“BEFORE BERLIN” (sneak peek)

BEFORE BERLIN- A Berlin Butterfly Series Prequel

“One day, one moment, one event…can change your life completely. -Anonymous”

CHAPTER ONE

August 1943

“Schritt vorwärts! Kopf hoch! Arme aus!” The sharp demands in a thick German accent came swiftly. Step forward. Chin out. Arms up. I hardly had time to turn to my left to see Renia, my best friend of ten years, performing the same ridiculous movements with an equally sour-faced woman in front of her. The long horizontal line of students extended the length of our stone courtyard, chunks of concrete still littered the ground even now, years after the explosions rocked the school. Another dozen or so girls clustered near the outer gate, awaiting their turn.

“Open your mouth.” The timeworn taskmistress inched closer to me, but even in youth I towered her by a head at the very least. She stretched her neck and leaned forward. The sulfurous scent of mustard reeked from her lips as they curved into an ardent scowl.  When she spoke, her jowls wiggled loosely above her crisp, clean uniform collar, but it was the brown mole near her chin with the solitary hair protruding, that captured my full attention.

“Do you have all of your teeth?” She inspected my mouth thoroughly.

I nodded.

She tugged on the end of my braid that hung freely down the right side of my chest, the lower locks nearly reaching my waist.

“gute Länge.”

I snuck a glance at Renia once more and wiggled my brows carefully so that this madam did not see my disrespect. What a relief the length of my hair had passed her inspection. I fought the giggle building in my throat. Such an odd thing for her to find so satisfactory.

A tall, reedy woman shadowed the ill-tempered one. A simple clipboard clutched in one hand and a pencil in the other.

“Mache Notizen.” The demanding one pointed for her to take notes, then turned back to me. “What is your name?”

I recognized my good fortune of having learned German years ago, even before they arrived in my city. While other fellow classmates struggled with the demands, I understood her well enough.

“Aleksandra.” I answered proudly, named after my grandmother who died before my birth.

“Family name?”

“Jaworski.”

“Age?”

“Sixteen.”

“Turn around.”

I rotated my back towards her but kept my arms extended upward from my sides. Why is she inspecting my person so closely? My brother, Ivan, who had been enlisted through conscript a year before had not been scrutinized so closely when the German soldiers came to our home. My breath hitched at a wayward thought.  A faint recollection emerged from an event I tried hard to forget…a collection of people—people with a unified belief—seized from their homes, lined up in the street and marched away…but I am not Jewish!

She pinched my side. The movement made me jump. I was ticklish there.

“Stand still.” She snapped. Though she had a solid grip on my waist there wasn’t much to grasp and the tighter she held on the more it hurt.

She turned to her scribe. “Tall, but skinny. Good posture and hips. Send her to Medical.”

Offended, I scrunched my nose. I am quite healthy, I wanted to argue. Other than a small scare of scarlet fever when I was four, I hardly got sick. And at this very moment could outrun anyone in this school, including the old bag.

The soldiers’ sudden disruption of our school day had come unexpected. This had happened before when the Germans threatened to close our school, but like many Poles trying to survive the invasion, the headmistress came to an agreement that included an altered curriculum, and random checks. Though none of the previous appearances required us to stand outside for hours in the sweltering heat. We were being inspected—but for what I wasn’t sure.

The clipboard woman scribbled something on a piece of paper then shoved it into my hand.

“Siebzehn,” I whispered as I read it. The number 17 appeared on the square sheet.

Since the Germans arrived in Poland four years ago, they gave us little choice but to follow any and every direction. My father knew firsthand the consequences of insubordination. As a Partisan, he should have been killed for his involvement in our government, but instead he was being forced by the new commanders to lead our city under the Führer, Adolph Hitler, and to assist in the German occupation…that and a reminder bullet to one knee. His brother, Szymon, was not so fortunate. Determined to be a threat by the intelligenzaktion, he was detained and sent to the Radogoszcz prison.

From the moment the soldiers entered our classrooms this morning until now, I hadn’t been afraid. Though they were stern and forceful, nothing in their conversations led me to believe our lives were threatened.

This was far from the invasion in September 1939.

Though Łódź wasn’t as big as Warsaw, it was a key location for the continued pursuits against other Polish cities and German enemies of the state. Our lack of adequate equipment and poor defenses, especially against Blitzkrieg, allowed for an effortless seizure when our Polish Army collapsed only days under the pressure of the Third Reich. Within that first month, not only did they sever our transportation, but they also carried out mass searches, committed crimes against the population, restructured the government with German officials, issued occupation decrees, renamed the city as Litzmannstadt and annexed us into Nazi, Germany.

My mind easily slipped back to those early days…the deafening sounds of gunfire, explosions, and above all, the horrifying screams. At twelve years old, I lived through the worst nightmare imaginable or so I thought with my limited life experience. That was until I witnessed the expulsion…the process in which the Germans managed the Jewish population. They claimed that the people of the Jewish faith were diseased and brought filth and degradation upon us but especially upon our new landlords. By February 1940, the Judes had been removed to a ghetto—a controlled residential quarter in the northeastern section of town—surrounded by barbed wire and armed guards. My friend Erela who lived with her parents and sister in the flat across from us were subjected to that swift removal and forced relocation. I didn’t even get to say goodbye.

Occasionally, Mama and I would take the streetcar past the fences. Sometimes I would cover my eyes afraid to see the downtrodden and defeated people. A people who just a year earlier were our baker, tailor, and seamstress. Then in 1941, train cars full of Romas arrived at the ghetto. Frau Weber, Mama’s hairdresser, said the new detainees came from Austria. I overheard her conversation while she washed Mama’s hair one afternoon. Her husband, Herr Weber, oversaw the Judenräte—the Jewish Council—in the ghetto, and said that the Romas were sent here temporarily before their transition to another camp.

“There are not enough resources for those filthy gypsies.” Frau Weber exclaimed, callously unaware of my mother’s cringe. “The Jude are already seven or eight to a room and nearly twenty in each flat,” she continued. “While I don’t care much for the Judes, I cannot tolerate the Romas. The quicker they move them to an extermination camp, the better.”

Mama never went back to have her hair done by Frau Weber, but she also never explained to me the definition of an extermination camp—it took me researching the word in a book at school to know…Extermination-the killing of a group of people or animal. I must have misheard her.

 Over the next year, the number of residents in the ghetto dwindled and fewer and fewer living souls remained. The neighborhood had always had an eeriness to it but now a dark cloud hovered unceasingly. I now went entirely out of my way to avoid it.

The rumors that circulated about town as to where the ghetto residents were evacuated to, varied. Some claimed deportations were to other cities, countries, or work camps, but I never forgot what Frau Weber called them and when Pan Nowak, our butcher, said with undeniable certainty that they were sent to a nearby village called Chelmno, a hint of hope sparked within me…until he elaborated.

 “Not the town mind you and not for better accommodations.” He weighed the last of the veal.

Mama froze in place, but I watched him curiously.

Wrapping the meat in paper, he continued, “A country estate specifically used as a killing center.”

Mama gasped and looked to me, then before she could stop him, he added, “They use poisonous gas.”

Mama’s beautiful complexion drained all color. Her red lips pulled into a tight line and though I could not see her eyes, her lashes blinked repeatedly. When he finally handed over the meat, Mama slapped the money down on the counter and departed quickly with me tightly in tow and a very silent walk home. 

That night, I prayed for Erela. I didn’t want to believe the stories, I wanted to trust that she was somewhere safe and happy. She was by far one of the kindest girls I had ever met.

“Weitergehen!” The terse voice of the clipboard woman ordering me to move on brought me back to the present. I followed her long, thin finger in the direction of another door, but before I exited, I peeked back at Renia. She was a few girls down from me and though her tyrant had moved past her, she apparently hadn’t gotten her square number yet to be dismissed. I smiled and winked before I turned away. We will have a good laugh about this at lunch.

When I exited the courtyard into the classroom, it appeared nothing like the room I had left earlier that morning. The desks had been removed and in their place were long tables separated by steel partitions and thin curtains both in front of the table and one on each side, but because they hardly covered much, I could see Gizela from my mathematics class sitting on one end of her table in a robe of sorts. Her shoulders were slumped, and her head lowered. She must be sick. I tried to recall the supper conversation with my parents the night before, but nothing was said about an illness spreading through the town.

I stopped in the center of the room, unsure of where to go next until a man in a long white coat hustled toward me. His ungainly height forced his spectacles to slide down his shiny nose as he eyed me warily and grabbed the paper number from my fingers.

“Siebzehn.” He hollered the number out and another woman approached with yet another clipboard. I bit the inside of my cheek and shifted nervously to my other foot. This could not be about sending young girls into battle—that’s preposterous…isn’t it?

Due to the uncertainty of our future, even before the war began, my father’s keen foresight and sound finances gave me the best education a child could be privileged to have. My all-girls school was one of the finest in town and I excelled in numbers, sciences, and foreign languages. Aside from our native Polish tongue, and German, I spoke a little Russian, and was currently learning English. Though many of my elderly neighbors mourned the hope of a free Poland, they were quite vocal about the value of other languages. “Knowing multiple languages, little Aleksandra,” Pani Kalinowski said, “is quite equal to survival.” Eight years after her comment, I have come to understand the wisdom of such a statement.

“Afleuchten.” The woman waved for me to follow her. I passed three of the partitions before she rolled one of them away revealing an empty table. “Sit.”

Unsure whether she meant the table or the chair, I chose the sole chair in the space. I would do everything in my power to convey how healthy I am. Maybe Gizela is sick, but I am most assuredly not.

“Name?” The woman’s eyes left the clipboard only briefly.

“Aleksandra Jaworski.”

“Your age?”

“Sixteen.” I took a deep inhale. They have already asked me this. Why didn’t the clipboard woman from outside just forward the information?

“Have you been ill recently?”

“No.”

“Broken any bones?”

“No.”

“When was your last bleed?”

“Bleed?”

“Your monthly?”

My brows curved inward, and I stuttered for the first time. “L—last week.”

“Have you had any imbecility in your family?”

I blinked twice then quickly answered so she didn’t believe I was the simpleton. “Uh, no, no nothing like that.”

“Do you have all of your teeth?”

I nodded, waiting for her to look in my mouth like the woman soldier did, but she didn’t.

“Zieh deine Sachen aus.”

“What?” My heart thumped heavily in my chest. I could not have heard her correctly. Why would she need me to remove my clothing? I am not sick! She repeated the same sentence only with an urgency now pointing to the table. She held up a thin piece of fabric that unraveled to a robe as she lifted it up. “Put this on.”

“Why?” My jaw tightened. “I am not ill.” I responded in German so there was no chance of a misunderstanding.

“Do it now.” Her stare pierced me threateningly. I waited but she made no move to leave my temporary quarters. I turned away from her and removed my blouse slowly. When I unzipped my skirt, I was trying to devise a way to escape. I am fast. I could outrun her, the doctor, the female soldier, and any number of squaddies they had walking around here. What I could not outrun are bullets and each of those soldiers carried a weapon.

“Quickly.” She demanded.

I pointed to my camisole and underwear. “These too?”

“Ja.”

I exhaled slowly and removed my undergarments with my back to her once again. I had never undressed in front of anyone besides my mother and that hadn’t been for many years.

I put my arms in the lightweight robe and closed it tight with my arms across my torso. The woman didn’t waste any time and grabbed my wrist and pulled me to the end of the table.

“Sit.” She directed.

I did as I was told, but my cheeks heated with frustration.

“Dr. Kraus.” She parted the curtain. “She is ready.”

My eyes widened to her announcement. Ready for what? Looking down I could see my hands openly trembling just below the rapid rise and fall of my chest.

The doctor stepped inside and closed the partition behind him.

I kept my head lowered and counted the white scuff marks on his black shoes. Four, Five…no six. They moved closer to me. His sweat, mixed with a pungent medicinal scent, preceded him. I wanted to pinch my nose, but he grabbed my arm and lifted it up, down, forward, and backward before he moved to my other arm and did the same thing. I eyed him warily. Maybe this is just a checkup, maybe somebody in the school really does have a contagious disease and we are all now being examined.

Couldn’t they just tell us? I fumed. Though I had a health assessment when I registered to attend the school, nothing required me to completely disrobe.

He rotated my shoulders and tapped his fingers down my spine, calling off codes to the woman holding the clipboard. Codes I was unfamiliar with in any of my languages. I jumped again when he pinched my waist through the robe. He checked my ears, eyes, nose and asked me to open my mouth. He untangled my braid and thoroughly searched my scalp leaving my hair a ratted mess once he had finished.

There could be a lice infestation. It has happened before.

He put the listening tubes into his ears and with the rounded end pressed it against my chest and then my back, all the while telling the nurse with the clipboard to document his findings.

“Sie ist stark und gesund.”

Of course, I was strong and healthy. I was not only the fastest runner at the school, but I could also jump higher than anyone as well.

The man placed his hands in the pockets of his white coat and rolled back on his heels. When he did this his jaw tightened.

“Name?”

“Aleksandra Jaworski.”

I said my name the same time the woman with the clipboard did. When she looked at me, she sent me a clear message, the doctor was speaking to her. I pursed my lips as he continued.

“Age?”

“Sixteen?”

“Recent illnesses?”

“None.”

“Hereditary Diseases?”

“None.”

“Menstruating?”

“Yes.”

The doctor now scrutinized me from my head to my toes. A drop of sweat rolled from the edge of his hairline down his cheek but he didn’t pause to swipe it.

“Have you had relations with men?”

My eyes nearly popped out of my head and my mouth separated on its own accord.

The man peered at me over his thick glasses, his deep blue eyes searing through me. He waited for my answer as if he was serious. I held my breath.

He is serious.

The heat in my cheeks made me want to sweat too. I shook my head lightly, too shocked for anything else.

“Are you certain no boy has touched you down here?” He pointed between my legs.

I shook my head fiercely this time.

“Lie back.”

I froze.

The woman placed her palm over my chest and pushed me backward.

“No, no, no.” I stiffened and my hands wound around my waist again holding tightly while fighting her pressure to restrain me. She set her clipboard down and used both hands forcefully to push me flat on the table, my legs dangled helplessly off the end. What are they doing? A thousand thoughts whirled inside my brain in that split second and all the possibilities frightened me.

“Lift your feet to the end of the table.” The doctor spoke dryly as if the whole struggle meant nothing.

My heart thumped again. I glanced past them and toward the exposed opening in the partition. Maybe someone out there will stop this. I spied a soldier staring my direction, a smirk spread across his face. I swallowed a lump, fighting the desire to cry.

“Bend your knees,” said the doctor.

I shook my head, feeling my chest constrict. This cannot be happening.

The woman didn’t wait and once again she moved my legs upward to the hard surface. Why? My short breaths came rapidly.

When he lowered his torso at the end of the table, I gasped. The entire lower half of my body was now exposed to him and anyone else who walked by the curtain, including that awful soldier. A slight breeze blew through and caused goosebumps to cover my skin. In bold contrast, perspiration rolled down my forehead and mingled with emerging tears. Even though I closed my eyes tight, the moisture slipped through anyway.

I bit my lip to keep from crying out as the doctor’s gloved fingers examined my private parts. I was too afraid to fight the woman who held my arms down, though I knew she did not care what was happening to me. I whimpered and sniffled through the horrifying seconds that followed.

“Very well.” He stood straight again. “She passes.”

I could barely catch my breath as the woman released her hold and the man pointed to the chair. “Get dressed and wait until you are retrieved.”

My mind continued to whirl. Did the school believe I had been with a man? Did they suspect me of being with child? I was mortified over the idea of being touched in a place I had never been touched before and of all places…here at my school!

I dressed quickly, making sure every button was closed and every part of me covered, but no matter what I did to forget about what just happened, the incident haunted me. Sniffling, I sat in the chair with both my hands covering my face, wishing to just go home. I wanted to see my parents, my dogs, and my rabbits. I wanted to feel the comfort of my bed and the loving embrace of my mother, and I never wanted to come back to this school ever again.

When the clipboard woman walked back in, I could have sliced her to ribbons with my glare. How would she like to be treated as thus? How would she like it if I was holding her down?

She raised her chin in challenging defiance. “Hier.”

She handed me a paper. As I quickly perused it, it had my name, my age, details of my medical examination and the word pass stamped in German on one corner.

“Do not lose this. It is your passport.” She handed me an apple and pointed to another door. “Do not speak to the soldiers, do not sleep with them and do not leave their escort until you arrive at your destination.”

“I, I just want to go home.”

Her painted red lips moved slowly enough for me to see every line she had brushed across them. “You have a new home, fraulein. You are part of Lebensborn now.”

Tears sprung from my eyes.

“I don’t know what Lebensborn is,” I whimpered. “Please, I just want to go home.”

She grabbed my wrist and led me to a door opposite of the one I had entered. Outside, a military truck rumbled to life as another young girl was physically forced inside the back. I stopped, but the woman shoved me forward then called to one of the soldiers for help.

When he appeared at my side, he tapped his long gun with one hand. “Come, now.” He commanded. Then he nudged me forward with the barrel end of his weapon.

“G—go wh—where?” I hardly recognized my stammering.

The soldier ignored me and directed me toward the back of the idling truck where additional soldiers faced me. Tears spilled down my cheeks. Please, no, please no. I cannot be a soldier.

Two hands pressed against my back and shoved me upward. I stumbled on the step, bruising my shin. With no tenderness in the responding touch, the same hands only lifted me to my feet to get me to move. Once inside, my eyes adjusted to the darkness. There were nine girls already huddled together. Two, I recognized from my classes, the others were strangers but welcomed me to their embrace all the same.