I would have much preferred to stay in the kitchen, rather than wearing someone else’s clothing and doing a job that I had never done before. What would the Commandant’s wife do if I made a mistake? But then again, the party might be a good opportunity for me to learn something that could help us stay alive. I’d have to be brave.
I slipped out of my own clothing and put on the black skirt and blouse, then tied the white apron over top, but when I slipped my foot into the first shoe, I realized they were too small. I curled in my toes and tied the laces loosely, but with each step they pinched.
When I found Helga, she redid my hair and adjusted the apron. “You’ll have to do,” she said, frowning. “I wouldn’t trust you with the drinks tray, but perhaps you’ll be steady enough to pass around this one.”
She handed me a silver platter laden with small open-faced sandwiches. They all looked delicious. Each small sandwich contained more food than I had eaten all day.
I balanced the heavy tray in front of me and watched as the guests shoved the tidbits into their mouths as they kept talking and laughing. I was certain that none of the guests saw me as anything more than a walking tray, and that was fine with me.
The snippets of conversation were mostly about the weather or life back home. There were a couple of conversations about Leningrad, and also something called “the Hunger Plan.” But the phrase that surfaced more frequently was “the Jewish Question.”
What did that mean? The way these Nazis talked, it was a problem for them, not a question.
By the time the party was over, my shoulders ached from holding the tray, and when I took off the shoes, my socks were stained with blood. I put my own clothing back on and went to the kitchen to help Mama finish up with the cleaning.
There was a mound of half-eaten sandwiches left over. “We’re not supposed to take any of this,” said Mama, but she and the rest of us filled our pockets. “What the Commandant doesn’t know won’t hurt him.”
That night, as I soaked my bloodied feet in a basin of cool water, Mama, Maria, Auntie Iryna and I feasted on the leftovers. I had a stomach ache all night but I didn’t care.
Chapter Twelve
The Jewish Question
It was a hot day in August when Auntie Iryna and her chickens disappeared. At first I was frantic, thinking she had been taken or killed, but then I remembered that Borys had wanted her to go to the forest with him. I asked Mama, and she said, “Yes, that’s where Iryna is.”
I tried to picture her living in the forest, sleeping on a mattress of fir boughs with her chickens by her side, but I couldn’t see it.
“Iryna’s stronger than you think,” said Mama, almost as if she guessed my thoughts.
I had apparently done a good enough job at the party that Frau Hermann trusted me to act as a maid whenever Wilma was busy. To save my toes and the socks, I’d wrap my feet tightly with thin cotton strips before pulling on the socks.
It turned out that Frau Hermann and her friends were hardly worth eavesdropping on. They talked about silly things like dresses and cake recipes. Didn’t they know that we were in the middle of a war? What I really wanted to hear about was the Jewish Question. Dolik and Leon and Doctor Mina would want to know, so they could prepare. So would Nathan and his parents.
Most evenings, Mama, Maria and I would talk about the things we’d overheard, and try to put it all together. It was obvious that all the people considered “subhuman” by the Nazis were treated poorly, but the Commandant didn’t talk about the Subhuman Question, only the Jewish Question. What was the question?
At the end of August, we got an inkling.
Flyers were posted throughout Viteretz demanding that Jews wear distinctive arm bands — a blue Star of David painted on a white piece of cloth. As I walked through town seeing all the people forced to wear them, it chilled me knowing that everyone who was a part of the Commandant’s Jewish Question was now clearly identified.
At first Dolik refused to wear his. “It would make me feel like a prisoner,” he said.
But then a Polish man whose father had been Jewish was caught by the police and shot dead in the street for not wearing one.
“He wasn’t even Jewish,” said Dolik. “Didn’t he go to St. Joseph’s?”
“But his papers identified him as Jewish,” I said. “Just like yours do. The Nazis are stopping people on the street, demanding to see our papers. You have to wear the arm band or you’ll be shot.”
As a warning to all, the man’s body was left in the middle of the road to rot in the heat. A full week went by before the new Volksdeutche dogcatcher loaded the bloated body into the back of his wagon and took it away.
After that, even people who had just one Jewish grandparent began wearing the arm band so they wouldn’t be shot. But while Jews not wearing them could be shot, Jews wearing the arm bands were forced into labour. The official order was that any Jew between the age of fourteen and sixty had to perform labour, but Leon and Dolik were both younger than fourteen. Still, they often joined the work crews. “We decided it was safer to be considered useful to the Nazis,” Dolik explained to me.
It seemed that nearly every day, a different group of Jews would be summoned at a moment’s notice. Sometimes they were made to do manual labour like renovating our school for its new German students or rebuilding bombed houses. At other times, a few would be selected to perform pointless and humiliating tasks. Once, the Segal family was made to collect up the horse dung from the streets with their bare hands and dispose of it in the Jewish cemetery. It was a blasphemous and horrible job, and it was especially hard on Mrs. Segal, whose weak leg left her exhausted at the best of times.
Leon, Dolik and other young Jews were given wheelbarrows, pickaxes and shovels and marched out to widen the dirt road beyond town. Day after day, the same group was called, and each day they had to travel farther to complete their task. They wouldn’t get back until dark.
One evening I sat with Dolik on our front step after he got back from a gruelling day of road widening. His hands were a blistered mess and his face was still covered in dirty sweat. “I’ve never done this kind of labour before,” he said. “I’m not very good at it.”
“At this rate, you’re going to collapse from exhaustion,” I said.
“But if I’m useful, I’m safer,” said Dolik.
A few days after this conversation, things did improve slightly. I noticed that Dolik and his brother weren’t being sent out every single day to work on the roads. Sometimes they were given less arduous jobs around town, like picking up trash or sweeping the sidewalks.
“Maybe the Nazis are realizing the work will be of better quality if they treat their workers more humanely,” I said to Dolik as we sat side by side on his front step.
“That’s not it,” he said. “Some of the leaders in our community offered to take over the management of the work groups. They’ve formed what the Commandant calls a Judenrat. There’s still the same amount of work, but the Judenrat is able to assign it more fairly than the Nazis.”
It was a small improvement, but a welcome one.
Chapter Thirteen
Root Cellar
As summer turned to fall, we had one piece of excellent news: Krasa was pregnant and her calf would be born in mid-April. Her milk would start to dry up around January and she’d likely be completely dry for February and March, but once her calf was born, we’d have plenty of milk again, plus we’d have a calf to sell.