Beyond the Shadow of Night(50)

A few minutes later, someone else entered—a uniformed guard—and told Mykhail to follow him. He spoke Ukrainian too. He didn’t utter another word until they reached a narrow path, camouflaged on both sides. He told Mykhail it was referred to as the Himmelstrasse. Mykhail clumsily repeated the word, and then the guard told him in Ukrainian what it meant: “Road to Heaven.” A polite smile played on Mykhail’s lips. Was this man joking? It sounded a strange name for a path.

That was when Mykhail heard the noise—a distant throbbing—which got louder as they walked on. At the end of the Himmelstrasse they came to another section of the camp, hidden from the rest, and Mykhail was led to a large brick building. At the nearest door—which was shut—a few people rested outside. Two were German guards, the rest appeared to be civilians.

The civilians were naked. Mykhail could feel his body starting to tremble as his imagination ran wild.

The throbbing noise was coming from inside this building. Now Mykhail recognized the noise: it was a big engine, whether diesel or gasoline he was too numb to consider. He was taken to the far end of the building, where the guard opened a door and told Mykhail to go in.

It was some sort of pump room, quite warm and dark, with an oily smell. But the room was dominated by the sound and sight of something Mykhail knew well—an engine from one of the tanks he was used to working on.

“You’re the mechanic,” the guard said. “Your job is to keep the engine running.”

“All day?” Mykhail asked.

“Most of the day, most of the night, every day, every week. You stop the engine when you are told to, you start the engine when you are told to. It must not break down under any circumstances. Your life depends upon it.”

Mykhail glanced at two medium-bore pipes, which he determined from the orientation of the engine to be the intake and the exhaust. They both went through the wall into another room of the same building.

“What is it for?” he said.

“If fuel gets low you have to tell me or another guard. If you need to stop it for maintenance you must tell me or another guard. If there are exhaust leaks you must stop them and tell me or another guard. You must keep the level of carbon monoxide produced as high as you can. Do you understand all of that?”

Many questions were rattling around in Mykhail’s mind. But he didn’t want to know the answers. He nodded, and the guard left.

It wasn’t long before Mykhail found out why he was there.

At first he didn’t know the full details, but he heard the screams and shouts coming from the other side of the wall, and wished the engine was even louder so it would drown out those sounds of a place worse than hell. Even deafen him, perhaps.

And then, worse, there was a blur of the darkest emotions when he did find out, a sense that he wanted to be elsewhere, that this couldn’t be happening. There was a commotion, rifles being used. Mykhail was called outside. He was told that others were supposed to carry out the task, but they had refused and been shot. So Mykhail had to step in, removing the still-warm bodies from the chamber, dragging them away and dropping them into nearby pits dug deep in the earth.

In the POW camp there had been constant physical suffering.

Mykhail wondered whether this was any better.





Chapter 17

Warsaw, Poland, 1943

Nobody spoke again of the food Rina was bringing into the Kogan household. It appeared in the kitchen, Mama cooked it, and they all ate it. It was mainly due to that food that the Kogans and the Slominskis survived into early 1943 in reasonable health. Papa often forced the idea home, saying this food was reasonable or the room was reasonably warm. It was only during the increasingly frequent arguments that Papa’s veil of optimism slipped, when he said in anger that even being alive wasn’t reasonable under the circumstances. Words were only words, but Asher knew Papa’s health was not good, the cough having now taken up permanent residence in his chest.

One day, during a silent breakfast, there was another knock at the door. Everyone looked to Mama, who turned to Papa. He didn’t move for a few seconds. It was as though they all had now come to recognize an “official knock.” Mama offered to answer it, but Papa said no, and slowly got to his feet and ambled over.

He opened the door. There was a man. There were also soldiers. A few words were exchanged, then Papa turned back and called for Oskar to join him, closing the door behind them. The others waited, not speaking.

When they returned inside, Papa did no more than bow his head, as if to hide his expression, while Oskar stared at the faces of the others, their mouths agape.

“What’s happened?” Mama said. “What is it?”

“We have to leave,” Oskar said. “They say it’s our turn.”

Mama gave her husband a look of horror. “Is this true, Hirsch?”

He nodded solemnly. “It . . . could be a good thing.”

“What do you mean?” Rina said. “Where do you think they want to take us?”

“Somewhere better than this,” he said flatly.

“I agree,” Mama said. “Let’s try to hope. You never know, it could be a place with more room, perhaps space to grow our own vegetables again and even keep a few chickens.”

“What are you talking about?” Rina said. “Haven’t you heard—”