rheumatism, and she stayed home to rest her joints while watching the children. Then she caught pneumonia and spent a week in the Jewish Hospital. Radio broadcasts promoted German victories. Field Marshal Erwin Rommel was sent to Tripoli, Libya, to support Italian troops fighting the British. The British and later Americans called him the “Desert Fox”. British submarines were sunk in the Atlantic by U-boats and in the Mediterranean by Italian subs. British cities were bombed, sparking a city-wide Second Great Fire of London. Many bombing raids struck industrial factories in Sheffield and London’s East End, and even the royal residence of Buckingham Palace.

There was talk of Spain, which was recovering from a long civil war that Hitler helped General Franco win in 1939, but he was afraid of the British attacking Spain from their military base in Gibraltar. If they did, his military forces would quickly fall. General Franco permitted the Spanish Volunteer Blue Division to fight in the Soviet Union, but not in Western Europe, and allowed German ships to refuel in Spanish ports. The Blue Division, witnessing the atrocities of the execution of Jews along with Polish and Russian civilians, offered temporary protection to them in areas they controlled. Spain maintained neutrality and never officially joined the Axis Powers. Jewish status was marked on Spanish identity papers. In fact, Spain took in thousands of Jewish refugees from France, Greece, Bulgaria, Romania, and Hungary when Jews had not been able to live openly in Spain for four hundred years. Spain allowed twenty to thirty-five thousand Jews to travel through Spain on transit visas from Vichy France. Spain accepted three hundred Spanish Jews from France and over one thousand and three hundred from Greece. Spanish diplomats gave Spanish citizenship to Sephardic Jews without proof. One Spanish diplomat, Angel Sanz-Briz, saved two hundred families of Hungarian Jews by giving them Spanish citizenship, taught them Spanish, and provided safe houses. When he fled Budapest in 1944, an Italian, Giorgio Perlasca, used false papers to convince the Hungarian government he was the new Spanish diplomat to continue assisting Jews from deportation to concentration camps until the arrival of the Soviet Army. He saved over five thousand and two hundred Jews from deportation with Spanish visas and safe houses under the authority of the Spanish Embassy. Ultimately, Hitler wanted Jews living in Spain shipped to Germany, and lists of Jews were made to document them for Himmler, waiting for their deportation, but Germany never got them. After the war, Angel Sanz-Briz continued his diplomatic career for Spain and died in Rome in 1980 as Spanish Ambassador to Italy. Giorgio Perlasca returned to Italy and justified his actions to avoid arrest. He struggled to make ends meet. He died in Padua in 1992.

After Germany invaded Poland, nine thousand refugees entered Portugal within a few months. The government ordered that issuing visas be ceased for refugees who could not return to their home country. Earlier in 1938, Jewish settlement was forbidden, but travel visas for thirty days were permitted. Portuguese diplomat Aristides de Sousa Mendes in Bordeaux, France, defied his government’s orders to reject refugees after Germany invaded France, issuing thousands of visas to refugees, including Jews, in German-occupied France. He was demoted, and his family was blacklisted into social disgrace. He ended up in Lisbon eating at a soup kitchen for Jewish refugees. After the war, he remained a social disgrace and had to beg people he saved for money. He died in poverty in 1954. It was estimated he saved thirty thousand refugees; a third were Jewish.

Germany jammed BBC Europe signals to keep Germans from hearing them. Outside cities in rural areas, people could catch BBC broadcasts more easily. Binyamin tried to construct an aerial loop like the British leaflets said to do. In the German language, they announced that Bremen, Germany, factories were bombed by the RAF and Kiel Canal Bridge suffered a direct hit, collapsing onto the Finnish ship Yrsa. German bombers attacked Ireland. The Greek Army was in Albania fighting the Italians. The British took a North African place called Derna in Libya. British Indian troops won a battle in East Africa, taking one thousand Italians captive. In Benghazi, Libya, the British took a hundred and thirty thousand Italians captive after a battle. These British victories would explain German troops being sent to Africa in support of Italian troops. Food supplies came in from the conquered territories. The Pfieffer family survived the winter. Binyamin filled a barrel with their valuables, money, and even photographs in case their apartment got bombed by the British. The family was elated that Great Britain never fell, but then Germany never invaded the country, except for the islands between France and England in the Channel. Battle of Britain was just dropping bombs on each other's heads. October 1941, the deportations of Jews in Berlin began. Jews were rounded up at work and in homes. Synagogues on Levetzow Street and Heidereuter Alley, the Jewish cemetery on Grosse Hamburger Street and Rosen Street, the Jewish home for the aged, and the Jewish Hospital were used as assembly centers. Once the soldiers had a thousand Jews together, they were taken to rail stations at Grunewald, Anhalter, or Putlitz Street train stations in cattle cars. Many Jews were told they were being resettled in eastern Europe and could take one suitcase with them. People wrote their name, birthdate, and address on their suitcases. Binyamin was arrested as he left the factory to walk home.

All the Jewish workers were forced into trucks and taken to the Jewish Cemetery. Binyamin looked out at the tombstones to view his father’s and nephew’s resting place for the last time. He was forced onto a cattle car that took him into the Harz Mountains, where there was a concentration camp factory in the old copper and silver mines making and testing V-1 and V-2 rockets. He was given a striped prisoner uniform: a shirt with a Star of David and a number below on the chest, pants, and wooden clogs. The undergarments they were given were long underwear and an undershirt with thin socks. They had the prisoners bathe to disinfect themselves. In the barracks, a man named Yakob explained the routine. Morning roll call; unsweetened coffee or tea was given, walk to the factory, work for twelve hours, lunch was potato or cabbage soup with a taste of meat, supper was coffee or tea with bread and margarine, marmalade, or sausage, and then back to the barracks for lights out. He explained that when they walk back to the factory in the dark, boys from the nearby farms come to toss food wrapped in newspaper to them. There is a corner behind the barracks where the searchlights cast shadows from the building. When more workers come into the camp than they can handle, they get a selection to remove the weak to ship out to other camps on the cattle cars. This place was miserable with despair that even the most stout atheists suddenly became religious. They prayed every night that the war would end soon so they could leave. When dysentery broke out in the camp, many men would recite the Kaddish mourner’s prayer they normally recite for their loved ones for themselves as they lay dying. The newspapers the boys wrap food in say Great Britain has not surrendered yet. They surely get much help from their colony, Canada, across the ocean. The British left Iceland to have Canadians take over Atlantic patrols, and then the Americans took over patrolling the Atlantic for German U-boats. For being neutral, America seemed to support Great Britain an awful lot. Yakob was certain Australia was watching Japan’s invasion of China, and French Indochina worried that they were next on the list of potential invasions.

Sarah was walking to work at the Jewish Hospital when she saw the Nazis rushing through the doors and firing their weapons. She ran back to the apartment. Binyamin never came home that night. Sarah walked to his factory the next morning to discover that all the Jewish workers were arrested. The foreman told her to find a good hiding place. Sarah gathered up everything they could carry to take to the Catholic Church to hide them in the family barrel. The nuns offered sanctuary, but Sarah did not want to risk their safety for them. Talia had a friend from school who could possibly help them find shelter. She visited her friend to request shelter since they could not afford their own apartment with her father’s income gone, and her mother could not work at the Jewish Hospital anymore. Her friend refused to help because the Gestapo would arrest them too. They returned to the Catholic church to hide in their nunnery. They were given a room to stay in. They took off the Star of David patches to study the Catholic faith, including some Latin. In time, the nuns found them another apartment, and Sarah got a new job in an airplane factory while her mother-in-law watched the children. They attended Catholic church services in Latin. Jews by the thousand were sent away in cattle cars day after day. On December 7, 1941, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in America’s Hawaii. Germany declared war the next day. America returned in kind. The American consulate in Berlin began packing up and leaving to cease all visa interviews. Sarah took a chance and went to the American Consulate to beg for passage out of Germany with her mother-in-law and children with their satchels. The Americans never opened the gates for them. Other Jews had the same idea and were quickly arrested by the Gestapo outside the closed gates. They were forced into a truck and taken to a Gestapo holding center. Sarah was beaten and interrogated. Her mother-in-law Shayna and Talia were also harshly interrogated. The children were questioned gently to receive chocolates, but they were too terrified to give information they heard. They stayed in concrete rooms separate from each other. Sarah bitterly wept, missing her last chance to escape Germany. The family was reunited in the same concrete cell to each eat a meal. The Gestapo wanted them to talk to each other to learn about other conspirators they knew.

Once the Americans left Berlin, in January 1942, Hitler conducted a conference of top Nazi officials at Wannsee to organize the plans for the Final Solution. It was decided to use gas chambers larger than the feared murder vans, using carbon monoxide. Once people learned about the murder vans, they refused to get in them. Since the invasion of Poland, patients in mental hospitals, then deaf and blind schools, in six killing centers were gassed beginning in June 1940. Since these people were institutionalized, nobody really missed them, and officials wrote to their families stating their family member died from illness. Reinhard Heydrich was placed in charge of the Final Solution to the Jewish Question. He came up with the plans to exterminate undesirables en masse. Auschwitz-Birkenau, Chełmno, Bełżec, Sobibor, Treblinka, and Majdanek were to be altered into death camps with crematoriums to remove evidence of the murdered. Death squads in Russia killed many Jews by marching them into forests and shooting them next to trenches for them to fall into. Bullets needed to be saved for battles. The first gas chambers were tested on Soviet prisoners of war. Prisoners' hair, including pubic hair, would be cut off to be sold by the kilogram to textile mills to be used to make blankets, socks, ropes, bomb ignition mechanisms, pillows, and mattresses. Gold teeth were to be removed. Rumors circulated that skin from tattooed dead were used to make lampshades. Too bad tattoos were taboo to the Jewish people to make much money from that. The gas chambers were to be designed as dummy showers to convince people to go in to bathe and disinfect themselves. Then the gas packet was dropped into a grate from the ceiling to gas everyone. Then the bodies were to be removed by strong male Jews, who would search bodies for hidden objects and toss them into the crematorium. Jewish women could go through the clothing to look for money and jewelry to be turned into the Reich.

Reinhard Heydrich did not have much time to learn the full results of his plans when he was attacked in his car with an anti-tank grenade by Czech and Slovak soldiers during May and died from a sepsis infection in June from the upholstery of his car seat. Some would call it poetic justice for a man dubbed The Hangman, The Butcher of Prague, The Blond Beast, and Himmler’s Evil Genius. Adolf Hitler called him the Man with the Iron Heart as he sent him to rule Bohemia and Moravia as Reich Protector. The assassins were sent by the Czechoslovak government-in-exile and trained by the British to kill him. The assassins were killed in a firefight at a cathedral. Soon after, as revenge, the villages of Lidice and Ležáky were set on fire. Then the men, women, and children were either shot or sent to concentration camps. The British continued bombing German cities, and the Nazi government began evacuating children into the rural areas. The Pfeiffer family did not know how long they were in Gestapo holding cells, but suddenly they were marched out to trucks to be taken to the train station to board cattle cars. They had not seen the sun or the moon for months and learned they were in their cells for three months, and it was March 30th of 1942. They heard people talk about what this resettlement place in Eastern Europe would be like. The German soldiers told them they were being moved to a resettlement area in Poland and had them label their suitcases properly to get them back later. Maybe they would each get their own house and get jobs in factories. Many had packed their cookware and dishes in their suitcases for their new homes.

They arrived at the concentration camp Auschwitz inside German-controlled Poland during the night. They were led off the cars to meet guards with German Shepherds ready to jump them. Men were separated to the left, and women and small children went to the right. Talia spotted twelve-year-old Yussel sticking his tongue out at the guards ordered to stand to the left of the men's group. It was the last time she saw him. Three-year-old Rachel clung to her mother Sarah, and they were directed to the left of the women’s group. Talia aided her grandmother Shayna to walk. The head guard asked a few questions, like age or infirmity. He asked about Shayna’s walk. Talia explained she had rheumatism in her joints and needed support while walking. The guard directed Shayna to the left, and she held her daughter-in-law’s arm for support while Sarah held on to Rachel in her other hand. Talia, aged twenty, was directed to stand to the right. When the separation was complete, they were directed to have their hair cut off, then undressed for the showers to be disinfected, then handed striped uniforms of a dress, cap, and wooden shoes with thin socks. They had their photographs taken and forms filled out with everything about them from eye color to occupation and birthplace for their personal file. Next, they had tattoos of their prisoner numbers placed on their left arm with a needle. Prisoner numbers usually went on the shirt or dress, but so many prisoners died that it became hard to read the numbers, so they started tattooing people to identify which prisoners died better. Teeth were checked for gold caps. Their possessions were taken away. They were given used and soiled undergarments. Talia and her group were directed toward the barracks. They walked past open fires where newborn babies were being burned in pits. Many of the women covered their eyes as they walked past the burning newborns. What was this place they were sent to? Wooden shoes produced blisters in time, even with thin socks. Then they entered the barracks. A Gypsy/Romani woman named Zelda guided Talia to her bunk. They called this barracks area Kanada from all the treasures there. They searched the pockets of arrivals who were murdered. Talia was horrified. She was separated from her family and unsure what part of the camp they were in.

“Did your family go left or right once genders were separated?” Zelda inquired.

“They went left,” Talia replied.

“They are burning in the crematorium now,” Zelda explained. “How old were your little brother and sister?”

“My brother was twelve, and my sister was three.” Talia explained.

“All children under age fourteen, mothers, elderly, sick, and injured to be unable to work are gassed and tossed in the crematorium.” Zelda explained. “Where are your grandfather and father?”

“Grandfather died during an air raid. A piece of the ceiling hit him, and he died bleeding from his head. My papa was arrested at his job last year, and I do not know where he was taken.” Talia explained.

“He might be alive. They have been shooting people unfit to work, and now they are gassing people since last month, going by the full moons. Is he strong?” Zelda inquired.

“He worked at a factory. Mama worked in a factory too. She was fit for work. Why was she not spared like me?” Talia questioned.

“Because your sister was clinging to her; mothers are killed with their young children.” Zelda explained.

“I will pray my papa is still alive and try to find him when this war is over. Germany just declared war on America after being attacked by the Japanese in Hawaii. In the Great War, America helped the British and French win over Germany and Austria.”

“Really, I have not heard that. So, America is fighting Japan and Germany. Interesting.” reacted Zelda.

“How long have you been here?” inquired Talia.

“Eternity. This place is hell. Every day and night they murder people. First, they shot them; now they gas them. You get too sick to work, they gas you or stab your heart with poison in the infirmary. They need to make room for arrivals; they shoot and now gas people. You steal food or wool socks, and they shoot you. Weekly we have to witness hangings. They make us strip naked for selections to remove people unfit for work when barracks get overcrowded. One female guard holds a staff, and if you cannot jump over it, then you are shot. Children walking to the gas chambers often say they see angels walking with them. Then we heard the screams until complete silence. The guards say the gas chambers get covered in bloody scratches from the dying people trying to get out. A few people in the barracks have seen angels. They usually die shortly after. Sometimes angels give hope of survival in this place. Nothing good or bad lasts forever. The Wheel of Fortune is always spinning.” Zelda explained.

“HaShem must be sad, greeting all the dead souls in Sheol. Papa said people have free will to hurt us or help us.” Talia stated.

“HaShem?” Zelda inquired.

“Oh, the Lord of Israel,” Talia explained.

“Ah, yes, God must be weeping, greeting his chosen people in Sheol and Heaven. Christians say God is everywhere. I will pray he takes his vengeance out on the Nazi monsters soon.” Zelda said before the lights were turned off.

“You are a Christian,” Talia noted.

“Yes, I am a Roman Catholic and a gypsy living in a caravan, traveling place to place. My parents were pickpockets and thieves, and I was caught in a street roundup in Cologne. This is the second camp I have been in. I have no idea what happened to my family.” explained Zelda.

The next morning, Talia stood for roll call. All the guards stood at attention as Commandant Rudolf Hoss walked by. He lived in a villa with his wife and five children just outside the camp. Morning drink was unsweetened coffee or tea. They walked to the clothing room where everybody’s clothes were placed for inspection. Guards had explained the clothing would be sent to Germans who lost their homes in bombing raids. Strange, Talia never noticed any clothing being distributed in Berlin by anyone. Going through a section later in the day, Talia found her brother’s clothes. She acted like she was searching through the clothing, checking if the guards were watching and tucking them up her dress into her underwear. At afternoon lunch, they received a potato or cabbage soup with a tiny taste of meat. Talia received relief in the latrines simply because the guards never entered them. For a few minutes, she was safe. On her way to the latrines, a female guard came up to her.

“I saw what you did; I will not tell.” she said, and then walked away.

She disappeared around the corner. The other ladies saw her and were curious what she saw Talia do. She was never punished for anything, so the guard actually kept quiet for a change. None of them had seen that particular guard before, and they never saw her again, wondering if she had transferred to another section of the camp. Usually, they saw the same guards every day. Some were ruthless like Gretel, who randomly shot people walking to and from the barracks for no reason, while others showed random acts of kindness. Usually, the random acts of kindness were not from German guards, but from Hungarians, Austrians, or Czechs. Finally, in the evening, they were given unsweetened coffee or tea, bread with margarine, marmalade, or sausage. The Gypsy/Romani Zelda thought the guard might have been an angel since she disappeared. Talia never confessed what she did to attract that guard’s attention. There were no clocks and no calendars to make all the days there blur together. The changing seasons were the only way to tell what year it was. Nearly every week a group of prisoners was hanged. Everyone in the camp was forced to watch, and prisoner men were ordered to remove their caps, then get back to work. Barracks all had a noose hanging from the ceiling to encourage suicides of the prisoners. For many, just living was an act of defiance. The guards celebrated Christmas and New Year 1943. Prisoners and the Auschwitz orchestra played music while the guards danced and got drunk. Every prisoner serving at the parties grabbed extra food to share in the barracks. For the prisoners, it was just another day in hell. Though on New Year’s Day, the guards were too hungover to do roll call, the prisoners ate their rations and rested in the barracks.

The German guard celebrations turned into news of defeat when, on January 31, 1943, newly promoted Field Marshal Friedrich Paulus of the 6th Army surrendered the trapped German forces outside Stalingrad. With the last of the German forces defeated to cease their offensive, the Soviet Army began liberating German-controlled Soviet territory as the Germans retreated. Germany’s ally Finland made peace with the Soviet Union and began expelling the Germans from Finland. In April and May 1943, the Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto received stories of mass murder in the concentration camps, leading to an uprising when the Nazis arrived to deport more Jews in the ghetto to the camps. The Nazis destroyed the ghetto, deporting every Jew they found to the death camps. About thirteen thousand Jews died in the Uprising. Sixteen Nazi soldiers died. To say the Jews were like sheep led to the slaughter was untrue. Once they learned of the death camps, which brings the question of who told them they existed, many did resist by joining their country’s resistance networks, hiding in any available place like the sewers or the Catholic Church, escaping camps, creating false documents, and uprisings did occur. But armed resistance was largely killed off in the violence, and the victors write the history books. In May 1943, Goebbels declared Berlin cleansed of Jews after deporting fifty thousand Jews, most of whom were murdered in concentration camps. Around eight thousand Jews in Berlin stayed hidden until the end of the war to rejoice in liberation.

One day in the summer of 1943, a new male guard ordered Talia to come with him. He had her clean the barracks bathroom, and she viewed their calendar hanging in their bunk room. She had been here over a year. The guard barracks resembled a country club with a tennis court and pool. The prisoners could hear the music and drunk parties going on at night. He seemed surprised that Talia spoke German. Most Jews here are from Poland or Hungary. The guard Gretel objected to Talia cleaning the bathroom floor, and the male guard “Fritz” offered the job to her and would send Talia back. She declined and walked off. He read a magazine while she worked. He had newspapers with news of the war. The Japanese bombed Australia. Hamburg was firebombed, and nearly forty-five thousand civilians were killed. That upset Gretel, who is from Hamburg, and she shot a bunch of prisoners in a fury.

In Italy, Il Duce, Benito Mussolini, was removed from office on July 25, 1943, by a vote of no confidence by the Fascist Grand Council, and King Victor Emmanuel III appointed a new prime minister. He was arrested, and the Italian population rejoiced, ripping down all fascist symbols and statues. Mussolini was held under house arrest until rescued by the Germans. In the Treblinka Concentration Camp, prisoners stole weapons and attacked the Nazi guards, set fire to buildings, and exploded a gas tank, while others climbed the fence. The attack lasted thirty minutes, leaving about one thousand and five hundred prisoners killed, and the guards had to call for reinforcements from the surrounding towns. Seventy escapees survived the war, while about a hundred escapees met death by machine gun. Guards in Auschwitz locked up the weapons and were careful about who they brought to the barracks to clean, do laundry, and cook in the kitchen. Talia clung to hope that the Soviet Army would liberate Poland and she could go home to start searching for her father and family in Switzerland. When she finished, Fritz took her back to the barracks. As autumn arrived and nights got colder, Fritz guided her to clean the barracks bathroom and then brought her to a supply closet and gave her a wool slip and underwear to keep her warm in the coming winter.

“You are a strange German. I asked a German friend from school for help, and she rejected me out of fear of the Gestapo.” Talia inquired.

“My family lives in the Sudetenland of Czechoslovakia. We are a mixture of Germans and Czechs. Most of us speak both languages. I was drafted into the army when the Nazis were given our country by the British, French, and Italian leaders. I have a brother in France and another brother fighting the Russians. My sister participates in the Czech resistance in Prague. So, it is either this place or going to war. Do not let anyone know about my kindness, or I could be shot. His Holiness says we should help each other in times of need. You shake in the cold, so you need wool clothes to keep warm these cold nights.” explained Fritz, and they returned to the bathroom.

“I will not tell,” replied Talia. “I am from Berlin.”

“You are from Berlin? What is it like?” inquired Fritz.

“We lived over my grandfather’s bakery. I took ballet classes and went to the public school. It has lots of museums, parks, palaces, and theaters. My uncle was an actor in the Yiddish Theater.

He took his family to Switzerland, getting false papers from a friend of his. The Berlin Olympics were fascinating. We got tickets to the opening ceremony and equestrian events where the Germans won all the medals. They had this new invention called television in rooms so the people in Berlin could watch all the events.” Talia explained as they walked up to the bathroom he wanted her to clean.

“What was Hitler like?” Fritz asked as they started brushing the floor, keeping the conversation going.

“Hitler seemed small, but he was standing far away from us. He looked up as if looking at the sky and not at the people. He postured like an amateur actor, very stiff and mechanical. People cheered, and he was stoic like a statue. Except in his speeches and when refusing to shake certain athletes’ hands when handing out medals, he never showed emotion. It was like looking at a statue of Julius Caesar in a Reich uniform.” Talia continued.

“Well, that is disappointing. In newsreels, he was always so full of rage and conviction.” Fritz reacted.

They finished cleaning the floor, reminiscing about their homes. Fritz was from a farm in the Sudetenland, raising sheep near the mountain forests. They grew wheat and rye, and his mama kept a vegetable garden. Along the river, they had pear trees. He attended the village Catholic school. He spoke Latin, Czech, and German. His brother in France was with the tank division in Normandy. His brother in the Soviet Union was a fighter pilot. His brother crash-landed his plane near Kiev and was captured. When the war ended, he wanted to go home to Czechoslovakia and open a furniture store in Prague. He liked making furniture. His father whittled wood. Once they were done with the floor, they went into his room, and he turned on the radio.

“Dance for me, Jewish ballerina from Berlin.” requested Fritz.

Talia took off her wooden clogs and socks, exposing her blisters. She improvised Swan Lake moves in her bare feet, and Fritz smiled. He offered a pair of thicker socks for her feet. He said to push down the socks to expose her heel and hide the socks inside the shoe. He offered a can of green beans from his rations in his locker for the dance, and she ate them with his mess kit fork. Fritz guarded Kanada to make sure they did not take anything, for all money went to the Reich. Guards often took things and hid them in their lockers. The commandant once taped up lockers and had them searched. The guards figured out how to remove the back of the locker and remove the stolen contraband before the commandant found it. Talia hid her brother Yussel’s clothes under the straw mattress. In Fritz’s newspapers, on September 8, 1943, Italy agreed to an armistice with the Allied Forces invading Sicily, Sardinia, and Palermo from Africa. Italy withdrew from Albania, so German forces occupied it. In October, facing the Germans, the Allied forces captured Naples. When Italy surrendered, the Germans rescued and installed Mussolini as a puppet leader of Northern Italy, but the Allies continued their advance, forcing the German troops out of Italy. Also in October, the Sobibor Concentration Camp had an uprising, and prisoners killed a dozen German guards and several Ukrainian guards. About three hundred prisoners attempted to escape out of the main gate, but many were killed by the surrounding minefields or recaptured. About seventy prisoners were successful in escaping until the end of the war. Winter came again, and she appreciated the wool slip and thick socks on her toes. Once a week the guards would have a girl from Kanada clean their bathroom in their barracks. Several times, it was his roommate Oskar from Austria who took a girl from Kanada to clean the bathroom. Oskar invited the female guard Gretel, the cruelest guard they met, into his room. Talia heard the moans with the door closed. One day, Talia came down with a cold. Fritz demanded she follow him to the barracks.

“Are you sick? Let me feel your forehead.” Fritz inquired, touching her head.

“I think I caught a cold. I can still work and recover in time. Please do not send me to the infirmary to be stabbed in the heart with poison or gassed. Everybody knows nobody gets better there and killed after two weeks. You want us all to die.” Talia begged.

“You are burning up. You might have the flu or typhoid. Here, take my handkerchief to blow your nose.” Fritz offered.

“Thank you. Adonai bless you.” replied Talia, and Fritz closed his door.

“Quick, put on this uniform. Get in my bed and cover your head with the blanket. I will grab some food and aspirin for you.” Fritz said.

He left to return with a can of tomato soup, antibiotic sulfa drugs, and aspirin. He closed his door and retrieved another girl to clean the bathroom while Talia ate the soup with his mess kit spoon after heating it on their heating stove. She took the aspirin and sulfa drugs in case she had an infection. He read a magazine, then a newsletter while Zelda cleaned the floor. Nazis were testing rockets and experimenting with a new form of weapon needing heavy water from Norway, using the 1938 discovery of uranium fission by German scientists. Unknown to the Germans, the Americans were using German Jewish scientists in their uranium experiments called the Manhattan Project, which invented the atomic bomb to be dropped over two Japanese cities after Germany surrendered. Fritz left again to take Zelda back to Kanada. He returned with an orange, bread, and some chicken stew. At night, Fritz had her stuffed in his locker. He gave her tea with honey for her cough. The guards rotated shifts, and nobody noticed she wasn’t a sleeping guard. The three other soldiers in his room figured out she was in his locker, but said nothing. Talia noticed the Nazis were very corrupt: I will not tell on you if you do not tell on me. He defended that a German-speaking ballerina who played the piano was valuable enough to be worth keeping alive. One of his roommates got food for her without being asked. His name was Matteo, and he was Hungarian with a brother fighting in the Soviet Union. During roll call in the morning, Fritz stated his section was all counted for. After a couple of days of rest and her fever broke, Fritz returned Talia to Kanada to be marched back to the barracks afterwards.

Zelda was shocked that Fritz and his roommates hid her, gave her medicine to break her fever, and additional food. If a prisoner looks up at a guard, they shoot them. Talia possessed stories of Berlin, and of Hitler, so he was in no hurry to kill her. She danced for him once, and he enjoyed her playing the piano too. This autumn brought hope for Talia when Fritz’s newspaper from the Polish village said the Russians were forcing the Germans to retreat back to Poland. They liberated the Ukrainian cities of Kharkov and Kiev. Next, Russians took back Smolensk, Russia. Then, after Italy surrendered, the Germans were moving up to northern Italy to rescue Mussolini from house arrest. Hitler made Mussolini the puppet leader of Northern Italy. Fritz thought that would not last long, given the way the Allies were moving north up the Italian Peninsula. Later, as Talia was walking to the latrines, she noticed a man on his knees with a Nazi guard pointing a gun at his head, but the gun clicked. She thought she glimpsed a spirit with a hand on the gun stock, with their other hand’s finger in the barrel as if they were stopping it from firing. In anger, the guard hit the man in the head, and he fell, holding his head. The guard next to him had the wind knock his hat off to the ground. Talia thought she saw the spirit wave its hand by his head to knock off the hat. The man on the ground recovered and was walked back to the factory the men worked in. Talia got scared she was about to die for viewing angelic spirits with feathered wings that glowed with light. She noted that nobody else viewed the angelic spirit. She thought a visit from her guardian angel would be nice, but most people die shortly after seeing them. As she walked back to the clothing room, she prayed to Adonai:

“My family gone for eternity

What will become of me

Who will hold my hand

When I can no longer stand

Where is my angel to hold me tight

How will I get through each night

My cries, no one hears

And nobody sees my tears

Where is my angel Mama promised me

I need one now, can you not see

Where is my angel for bad and for worse

I am a shaky boat on an unknown course

Where is my angel before it is too late

How much longer must I wait

A glance goodbye was not enough

Moving on is very tough

Where is my angel to wipe away every tear

My angel is far from here”

That evening, the girls in the barracks viewed Talia, awestruck and frozen still while gazing towards the ceiling.

“It was you,” she whispered.

Nobody could wake up Talia from the trance she was held in.

“Yes, I saw you take your brother’s clothes. Yussel thanks you. I told you I would not tell. Do not worry; your family is with Father now. Talia, you will get through this. Trust in Father hearing your prayers. It makes Father weep to see all this suffering, welcoming the dead souls into his arms, and hearing everybody’s prayers. All he can do with humans having free will to do good or evil is to give humans hope and send his angels to watch over you all. This war will end someday, Father will have his vengeance when he wills it. Glory to El in the highest, and you will go home to search for your family. I promise. Just hang on for a while longer.” said the angel.

“Why did you let my family die? They did not deserve it.” begged Talia.

“It was their time to go. But it is not your time yet.” explained the angel.

“Why must I stay here in hell?” Talia asked.

“Who wrote the ancient scriptures on scrolls, the living or the dead?” questioned the angel.

“The living,” Talia answered. “Precisely, you need to write the story of your family, your friends, and the guards, so the humans not born yet will know what happened here. Just as scribes wrote down the holy book. You must fulfill your purpose.” finished the angel and disappeared.

Talia, released from her trance, looked around at people staring at her.

“My guardian angel came to me. She told me not to give up hope and hang on. She said I will go home after the war and write the story of my family, friends, and guards.” Talia explained.

“I think we all must write the story of our families now,” Zelda replied.

The guards decorated their barracks and recreation hall for Christmas and were ready to celebrate New Year 1944. Overnight January 3-4, 1944, the Soviet Army crossed the border into Poland.