Holocaust Rescue

January 27, 1945

The explosion shocked Erika awake. She gasped as she stared into the blackness. The other inmates stirred, talking to one another, raising their voices. Someone's elbow poked her in the side, but she hardly felt it. She'd long ago grown accustomed to not having enough room to turn over.

"What happened?" she cried.

"The Russians are coming to rescue us!" one woman told her. "They're outside the gate! The Nazis have fled! We're free at last!"

Erika shivered as she hurried from her bunk to join the others. The thin threads of her concentration camp issue rags did virtually nothing to protect her from the bitter cold, and the near-starvation level diet she'd existed at for many months had left not an ounce of insulating fat on her body. She'd ceased to notice the ubiquitous stench ages ago, about the same time she'd learned to ignore the constant rumbling of her empty stomach.

Outside, blazing fires lit the night from the direction of the crematoriums, and Erika realized the woman's words were true. The Nazis had indeed fled, setting the fire in a desperate attempt to hide their horrendous deeds. She reflected on this for a moment before her attention was drawn to what was taking place on the other side of the gate. She could see Soviet soldiers approaching in white coats as camouflage against the snow. They rushed through the gate, running in every direction. One of the men grabbed her and pulled her toward the woods outside the gate.

She opened her mouth to scream, but no sound came out. Almost instantly, another man smashed his fist into the first man's face, causing him to lose his grip on her. The second man led her back toward the others. He spoke to her in a language she didn't understand.

"What?" she asked.

"Are you all right? Did he hurt you?" The soldier spoke German with an obvious Russian accent.

"I'm all right. I'm not hurt." She'd found her voice at last.

"Come, sit near the fire. Would you like a hot drink?"

"Yes, please."

He led her to a seat beside a crackling fire, then fetched a blanket to wrap around her. She pulled the edges of the blanket together so it covered her entire body, and her shivering diminished slowly at first but was soon gone. He handed her a mug of steaming liquid, and she took a sip. Hot chocolate.

"Thank you." Her voice was barely a whisper as she gazed into his eyes - they were green, and she could see kindness in them. Tufts of dark blond hair peeked from beneath his fur cap, and she realized that, to her astonishment, he was, at most, only a couple of years older than she.

"What shall I call you?"

"My name is Erika, Erika Messer." Nobody had called her by name in so long she was amazed she still remembered it. "What's yours?"

"I am Yuri Leonidovich."

"The hot chocolate is very good." She couldn't remember the last time she'd had something to drink that actually had a taste to it.

"Would you like a cookie too?"

She nodded, and he passed a tray laden with an assortment of cookies. She chose the closest one. "You're so very kind."

Tears came unbidden to her eyes, the first she'd shed in many months. It was as if something inside her that had been frozen solid was at last beginning to thaw. Embarrassed for a virtual stranger to see her cry, she turned her head away from him.

"Hey." She felt the soft warmth of his hand covering her own. "It's all right. It's all over now."

Touched by Yuri's kindness, she couldn't hold it in any longer, and her shoulders heaved with heavy sobs. She felt his arms around her, holding her, and she laid a head on his shoulder. She cried until no tears remained, and his fingers wiped the last ones from her face.

"You look just about the same age as my sister in Kiev. Her name is Sonya."

"I had a sister, once." The memory of Toni brought a searing pain to her heart. Although it had now been many months since she'd died, it seemed like only yesterday. The utter hopelessness in Toni's haunted eyes would remain with Erika forever.

"I'm sorry."

"She was the last of my family. Now no one is left but me."

"Where will you go now?"

"Why, I don't know! I hadn't even considered I might live. I just assumed I'd die in the camps like my parents and sister. It hadn't occurred to me I might one day be free again."

"Where are you from?"

"Berlin. That's where we lived when it happened."

"When what happened?"

"Kristallnacht. The Night of Broken Glass. My father sold watches. The Nazis smashed all his store's windows and destroyed all his merchandise."

Erika could still remember her father surveying the ruins of his livelihood while crying and praying in Yiddish, a language she and Toni hadn't known. They'd had no interest in learning the tongue of their ancestors, anyway. To them, they were simply Germans, and religion had nothing to do with it.

Until that night, when they'd discovered that religion had everything to do with it.

"What did you do then?" He leaned toward her, gazing into her eyes.

"The Nazis herded us together, then forced us into boxcars. It was so crowded all we could do was stand. It was so noisy, and the smell - " She shuddered. "I can't even begin to describe it.

I have no idea how long we traveled on the train. I lost all track of time. I was so hungry and thirsty, and my feet hurt so bad, it was so hard to breathe, and it seemed like the journey would just go on forever, but finally the doors were thrown open, and we were pushed off the train. I'd been in complete darkness for so long the sun hurt my eyes, but I had no choice but to carry on.

I saw that I was standing in this big yard full of people. There were two lines, and a man in a Nazi uniform with cold, cruel blue eyes was barking at us, telling each of us which line to join. "Right!" he yelled at me, and so I went to stand in the line to the right. I saw that the people in the other line were mostly very old, little children, and cripples. I remember feeling relieved that all four members of my family had escaped what I knew would soon be their fate, but we had no idea what was in store for us.

Papa was taken from us right away and sent to the men's camp. Mama, Toni and I were led to this cramped, filthy enclosure with rows and rows of wooden barracks. We were forced to strip naked, our clothes were taken from us, and we were given striped pajamas with gold stars sewn on them. This was all we had to wear. They made us sleep crammed together like sardines, and we had to work very hard in the fields every day. If they thought we weren't working hard enough, they would beat us to make us work harder. They gave us one bowl of watery soup with a few vegetables floating around in it and a piece of stale bread every morning, and that was all we had to eat for the whole day. And that wasn't all. The worst was yet to come."

She lowered her eyes in shame, and he looked on with compassion, waiting for her to continue.

"One day while I was working, one of the soldiers grabbed me from behind. I was too terrified to make a sound. He pulled me into an empty building, and - and - " She broke down and couldn't continue. Yuri held and comforted her, rocking her as if she were a child.

"That night, Mama heard me crying and asked what was wrong. I told her what the soldier had done. Life went on like normal for awhile, and then one day there was a commotion, and all of us went running to see what had happened. I couldn't believe my eyes. Somehow, Mama had stolen a knife, and she'd stabbed that soldier right in the back. Already a couple of other soldiers had grabbed her and were pulling her away. I squeezed my eyes shut and stuck my fingers in my ears, but I still heard the shot.

Toni and I never had the chance to mourn her. We had to keep on working or we knew we'd be killed too. At night we held each other and cried.

Some time later, we heard five of the men tried to escape. They'd been caught and hanged as a warning to the others, and in addition, five other men were chosen at random to be hanged with them. The ten bodies were hung high where all the inmates could see them. Toni and I saw that one of the men was our Papa.

Instead of taking the bodies down and burying them, the Nazis just left them there to rot. Every time Toni and I were working in the field, we had to force ourselves not to look over at Papa hanging there. We both began to have terrible nightmares every night. One morning, Toni woke up with a rash all over her body. She was dead within a week's time. Another girl helped me bury her body."

"I'm so sorry." Yuri wasn't quite sure what to say. He couldn't even begin to imagine the pain she'd been through.

By now the fire had almost died, and only a few glowing coals were left. Yuri and Erika were the only two remaining beside it. The Red Army had moved on, and the few remaining bedraggled former captives had scattered and fled. The pink fingers of dawn were beginning to creep over the horizon.

"We need to get moving. We can't just stay here all day," said Yuri.

"But where shall we go?" Erika's eyes grew wide as she gazed around. After untold months of being imprisoned, she hadn't a clue where to start.

"First of all, we need to get some food into you," Yuri replied. "You look like you haven't had a decent meal in ages."

"What about your unit?" asked Erika.

"I'd never catch up to them, even if I tried."

"But won't you get in trouble when they find you?"

"That's why I need to get out of this uniform as soon as possible. Do you know where the officer's quarters are?"

Erika pointed. "I think they're over there."

With some difficulty, they located the quarters of the SS officers of Auschwitz, which were, of course, now abandoned. Yuri threw a rock through a window, then used his gloved fist to bust out the rest of the glass, reached in, and unlocked the door.

As soon as they were inside the house, Yuri dashed toward the bedroom, while Erika made her way to the kitchen, where she began to open doors and drawers in search of food. She found a loaf of bread and a block of cheese in the cupboard. Snatching the cheese, she bit into it with the savagery of a caveman biting into a fresh kill.

She'd eaten about half the cheese when Yuri reappeared, wearing a white shirt and tan slacks that were a little too big, but fit well enough.

"Luckily, they fit," he said.

"Not too fast, or you'll get sick." He placed a caring hand on her arm, and she forced herself to put the cheese down. "We need to find some clothes for you, too," he told her. "You must be freezing in those rags!"

The soldier's clothes were all much too large for her, of course, but by putting on the biggest shirt she could find and adding a belt around the waist that had the notch in the nearest hole, she was able to fashion a dress of sorts.

Yuri looked at her with pity in his eyes. "That'll do for now, I suppose. Well, where do you want to go?"

"Back to Berlin, I suppose. It's the only home I've ever known."

"It's under heavy bombardment," Yuri told her. "We'd be even less safe there than staying here."

"Well, then, I guess just somewhere we'll be safe."

"Sweden would be a good option, but we'd need train fare." He dashed back to the bedroom, where he began pulling dresser drawers open and digging through them. Erika joined him, and when they'd gone through all the drawers and other various hiding places they could find, they showed one another the fruits of their labor.

"It doesn't look like much," Yuri remarked, staring down at the coins in his hand.

"Seven pfennigs," Erika told him. "And I found four."

"That's enough to buy what?"

Erika shrugged. "A couple sticks of chewing gum, perhaps."

"So not nearly enough for two train tickets, then."

Erika shook her head.

Yuri began to rummage through the kitchen cabinets. "It doesn't look like any expensive china or anything of value was left behind, and all I have on me is a couple of rubles and a few kopecks."

"What's that?"

"Lunch for us both at a moderately-priced restaurant, perhaps. Not nearly as much as we need."

"Well, at least we have food."

Yuri frowned. "Enough for a couple of days at most, if we use it sparingly. We'll just have to try to find work somehow."

They left the concentration camp grounds, Yuri holding his compass in his hands. "What direction are we headed?" asked Erika.

"Northwest. If we can make it to Danzig, we can catch the train to Malmo."

"How long will it take for us to walk that far?"

"A good couple of weeks, so we'd better get going."

"A couple of weeks?" Erika gasped. "But where will we sleep at night?"

Yuri groaned. "I can't believe you were just rescued from a living hell and you're worried about that." He spat on the ground. "I assure you, wherever we find to sleep will be better than the place you spent your last night."

Memories of what the Nazi soldier had done to her flooded Erika's mind, and she wondered whether she could trust Yuri. He'd been so kind to her, so gentle, but after all, she'd only known him for a few hours.

"Of course, we'll never get there at all if you're going to just stand here like a statue."

A sharp retort was on the tip of her tongue, but then she remembered Yuri had good cause to be anxious. If anyone recognized him, he'd be executed for desertion.

"Sorry," she murmured, taking a step forward.

"That's better." They walked until Erika's feet were sore, yet she didn't dare complain. The only comfort was the rising sun that brought blessed warmth to her chilled flesh.

"I'm starving," Yuri said at last. Accustomed to going an entire day with almost no food, Erika hadn't even considered it might be close to lunchtime. They found a thicket of bushes in which to hide, and Yuri dug into the food they'd brought along. Erika picked at a piece of stale bread and ate a couple of grapes. When they were finished eating, they found a spring branch which provided the chance to wash their hands before continuing on their journey.

The sun was nearing the horizon when they were startled by the appearance of a pig which ran into their path. Yuri scooped the animal up and held it in his hands. The piglet wriggled and squirmed to get down, and a few seconds later, a middle-aged man appeared, babbling in a language Erika didn't understand. He was dressed in filthy overalls which covered a faded red shirt, and he held a straw hat on his head to keep it from blowing off.

He reached for the pig, and Yuri handed it over. The two men carried on a long conversation as Erika listened, wondering what they were talking about, and at last Yuri turned to her.

"He's speaking Polish, but I understand enough to get the gist of what he's saying. I told him we'd both just been freed from Auschwitz and needed work, and he offered to let us help out on his farm in exchange for food and lodging and a small income."

"Oh, thank you!" Relief swept through Erika as she smiled at the man. She pointed to herself. "I'm Erika Messer."

"Marek Bakowski." The man smiled as he shook her hand.

She pointed to her newfound friend. "This is Yuri. "

"Yuri Shevchenko." Yuri smiled as he also shook Mr. Bakowski's hand.

Erika frowned. "But I thought your last name was - "

He cut her off in mid sentence."I'll explain later." As they followed Marek back in the direction from whence he'd come, Erika wondered what was in store for her.

They walked across a yard containing patches of snow and an occasional withered shrub, until they came upon a log cabin with snow on its roof. A middle-aged woman appeared at the door, salt-and-pepper hair pulled back in a bun, her light blue eyes lit up in interest. She wore a shapeless brown dress that hung past her knees, and a small, grey cat circled her ankles. Marek spoke to her in Polish, and she stepped back into the cabin and motioned them inside. Then he spoke to Yuri, who then turned and explained to Erika.

"She's his wife, and her name is Kazia." Erika smiled at the woman. Kazia smiled back and said something to them in Polish.

"She wants to know if we'd like to join them in eating their evening meal," Yuri translated.

"Oh, yes! Thank you very much," Erika told Kazia. Dinner was a stew containing bits of sausage with cabbage and potatoes, and there was a bitter black bread to go along with it. While they were eating, Kazia fetched a photograph of a young man from the mantel to show her guests. The young man had light brown hair and bright blue eyes like Kazia's. He wore a military uniform and was smiling.

"Their son, Stanislaw," Yuri told Erika. "He was killed in Operation Tempest."

"I'm very sorry," Erika told the couple as she reached across the table and touched their hands.

After they'd finished their meal, Erika helped Kazia with the dishes. The woman kept up a steady chatter as they were working, and Erika nodded at what she guessed to be appropriate moments. Once the dishes were cleaned and put away, Kazia led Erika into the bedroom, where she riffled through the few dresses hanging in the closet and selected a blue one. She led Erika into a smaller bedroom - Erika guessed it must have been Stanislaw's - and, with hand motions, indicated she wanted her to put the dress on. Erika did so. It was much too big and hung off the shoulders, but it was very comfortable.

Erika saw that the smaller room contained a narrow cot on a shelf attached to the wall and a closet. She opened the closet's door and saw men's clothing that looked to be too small for Marek. Stanislaw's, she told herself. Overcome with melancholy, she closed the closet's door.

A short time later, Yuri entered the bedroom. He gasped when he saw her, and she frowned. He laughed. "You sure look a lot better in a real dress!"

Feeling as though a barrier between them had just been broken through, she laughed along with him. Then, realizing this room was where they were both to spend the night, her eyes widened. "I've never slept in the same bed with a man before." Her voice shook a little.

Yuri placed a reassuring hand on her arm. "I promise, I won't do anything to make you feel uncomfortable." He got into the bed and pressed his back against the wall, smiling at her. She cringed a little as she lay down beside him, and he put his arm around her and held her.

Her body was as stiff as a board. "Please don't be afraid," he whispered to her. "Nothing bad will happen. Everything will be all right." He began to sing to her in Russian, and although she couldn't understand the words, the melody soothed her, and she felt herself slowly beginning to relax.

A snow storm blew through during the night, and Yuri and Erika spent the next several days shoveling snow. "I don't believe it!" Yuri exclaimed when he saw the pile of snow Erika had shoveled on the first day. "You shoveled all that in just a few hours?"

"The work here isn't nearly as hard as it was in the camp," Erika replied. "And I get three meals a day now."

Yuri, visibly moved by her words, couldn't hide the tears welling up in his eyes. He swallowed hard to keep a lump from forming in his throat.

On Friday, Marek sent them to the supply store. "I remember Friday evenings when we'd visit my grandparents," Erika told Yuri on the way back to the Bakowski farm. "Just before sundown, my grandmother would light the candles and say the blessings in Yiddish. I remember the challah, the braided bread. It was always such a special time."

Yuri snorted. "All that for a God who doesn't even exist."

Erika gasped. "Why, of course He exists! How can you say that?"

"If He exists, how could He let His chosen people get rounded up like cattle and either worked to death or gassed and burned assembly line style? How could He have let your parents and sister die like they did? How could He have let that Nazi soldier - " He looked into her eyes and couldn't finish.

"Some of the older people in the camp used to say it was His judgement on us for forsaking the ways of our fathers, for becoming too much like Christians or pagans."

"And you could believe in a God who would let all that happen just because you don't light candles on Friday evening anymore?"

She couldn't answer him. They walked the rest of the way to the farm in silence.

Winter became spring, and Yuri and Erika continued to work for the Bakowskis, until one day, Yuri asked Erika to show him how much money she had saved up. She hadn't spent a penny of it, so it was all still in the worn sock she'd put it in whenever she'd been paid. She took it all out of the sock and handed it to Yuri, and he straightened it out, organized it by denomination, and then counted it.

"Between what you have and what I have, there's easily enough for a couple of weeks' provision plus two train tickets to Sweden," he told her. "I think it's time we continued on our journey." Not to mention the fact that several months' worth of sleeping with her back pressed against his body had awakened certain desires in him, desires he found more and more difficult to suppress as time went by.

Erika sighed. "All right."

"Is something wrong?" asked Yuri.

"Not really. It's just that, after all this time of sleeping in a real house and having enough food to eat every day, it's hard to give that up to face the unknown again."

Yuri grew thoughtful. "Considering where you just came from, it's only natural you'd feel that way." His voice was tender. "But we can't stay here forever, can we?"

"I suppose not." They said their goodbyes to Marek and Kazia. Kazia wept and embraced them, cautioning them to be careful, and then they were off.

"I felt almost guilty about leaving her," Yuri admitted as they walked along. "I must have reminded her of her lost son."

They'd been walking for a couple of hours when they came upon a crumpled grey-green pile lying by the side of the road and were shocked to find it was a dead body dressed in a Nazi uniform. Yuri kicked the body over with his boot, and they saw the skin of the corpse's face was grey and insects were already feeding on it.

"Ugh!" Yuri turned and ran a short distance into the woods, where he leaned over a fallen log and vomited. A moment later, her felt the soft touch of Erika's hand on his arm.

"We have to bury him."

"The hell we do!" Yuri exploded. "He was an animal! People like him almost wiped your people completely off the face of the earth and started a war that just about destroyed a whole continent and cost millions of lives! Let him lay there and rot!"

"My grandmother would have said that until his body is buried, his soul will linger in confusion. We have to do that so he can move on and find peace in the afterlife."

"That's a load of bull!" Yuri snapped. "There's no such thing as souls or the afterlife, and it's a good thing for him there isn't!" His eyes glowed with hate. "You don't even want to know what I'd do to him if he weren't already dead!"

"Please, Yuri." Tears were beginning to form in Erika's eyes. "He was somebody's son, maybe somebody's brother, husband, or father. How do you think they'd feel if they knew he was just lying here like this?"

"I don't care - he got what he deserved! I wish all of them were dead!"

Erika found a sturdy twig and began to use it to dig a hole.

"You're crazy," Yuri told her. "If you're going to stay and do that, you're going to do it by yourself!"

Erika made no reply as she continued to struggle with the stick, finally giving up and using her fingers instead. A few raindrops fell, soon leading to a deluge. Erika tarried on, and a few moments later, she noticed that someone else was working right alongside her and looked up into Yuri's eyes.

"I couldn't just leave you here all alone," he told her. "If anything had happened to you, I never could have forgiven myself."

The two were soon drenched, and they were both about to give up on their arduous task when they heard the beeping of a car's horn. Terrified, Erika sprang to her feet and darted into the woods, where she found a cave to hide in. When she'd stopped shivering, she walked to the edge of the cave and peeked out. The rain had slowed to a drizzle, and Yuri and a man she'd never seen before were walking toward her. The stranger looked to be about thirty. He was stout, with short dark brown hair and brown eyes that looked friendly.

"Erika?" called Yuri. Cautiously, she stepped outside the cave to face them.

"This is Roger Hill," he told her. "He's an American bomber pilot who was shot down over France and was sent first to Buchenwald, then to Stalag Luft III. It was liberated at about the same time as the camp you were in. He's offered to drive us to Danzig, where we can take the ship to New York."

"New York?" Erika just stared at Roger.

"That's right." Roger smiled. "Yuri told me what happened to you. I'm so sorry for the loss of your family. In America, there are people who can help you, and Jews are treated just like everyone else." While that might not have been exactly true, he wasn't about to say anything to discourage her.

Erika looked at Yuri.

"We were going to Danzig anyway," he reminded her. "The trip will be much faster and safer in Roger's car."

"Where did you get a car?" she asked Roger.

"I bought it from a man who'd had it since before the war. He told me his eyesight's too bad for him to drive now, and it was just sitting there in his shed, rusting."

Convinced at last, Erika followed Roger and Yuri back to Roger's car, where she and Yuri got into the back seat and huddled up together.

Erika was asleep by the time Roger reached his destination, which was a small inn. "I thought we'd spend the night here, then catch the first ship out in the morning," he announced.

Yuri gently shook Erika's shoulder. "Time to wake up," he told her.

She yawned, rubbed her eyes, and looked through the car's window at the twilight sky. "Where are we?"

"A five-minute walk from the port," Roger told her. "We'll spend the night here and take the first ship out tomorrow."

"Come on." Yuri's voice was soft as he took her hand. Too sleepy to give the situation much thought, she let him lead her to the inn's front door.