Undying Love - Brian Hesse (best non fiction books of all time txt) 📗

were forced to wear a yellow star on their clothing. It was clear to many Poles and Jews alike, that this separation of people signaled something much darker, and sinister to come, like storm clouds still just barely visible on the horizon.

   Anastazja huddled close to her only friend, Sara Abrams, originally from Lodz. Anastazja felt a maternal responsibility for the young and frail Sara from the moment they met in the ghetto. Sara, at sixteen, is twenty years Anastazja’s junior and, as observed by Anastazja, is not very mature for her age.  Anastazja thought that Sara was characteristic of the many young girls she taught at the University before the Nazis brought death to her Nation. She placed her arm around Sara and thought about the girls she taught, what seemed like, another lifetime ago. Many were intelligent and eager to learn but came from very sheltered families. Even at sixteen, she thought, girls should have some sense of how dark and cold the world can turn. If they learned this early, she considered, events like this would still be horrible, but a bit more tolerable. Sarah was a prime example. She lost her parents during the roundup of the Lodz Jews. Her nightmare began when a man in a long leather jacket with bright blue eyes and dark slicked back hair knocked quietly at her door. The bombing had ended and many families returned to their homes if still left standing after the initial attack. Anastazja shook her head in silence as she thought how humans always seek out the familiar in vain attempts at comfort, even as the sky around them is falling on their heads. That soft knock on the door would quickly turn to horror as the Gestapo agent with the slicked hair accused her Mother and Father of Communist activities. Sara, her Mother, and Father were shoved down the three flights of stairs to the courtyard below. A truck was waiting and Sara was thrown into the back already overcrowded with others. She looked back just in time as the man in the leather coat pointed his pistol at the head of her Father and pulled the trigger. She watched as a fine red mist of what was once her Father’s brains scattered throughout the cold morning mist. The truck mercifully rounded the corner before her Mother undoubtedly met the same fate.

     “Anastazja,” came a muffled whimper from her tear soaked breast.

       “Yes, my dear,” replied Anastazja, stroking Sara’s long brown hair, matted with the filth and grime of the ghetto.

        “Is there any chance that my Mother may have survived?” she asked, through intermittent pauses in her sobs.

       Anastazja did not immediately answer the question. She fought back her own tears knowing the answer to the naïve question. She knew that the SS, Gestapo, and local German police, were not here to incorporate Poland into their empire of hatred. The Germans were here to enslave the uneducated and eliminate the threats. She herself was part of the intelligentsia of Poland. She was just fortunate that she escaped, so far, the scrutiny of the efficient Gestapo. The tears flowed softly from the corner of both eyes when she calculated the chances that Aleksander also escaped the attention of the SS.

     “I do not know my child. But I do know that you must keep hope, even as the world around you is falling apart. Think about your eventual reunion with your Mother. Think of all the good times with your Father. I will stay with you Sara.”

Anastazja was pleased to hear the girl’s sobs slowly lessen until nothing but a faint snoring from the exhausted girl. Both women have not eaten since the previous morning. Rations were distributed at Seven in the morning each day to those lucky enough, or strong enough, to stand in line. Anastazja knew that even the meager ration of a hunk of moldy bread and watery soup could not sustain them for long. She heard rumors about a German armaments plant opening just a few miles from the ghetto. If she could convince the Jewish council of her and Sara’s worth as workers, she could at least secure decent food for the both. In the meantime, she thought, I must find us food to sustain us.

Work Will Set You Free (1942)

    It was three years to the day that Anastazja and Sara found each other in the Lodz ghetto. It was one year to the day that Anastazja watched Sara meet a violent, yet merciful, end at the hands of the ruthless SS guard, Hans Gruber. Standing in the long line of half-starved workers, huddling like packed sardines to fight the bitter winter wind blowing from the East, Anastazja recalled the day she lost her adopted child.

            Yes, she was like the daughter I would never, could never, have with my Aleksander, she thought with a cold numbness that frightened her. Just three years ago she would have wept reminding herself that she could never openly love him. Their love was considered taboo by the smaller minds. The minds that seemed to comprise most of the modern world, she thought, with some humor. Aleksander was not a blood relation, but they grew up together as brother and sister. Her mind tirelessly shifted from the memory of being adopted by Aleksander’s biological Mother and Father, to thoughts of Sara bleeding to death in a filthy Lodz ghetto sewer.

      “Aleksander, come meet Anastazja, your new baby sister,” stated Aleksander’s Mother, Helen Walczak.

       “Hello,” said Aleksander, slowly and nervously holding out his small soft hand.

        Anastazja was afraid to take the boys hand. I don’t like boys, she thought, hiding her face deep in the seam of Helen’s skirt.

But that was such a long time ago, she contemplated, as the line slowly moved forward toward the barbed wire front gate, as each group boarded the awaiting Army truck. She could hear the German Shepherd’s barking at the workers, giving just a little taste of the horror brought to any prisoner stepping out of line. Her thoughts shifted to Sarah, and the day her heart became frozen over like the surface of a lake in late December, frozen with just a hint of movement, of life beneath the surface.

       “I never asked Anastazja, but how did you land us work at the factory?” Sara asked, with genuine naivety.

        Anastazja tried hard to push that unpleasant memory out of her mind. She turned to Sara prepared to scold her for such a dumb question. She felt two years of humiliation well up inside her like pressure in a volcano finally finding release. She turned with mouth wide open, eyes narrowed, and finger pointed directly in Sarah’s surprised face, but quickly closed the floodgates when she looked at the girl’s innocent expression. A surge of pity raced through her body as she looked at the genuine expression of wonder on the girl’s face.

       “My dear Sara, I simply used my charm and wonderful way with words and phrases,” she stated, with a forced smile across her wind-burnt face.

       I’m so glad she doesn’t know what pretty girls must do just to work sixteen hours a day in dirty and dangerous conditions for some extra food.

     Executives at the I.G. Farben plant, most of them members of the SS, quickly spotted an opportunity to make money in Poland after the Nazi invasion. Plants began springing up around Western Poland dedicated to feeding the voracious appetite of the Nazi war machine. Much happened since the invasion of Poland. After dividing Poland between Germany and Russia, Hitler turned his greedy eyes to the West of Europe. France fell in 1940 in what seemed to be an easy victory. However, what the world did not see, was the appalling number of Panzer tanks obliterated by the superior French Char B1 and S35 tanks. French tanks were heavily armored making the task of armor penetration difficult for German tanks. German tanks, on the other hand, gained the advantage in maneuverability, thus giving them ultimate control of the battlefield.

       After the invasion of France and, the failed invasion of Britain, Hitler turned his attention on Russia. If Poland was to become a Nation of slaves, then Russia was to become a Nation of corpses. Hitler and his General staff knew that their supply lines were stretched beyond their limit, the deeper the penetration into Soviet territory. The German army must survive off the food the vast Soviet land could supply. This meant nothing less than starvation, disease, and death for the Russian population.

       Poland was to be slave Nation. With each factory built to turn coal into synthetic rubber. With each plant designed to make artillery shells, small arms bullets, pots, pans, mess kits, and other miscellaneous items necessary for the war effort, concentration camps seemed to grow out of the burnt rubble and blackened land, like so many weeds sprouting, and chocking any life remaining across Poland.

       Anastazja thought about the day that Sarah died. They were standing in line waiting for transport to the armaments factory. Sara was in demand at the factory because her hands were small and fit easily inside the small caliber artillery shells for polishing. She was ill on this morning and Anastazja thought with dismay that she may be suffering from dysentery. Dysentery and typhus was spreading through the ghetto like wild fire, because of the lack of proper sanitation. Residents of the ghetto were forced to defecate in buckets and throw their filth carelessly into the gutters just outside their dwelling. This practice, combined with lack of food and clean water, created the ideal conditions for such diseases to take deadly hold on the starving community.

     “Sara, your slouching dear. You must stand straighter than that,” stated Anastazja, as she held her gently under her frail arm.

       “I can’t,” replied Sara, “I am too weak to stand.

     Just as SS Untersturmfuhrer, Hans Gruber, walked past the pale girl, she fell to the ground with a loud gasp as her chest hit the hard pavement, causing the air to be forcibly expelled from her infected lungs.

     “She cannot work. She is dying!” exclaimed Hans Gruber. He walked over to Sara and dragged her to the middle of the road just a few feet away from a silent Anastazja. She knew that protestations would only mean her own death alongside her young adopted friend. She watched helplessly as SS Gruber drew his German Luger pistol and fired a shot into the left temple of the prostrate girl. The blood squirted in bright red jets of blood for a few moments and then slowly gushed from the penny sized wound, causing blood to pool around her head. Anastazja watched in horror as Sara’s body began to twitch violently giving the impression of someone having an epileptic seizure.

       Anastazja was quickly snapped back to reality when she heard a scream and felt a blunt wooden object strike the middle of her back.

     “Move forward you bitch or I will shoot you in the, middle of the street,” yelled a deep masculine voice from behind. The voice belonged to Hans Gruber. The very man who killed her only adopted baby girl several years ago.

         I will kill you, you son of a bitch, if it is the last thing I do, she thought as she staggered to keep her balance, lest she give him an excuse to kill her.

        She struggled to block out the thought of having the unscrupulous head of the Jewish council, tasked with deciding who is fit to work, put his hands all over her body in exchange for a job for her and Sara. She blocked out