The Family Behind the Walls

11. Jordanna

ELEVEN

JORDANNA

JULY 29TH, 1943 – ?óD?, POLAND

The darkness of the sky is like nothing I’ve seen before. Hamburg at night still offers light, but here on Przemys?owa Street in front of a blockading fortress of walls identified as a Preventive Camp for Polish Youth is darker than I knew possible, and not a star in the sky.

A male and female guard step out from a slight opening between the black gates, both with burly chests, and chins that hide their necks. The caps on their heads conceal their eyes. I wish they couldn’t see my eyes, and the fear I can’t hide.

Their feet squelch against the wet gravel as they step toward us. There’s silence mixed with faint cries in the distance and the hoot of an owl from above our heads. The air is wet and sticking to my skin, and smells like rotten flowers.

“Line up in columns of four, girls and children under twelve on one side and boys over twelve on the other,” the female guard shouts as she steps beneath a glow of light. She must want us to see the gun clenched in her grip.

I yank Lilli with me into a queue, unsure if I should place her in front of me, to the side, or behind. If she’s in front, I can keep an eye on her. Alfie steps to my side, into the boys’ column, taking direction by sight rather than sound.

With another wave of panic washing over me, I take his hand to get his attention. I point to my mouth and gesture with my other hand to talk. Then I point to my eyes and again my mouth, speaking the words: “Watch them talk,” through a breath.

I don’t know if he understands what I’m trying to tell him, but he gives me a nod.

Some of the other children in our group aren’t following the command to line up, and I can only assume it’s because they don’t understand German as much as we do. I never considered myself lucky to know two languages fluently until now. I heard a couple of them conversing quietly in Polish, but I thought we were only supposed to speak German.

I twist my head ever so slightly to peer over my shoulder at the children still standing out of order. The SS storm toward the confused young ones and begin shoving them into lines, still shouting at them in German. I turn back to face the front, unable to watch the scene behind me. The horror of hearing the screams and cries is enough to demolish my remaining strength.

I notice Lilli shaking, her soot covered nightgown wriggling like gelatin.

Another SS walks out from within the gated area and waves us in, pointing us toward a white building off to the left.

“This line, move along. The others stay back,” the female guard says, her voice stern and final. Lilli and I are shoved forward while Alfie is kept near the entrance. Panic stirs in my chest, my breaths heavy and ragged. I turn back toward Alfie, desperate for one last look. A tear slips down his cheek, his hands trembling by his side as he gives me a subtle, stilted wave. My throat tightens, a scream rising through me, but I clamp my mouth shut, pinching my teeth against my lips. The sharp pain in the center of my chest is suffocating me. Lilli walks ahead, small and frail, yet somehow steadier than me. I can barely hold myself together. I’m falling apart.

“You will sleep in this block tonight, then report to reception in the morning,” the guard barks, her words pulsating through my bones. The wooden door slams shut behind us with a deafening thrash, another reminder that I can’t wake up from this never-ending nightmare.

“Why won’t they tell us where—” Lilli turns to ask, and I cup my hand over her mouth to keep her silent.

“Buckets serve as toilets. You will be woken in the morning. No one is to leave this block. Servings of bread and water will be handed out shortly.”

We’re scuttled inside, pushed really, some knocked over while entering a smaller area of what seems to be a bigger block from what little we can make out in the dark.

Once everyone is inside, the door closes and locks from outside. Someone daringly flips a light switch, illuminating the space, which doesn’t give us any better of a view. A pile of strewn blankets lie in the center of the room, along with a few lumpy mattresses with straw poking out of the sides.

The older children rush to call ownership of the mattresses, leaving the rest of us to divvy up the wool blankets. Wool in high temperatures is unappealing, but a wooden floor is worse.

Some children hesitate to claim blankets. They’re younger, closer to Lilli’s age. I step forward, taking the bundle in my arms. I distribute them to the children standing alone and those with familiar companions. I hand Lilli the last of the blankets. “Find a spot where we can sleep. I’ll be there shortly,” I say.

Other girls, with their blankets, remain frozen in place, lost in thought, possibly wondering what might happen next. I am.

Anytime Mama would catch me eavesdropping on her and Papa, she would tell me, “ To know more is worse than knowing nothing .” I wish I had understood how right she was. Mama wanted to protect me from understanding how evil this world can be. Now, I want to tell these children the same. It won’t make it any easier on them, though.

I start with the first little girl, asking her if she speaks Polish so I might help her. “Mówisz po polsku?”

“Tak,” she says, agreeing. A look of hope brightens her eyes for a mere second.

“Pozwól ?e ci pomog??” I ask, gently taking the blanket from her hand so I can help her set up a spot to sleep.

Lilli has already unrolled the blanket and situated herself on one half toward the farthest wall. I bring this little girl’s blanket next to ours and shake it out to lie flat.

“Dzi?kuj? bardzo,” she says, thanking me with much more than her words as her arms swing around my waist.

“I’m Jordanna and ona jest Lilli,” I say, introducing ourselves.

“Jestem…Kalina,” she introduces herself with a hint of a smile.

Mama and Papa didn’t move to Germany until just before Max was born so we spoke mostly Polish at home, but anywhere else, we’ve always spoken German. I can help those with language barriers here. It’s apparent the guards have no intention of making anything clear in a way the Polish speaking children will understand. It’s been four years since Germany has taken occupation in this country.

I ruffle my fingers through Kalina’s thick dark curls and make my way back to the other girls still standing about. A few others have followed our lead and situated themselves with blankets. I introduce myself to the girls and arrange sleeping spots for each of them, doing whatever I can to ease their grief. Mama would do the same. Now, among the turmoil, it’s clear how hard she must have worked to shelter us from the cruelty taking over our country. Inside our walls, there was happiness, a good life. We were so lucky to be spared from this as long as we were.

Despite the hard, unforgiving floor and the sweat pooling onto the wool, Lilli falls asleep, and I take her hand in mine and give in to the exhaustion too.

The howling of a trumpet vibrates the glass window and shudders the door, poking the inside of my ears like sharp whittled toothpicks. Lilli gasps and pushes herself up. No longer in braids, her hair is tangled and messy. I can only imagine how mine looks. I push her hair out of her face and help her up to her feet then make my way to the one window. Before I can reach it, the door swings open and a woman in uniform starts shouting and screaming at us. “Up and out. Line up outside,” she hollers.

Those who don’t move fast enough face immediate consequence, evident of a whoosh and snap from a leather belt. The whoop strikes a nerve down my spine. Shrilling screams follow each snap. The girls can’t seem to move fast enough for the guard’s liking. Lilli, Kalina, and the other younger girls I helped last night managed to make it out faster than I would have figured, avoiding a whipping.

We’re all standing in line beside the block, staring ahead at another building. A few girls whimper while one chokes on a stifled breath. “Shh,” I say, trying to calm them.

No more than a minute passes before we’re following the guard through the maze of buildings before reaching one closer to the entrance. “Inside you go,” she says, slapping her hands together.

Other children are already inside, offering us a preview of what I fear is our terrifying future. Their bodies are emaciated, heads shaven clean, heavy sacks of skin drooping below their eyes. It isn’t long before I question whether I’m looking at boys, girls, or both. They all look quite the same. Some are dressed in matching gray pajamas, while others are still wearing street clothes. Their eyes share a common look of dread, desertion, desolation.

As the crowd of other children disperses, two older girls in gray pajamas are in the center standing over stools with razors, buzzing the hair off the person in the seat below them, eyebrows and all.

“Get in a line,” one of the hairdressers shouts.

Lilli pulls me into the line, yanking my arm to whisper, “I don’t want to cut my hair.”

“You mustn’t say a word. Did you see what happened to those other girls who didn’t move fast enough?” I whisper back.

I hear the gulp Lilli tries to swallow. “But Mama said I could grow my hair out as long as I want,” she replies, keeping her words softer than a whisper.

Mama used to tell me the same. I’ve only cut it a few times. She said we looked like princesses. But we aren’t princesses. We’re rats in an inferior race.

“I’ll go first,” I say, feeling the burn of tears threaten to fill my eyes. Everything is slowly being taken from us until there’s nothing left. Alfie may not recognize us when we find him, not that I’m sure he ever noticed me in the way I noticed every little detail about him. I’ll probably look just like him. The thought pushes a tear onto my lashes, but I swipe it away before anyone sees. I have to be brave. I have to be strong. Lilli needs me to be. Mama would do the same.

It isn’t long before I’m next in line. I follow the person in front then sit down, hard, and cross my hands over my lap.

Lilli is watching me. She’s watching my reaction.

They’re stripping me of my hair. It’s my hair.

The blade skims along my head and I clutch my hands against my stomach, pushing against the pain burning inside. I force my lips into a smile, knowing she must be calling my bluff. Whatever she may think, I will keep the smile for her and for the girls standing behind her, facing the same.

They may take my hair, but not Mama’s teachingsto care, lead, and be brave for those unable to. Her words constantly echo in my head. She’s said them so many times and I understand why now.

The process of shaving my hair off is quicker than I would imagine. My head feels much lighter, and very naked.

I’m pushed aside for being too slow. Lilli is already on the stool, eyes shut tight.

After the first stroke of the blade, a single tear rolls down her cheek and my heart breaks again.

“Next!” someone shouts from around the corner.

“Go!” the hairdresser shouts at me.

I’m trying to convince myself that losing our hair will be the worst part of this registration process seeing as the cold bath that followed was welcome after the heat we’ve endured, and the ash glued to our skin.

I couldn’t have guessed the next room would be some kind of doctor’s office. The room is small, enclosed, with stale air. A set of measuring tools next to a stack of papers rests on his narrow wooden desk. The doctor’s face is covered in thick puffy wrinkles with a defined grimace. The white sprigs of hair on his head flop around as he mumbles something to a young woman with a clipboard.

“Sit,” he grunts, pointing to a metal stool.

I do so while watching him lean over his desk, swab the pad of his thumb across his tongue and snag a paper from a thick stack, titled: Germanization Screening.

The doctor makes his way over to me, hovering like a beast before taking measurements with a cold pair of metal calipers, the metal grinding against grooves along the tool. He doesn’t just take the typical growth measurements like our family doctor has always done. Instead, he measures the distance between the arch of where our eyebrows were before shaven being off and the bridge of our nose, then cheekbone to cheekbone, and forehead to chin. Our height from head to toe, arm span, leg length, angle of our lower jaws, and even the position of our ears.

“Hmm,” he says, jotting down numbers. “Peculiar.”

“What is?” I ask, nervous to know his reason.

He flaps his hand at me. “She isn’t Aryan, but these measurements are inconclusive,” the doctor tells the young woman assisting him, taking down her own notes in addition to his. “There’s no racial data on her record?”

The woman scans the paper clipped to her clipboard before responding. “No, it seems we’ve sent a request to obtain her identification. However, she’s not on the Volkliste.”

“Mark her as ‘Pending Transfer’ until further notice,” the doctor says, handing her his sheet of notes.

The sick feeling in my stomach swells, not knowing what anything means, wondering if Lilli will have the same results and hoping the word “transfer” means something in my best interest.

The assistant ushers me to the next room, leaving me unsurprised to find another small space.

This room is also nearly vacant except for an odd chair with a tall flat back and a short metal pole extruding parallel to the metal seat. It looks medieval, facing the right side of the room. Next, I notice an older girl with a head-full of black curly hair waiting behind a camera on a tripod.

“Sit. Press your head back against the metal post,” she commands. I do as she says but she hisses and marches toward me, shoving my head back further until the metal post jabs the back of my skull.

She returns to the camera and takes another photo then charges toward me again. This time, she pulls me up from the seat, swivels it around with a shrill scrape between the chair’s legs and the floor, leaving me to face the opposite direction. She then takes the second photograph. It’s all repeated a third time to take a shot of me facing the left wall.

The bright bulb blinds me for all three shots, the last leaving me with colorful circles floating in front of my eyes.

“Leave now,” the photographer demands, pointing to the door as if I’m a misbehaved house pet.

I wish the door would lead me back outside, but there’s another room and another angry woman waiting for me at a table. “Come,” she orders, snapping her fingers in the air.

The woman grabs my hand, mangles her fingers around mine with a tight grip and jabs each of my fingertips onto a pad of ink then onto a paper.

“Leave,” she says through an annoyed exhale, nudging her head toward the door to her right. “New arrivals are to report to the quarantine block for the next few days. Someone will escort you there. Wait outside.”

I step outside, grateful to avoid another room, but anxious while waiting for Lilli to step out next.

We’ve been separated for too many minutes.

I don’t know how much longer I can wait.