A Wartime Friend Read online

  What if other people smell like my father and another woman has a fur coat? It wouldn’t hurt to check. Reaching up with both hands, she felt her mother’s face, the little piece of net hanging from her hat over her wet eyes. She felt her father’s closed eyes and with her fingers followed the line of sweat down his face into his pointed beard.

  Fumes from the truck’s engine blew in beneath the canvas surround as it burst into life and surged forward, its wheels bumping over the cobbled street. People coughed and spluttered as they jolted into each other. Others prayed. Some froze as though they were already dead. Others tried to lend some logic to their situation.

  ‘Where are they taking us?’

  ‘They’re taking us to the railway station,’ someone said. ‘We’re being shipped east. That’s what I heard.’

  There were mutterings of disbelief.

  Leah felt her father’s body stiffen against hers and heard a barely suppressed wail from her mother. Her fingers followed the movement of her mother’s head as she hid her face in her husband’s shoulder. ‘They’re going to kill us,’ said her mother, her alarm muffled.

  Rudy Westerman tried to sound brave. ‘Shush, Rachel. Don’t be so foolish. You’re frightening the child,’ he whispered. ‘We’re just going to be resettled to do war work in factories in the east. Normandy will be a battleground if an attack comes from England. They will move everyone they can.’

  He’d picked up on hearsay, rumours and reassurances from the small Jewish community that had congregated in the town; some were of French descent and many had fled west from the devilish hound that was the Third Reich. Everyone believed what they had been told: they were being taken to labour camps in Eastern Europe. But being a logical man, there was no disguising the disbelief in his voice, a result of the leaden sickness he felt inside. Why had nobody come back from these labour camps? Why no letters, no postcards, nothing?

  The answer chilled him, though for now at least he would keep it to himself. His voice failed to boom with the familiar confidence of a man used to lecturing and throwing his voice to the back of a room. He only hoped his simple words were enough to calm his wife and daughter. It was all he had to give them.

  CHAPTER TWO

  The smell of coal dust and the sound of escaping steam heralded their arrival at yet another railway station. The tarpaulin that shielded their existence from the sleeping world they’d passed through was pulled aside. There was little light except for the cold white globes above the signs revealing that this was Rennes. Somebody remarked at the lights being on.

  ‘As though they’ve nothing to fear from British bombers,’ someone else added.

  ‘They will. In time.’

  Every statement was murmured in hushed tones. The yell of rougher men barked out into the night.

  ‘Schnell! Schnell!’

  More shouts, more wielding of rifle butts.

  Rudy Westerman cupped his hand around his daughter’s eyes so she wouldn’t see the blood spurting from the head of a man close by. She saw it all the same, her footsteps faltering as she took in the sight of blood running down his face and dripping from his chin.

  This time they were dragged rather than pushed.

  The sloping roofs of railway goods warehouses pitched a black visage directly in front of them. Tumbling like dead flies from the back of the truck, they were hustled to a waiting area where their belongings were searched for ‘contraband’. Only a few people cried. Even the children were silent, eyes big and round, wondering at this horror world they had entered.

  ‘What do they mean by contraband?’ whispered Leah’s mother.

  Her husband answered, ‘They mean anything of value.’

  Everything of value was taken, the soldiers ripping at outer clothes, snapping open suitcases, bundles and valises. Only the small things people had slid into clothes about their person escaped the search. Leah retained her coat and the pink scarf that had belonged to her mother.

  Her father attempted to inject some humour into the sombre scene, though purposely kept his voice low. ‘Rachel, I am really glad you never mended that hole in my pocket.’

  ‘I forgot,’ she replied, totally oblivious to his attempt to lighten their circumstances. ‘Oh dear. Oh dear, I am so sorry …’ Her sobbing returned anew.

  ‘Never mind. A few coins and your favourite silver earrings have fallen all the way down into the lining of my coat,’ he whispered back, more concerned that the guards had taken the small suitcase containing their food. ‘Now isn’t that lucky!’

  ‘And I have money,’ whispered Leah, referring to the small sum sewn into the hem of her dress.

  All day they waited, sitting on their luggage, now emptied of their food and valuables. It was cold. Soon there would be frost. The sky was overcast, the clouds as grey as their moods.

  A few enterprising souls smelling of sweat and fear wove among the forlorn crowd trying to sell what remained of their pathetic belongings. Not many people were interested. What was the use of a handsome ring or tiepin when you’d eaten nothing since the day before and were unsure of when you would eat again? Only those who had had time to grab and hide a little food had any success, though unsure of when they might eat again, people clung on to what they had.

  Leah’s mother protested when her husband handed over a gold watch filched up from the lining of his coat in exchange for half a loaf of bread. His response was blunt: ‘Our suitcase is gone. You can’t eat a gold watch.’

  Rumours continued to be rife. Leah overheard somebody ask her father whether he believed they were really going east to work. Her father was non-committal. ‘I am not privy to Nazi war plans,’ he replied.

  ‘I heard that nobody comes back. Those that go are never heard from again. It’s not a work camp. It’s a death camp. They’re going to kill us all.’

  This last comment resulted in her father springing to his feet, grabbing the man by his collar and threatening him with a beating if he didn’t keep his filthy comments to himself.

  It was six o’clock in the evening when they were finally herded towards a goods train. Leah was tired and it had been some time since she’d eaten the bread her father had given her. The station was a bare, dismal-looking place smelling of manure and urine, as though animals were usually boarded there.

  Leah’s mother remarked that she could see no carriages, only cattle wagons. ‘Surely they don’t expect us to travel in those? Especially if we are going on a very long journey – I think we should protest.’

  Her hurrying footsteps came to an abrupt standstill.

  ‘You must move,’ urged her husband.

  ‘No!’

  The crowd, herded onwards by the bellowing guards, parted to either side of her. Frightened by her behaviour, Leah grabbed her mother’s arm, tugging at it, pleading with her to move.

  Her father hissed a warning. ‘Rachel. You must move forward. If you don’t, they will punish you.’

  Guards with fierce dogs on chain leashes shouted and pushed those who dared loiter, beating them with staves if they didn’t move forward fast enough. The sharp teeth of the snarling guard dogs bit a few unfortunate men, women and children.

  So many people were being loaded into each cattle wagon, though not fast enough for those driving them forward. The wagons were quite high and not easy to climb into, especially for the old and those with children. When a bottleneck occurred, Leah found herself pushed to the edge of those waiting to board.

  With the queue at a standstill, the guards seemed to relish the opportunity to beat anew, the dog handlers goading their overexcited dogs to leap forward and take a chunk out of those at the edge of the crowd. In the ensuing panic, Leah’s parents got sucked into the centre of the throng, leaving Leah isolated from them on the edge. Her father tried to pull her back but the crush of people severed their contact. The touch of his fingertips melted away.

  ‘Leah. Come here! Come here!’

  People surged into the gap between her and her fathe
r.

  ‘Schnell! Schnell!’

  Always that word. Always the flailing arms, the snarling dogs.

  The wooden staves beat down all around her, hitting shoulders, arms and backs, cracking heads. A guard with a dog saw her wavering on the edge of the crowd. ‘Get going. Now! Now!’

  The dog he held wasn’t crazed like the others, barking and snarling, but was wagging its tail, looking up at the guard before eyeing the little girl within its reach. Instead of biting her, it looked at Leah as though she were a friend. There was no malice in its eyes, no snarling or bared fangs threatening to rip her flesh from her bones.

  The guard’s face was electric with blood lust, urging the dog to attack. ‘Go on! Go on! Attack! Take your first taste of a Jew!’

  The dog did nothing. Its gaze fixed on Leah, its tail wagging in greeting; it was almost as though it recognised her, welcoming her as a long-lost friend.

  The guard swore at the dog, wrenching the chain leash cruelly so that it tightened like a noose around the animal’s neck.

  ‘Damned hound!’

  The dog yelped. The guard, deciding that if this child were going to be injured he’d have to do it himself, raised his stave. It was only inches away when her father’s arm clapped on to her shoulder, dragging her back into the centre of the crowd. The last she saw was the guard kicking the dog and shouting that he would shoot it at their next stop if its attitude didn’t improve.

  ‘It should be acting like a wolf, not a mouse!’

  In the meantime, it was due a good beating. The other dog handlers laughed at him.

  ‘You got the one that’s soft as boiled cabbage,’ shouted one of them. More laughter, raucous comments and jibes.

  The crowd closed around Leah, too dense for her to see any more.

  They were packed even more tightly together than they’d been in the truck, everyone standing up, fear simmering like a warm stew in the bitter cold, her face muffled in the thick fur of her mother’s coat. Some people prayed in French, some in German and many in Hebrew.

  The Old Testament mantra of the chosen peoples’ exile into slavery in Egypt was an apt comparison. ‘By the Rivers of Babylon … let the words of our mouths and the meditation of our hearts …’ It was happening again, though this time they feared never returning to the Promised Land. Many Jews had fled Germany for safety in France. Many other tongues would be spoken before the horror finally came to an end.

  There was no light inside the cattle wagon. Only by feeling and information passed mouth to mouth did they learn that the only facilities was a bucket in one corner for women, and one in another for men. Leah told her mother that she’d wet her knickers, but her mother didn’t appear to hear, or perhaps she didn’t want to because she could not supply her daughter with clean underwear.

  ‘Tonight will be cold,’ somebody said. Everyone knew what this person meant: at night they would be spared the stench of the buckets, but by day they would soon stink.

  As was her disposition, Leah’s mother did her best to keep apart from those she considered inferior to herself: a professor’s wife and daughter of a rich mill owner. ‘Herded like sheep,’ she grumbled.

  Leah bit her bottom lip and squeezed her eyes shut. Perhaps it was all just a dream; no, not a dream – a terrible nightmare. If she opened her eyes she would see that, but when she did nothing had changed.

  Her mother had always been of a whiny disposition, something Leah and her father had often shared looks over. But it was too dark to exchange those familiar and predominantly humorous looks. Fear permeated each of them, seeping through their soiled clothes; a cloying sweat enveloping all, sticking them one to the other as fast as glue.

  The shriek of a whistle announced their departure. Miles and miles they travelled, through the night and all the next day, though daylight was barely discernible in their cramped quarters. There might have been gaps in the sides of the wagons, but the sheer number of bodies blocked out most of the daylight. On and on they went like this. Nights should have been colder but they were so squashed together, a series of bodies staying warm, that it provided the only comfort on a journey of pitiful souls.

  Not all the bodies remained warm. Blessed with the release that only death can bring, the dead remained upright, wedged in among the living. Already starving, already weary from travelling in trucks to meet the train, the elderly and the very young were the first to weaken. They were given no food and only one cup of water a day. Small children, smothered by the close proximity of adults, suffocated. Old people gave themselves up to the inevitable, closing their eyes and falling asleep, never to wake again.

  Leah rested her head against her father, his arm wrapped around her to hold her upright. Her legs were aching. She dreamed of her bed, even the narrow one in France. The pretty violet and white one back in Austria was only a fantasy; something from what seemed a very long time ago.

  The train rattled slowly onwards, stopping for a few hours overnight at small towns. At one there was a lot of shouting. Her father managed to look out and saw people with baskets of bread trying to get close to the train. The guards were holding them back, shouting at them that approach was verboten. Forbidden. When they didn’t immediately retreat, they were pushed back with rifle butts, their fallen loaves picked up by the soldiers, their empty baskets kicked after them.

  After a few days six in their wagon were dead. Multiply that by twenty, thought Leah’s father, taking a guess as to how many wagonloads of people the train was towing, that makes 120 people in total. His analysis was sickening and he didn’t want to believe it. Sadly, he knew that although it was only a guess, even three in each truck would bring the total to sixty. Sixty people dead. How many more would die before they reached their destination?

  The dead continued to remain where they had died, some still upright. Leah’s father suggested they lay them on the floor in layers, two on top of two. Those closest did just that. The dead were piled up. There was a little more room, though still not enough to enable sitting down. Heads rested on the shoulders of neighbours.

  A woman next to her mother began to scream. ‘My baby is being born! Please! Please help me!’

  Leah’s mother panicked. ‘There’s no room for her to lie down! She should be lying down!’

  Rudy exchanged looks with other men. There was only one place where the woman could lie down.

  ‘On top of the dead?’

  ‘Where else?’

  In normal times they would never have committed such sacrilege, but these were not normal times. They were the most abnormal times they’d ever known.

  Room was made for her on top of the piled bodies. A midwife pushed her way forward.

  ‘I will do what I can. You men should not be here. This is a woman’s time. Give her privacy.’

  A circle of women formed around her.

  Not wishing her daughter to witness what was about to happen, Rachel Westerman held her daughter’s head tightly against her, but Leah struggled and, as the train lurched, her head became dislodged from her mother’s grip. The acrid smell of unwashed bodies mixed with one she did not recognise, except that it was female and somehow feline.

  Her heart thudding, she watched as the woman’s clothes were hitched up above her thighs, her underwear removed. The woman gave no sign that her dignity was being invaded, her private parts on view to the world. The old woman who had professed to be a midwife commented on every little thing she was doing, as though somehow her skill and knowledge might keep their minds off where they were and what the future held.

  There was blood, a bulging of something between the woman’s legs. The feline, raw, blood smell intensified.

  ‘Now I will turn the head so the shoulders come out sideways. How far gone are you, my dear?’

  The woman whimpered but did not reply. From somewhere among the banished men her husband answered for her. ‘Seven months.’

  The midwife pulled the baby from the woman’s body. ‘I need to cut the cord, but
I can’t see … It’s too dark …’

  Meagre as it was, a cigarette lighter was passed from hand to hand, throwing some light for the old woman to see by. Silence hung in the air, the only sound the rattling of the cattle wagon and the squealing of iron wheels against iron rails.

  Somebody passed her a sack. The old woman sighed. ‘There’s nothing I can do. Open it please.’

  The sack was opened, the baby slid inside, and the neck of the sack was folded over.

  ‘Lydia? Lydia?’

  The father of the child shook his wife’s shoulders. Finally convinced there was nothing he could do, her clothes were put in order, one more body added to the pile. The sack containing her dead baby was placed beside her. There was no ceremony. No prayers. Only blank acceptance that she was gone where others would doubtless follow.

  A man, unknown to Leah and her family, suggested they should inform the guards about the dead the very next time they stopped for food and water. ‘It is not healthy to leave the dead with the living. If they do that there will be no workers arriving at the end of this journey. What good will that do?’

  Up until that moment Leah’s father had not engaged with any of his fellow passengers. As if their cramped closeness was not enough, he’d travelled with one arm around his wife, one around his daughter. Tired and suffering from the blow dealt him at the beginning of their journey, Leah realised from the sounds he was making that her father was in pain. When she felt his face she found that his mouth was firmly clenched. Sometimes he wheezed, his breath seeming to whistle down his nose and from his throat. When that happened, blood trickled from the corner of his mouth and she felt it sticky on her fingers.

  ‘I think that is a very good idea,’ he voiced somewhat thoughtfully in reply. ‘It will give us more room.’

  A few other voices rose in support.

  Rudy Westerman had made his mind up. He didn’t really believe they were to be used as labour in the east. He’d heard those dreadful rumours that had turned his stomach. War made monsters of men. If he died then so be it, but Leah? She was only ten years old. She deserved to live. His brain worked feverishly. He had to save her. He must save her.