Bulletin No. 87
Friends, we are subject to a Sperre, an abbreviation of German for curfew, Gehsperre. We are forbidden to leave our homes until further notice. We sit and we wait for the round-up to begin. Will this be my last documentation for Libertatem per Lectio? Pray for me, friends.
Dorotha
Three days after the chairman demanded the ghetto sacrifice its children, the Nazis came, pouring into the courtyard in covered trucks. The sky out of the cracked window pane was streaked a mustard yellow and the air smelt of burning.
Dorotha, her parents, Ruth and her mother hadn’t been able to leave their room since the chairman’s speech, not even to go to work. All factories were closed. Notices had been posted on doors everywhere, warning the ghetto that no one must leave their home from five p.m. on Saturday 5 September until further notice, unless they had a pass from the police. Even the records office was sealed so parents could not change their children’s birth dates.
The amplified German voice echoed up and down the street. ‘Everyone,raus, outside and line up in the courtyard.’
All at once, the air inside the tiny room was charged with electricity. Mrs Mordkowicz was shaking as she tried to button up her cardigan.
‘Let me, Mama,’ said Ruth. Then, when she had managed that, to their horror, they realised she had lost so much weight that her skirt was slipping down.
‘Mama’s skirt!’ Ruth gasped. If the Germans saw that she was nothing but skin and bone, she would be the first into the trucks.
Thinking quickly, Rachel tore a strip from the bottom of her skirt and wound it around Mrs Mordkowicz’s waistband before returning to stare out the window. ‘There, that should hold for now.’
Her father, for some unknown reason, had decided to tidy the room.
‘Come,’ said Mrs Mordkowicz, holding out her hand to him. ‘We can tidy it when we get home.’
He held her hand for support and allowed himself to be led from the room like a child, leaving just Dorotha and her mother alone.
Rachel was a study in calm, staring out the window.
‘Mama,’ Dorotha said, touching her lightly on the back. She inhaled. The blades of her mother’s shoulder bones protruded like tiny wings. Her mother turned, her eyes dark pools in the white milk of her cheeks.
Dorotha reached out and rubbed her mother’s cheeks, hoping to spread a flush of pink into them.
‘Alle Juden raus! SCHNELLER!’
The door seemed to explode, rattling the old, peeling window frames, and her mother flinched. ‘Let’s go,’ she said, raising her daughter’s palm to her lips and kissing it softly.
They got to the door, and her mother paused. ‘When this is over, you must find Adela,’ she ordered, love and desperation folded in her words.
‘We can find her together, Mama, and—’
‘Promise me,’ she interrupted fiercely, and Dorotha nodded.
Outside, the September sun was warm, but in the narrow courtyard, surrounded on all sides by tall, concrete buildings, a chill rose up from the cobbles. They lined up in fives.
Dorotha felt herself being scrutinised by an SS man. He looked so incongruous in the murk of this squalid courtyard, with its green moss and damp creeping up the walls. Everything about him shone, from his hair to his black boots, to the silver skulls on his collar. He walked up and down, inspecting the lines of terrified residents from the block, and Dorotha wondered,Did he have a wife and children? Did he like culture? What was his preferred way to relax and unwind, music or books? Was it possible to be so filled with hate but enjoy beautiful things?
Dorotha stared at the floor, her heart pounding wildly in her chest. There was no sound but his footsteps and the panting of the dogs. She started to count down from one hundred, a trick Joyce had taught her once to alleviate tension. Anything to stop the hot, spiky panic from bursting out of her in a scream.
The SS man began to hum, and Dorotha recognised the music. Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5. Music then. Revulsion crawled over her as she realised his game. The music was an accompaniment to his selection. The riding whip clutched in his elegant black glove flicked left then right, like a conductor’s baton, falling on hapless souls.
It all happened so fast. One minute, she was standing beside her parents. The next, she was on the other side of the courtyard with Ruth and Mrs Mordkowicz. She raised her gaze. Her eyes met her mother’s, now standing opposite her. Beside her stood her father, swaying, on the brink of collapse. Her family were on theschlechte Seite. The wrong side. Everything inside her turned to stone.
‘Mama!’ she cried, but nothing came out of her mouth. ‘Mama, Papa...’ she tried again as her mother and father were led away.
No. No. No.Her whole life was slipping away, and then it came. The fear burst out of her, clawing at her neck, and she was running across the courtyard towards her mother.
‘Mama, Papa, wait!’ she shouted, her voice wild and unhinged.
Her mother turned and placed a palm on her cheek. ‘Mayn kind,’ she said, her voice resigned, ‘you must do everything in your power to survive. Survive and tell our story.’
