Touching the Wire by Rebecca Bryn

nightmares?
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     

Chapter
Five
     
    On June 4 th 1944 Rome had fallen to
the allies and, within days, news spread across the camp. Whispers of
resistance grew louder.
    The infirmary door stood
open, letting out the humid stench of the interior. Miriam’s figure was
silhouetted in the doorway. She turned. ‘The Red Cross are here, doctor.’
    He joined her in the
doorway. Vehicles bearing the insignia of the International Red Cross and the
Danish Red Cross rumbled through the camp.
    Miriam shaded her eyes.
‘Where are they going?’
    ‘The Theresienstadt
Familienlager.’ He cursed under his breath. ‘Better rations… I knew it was a
sham.’
    Miriam’s thin shoulders
slumped. ‘And if the officials make a good report we may not get any more Red
Cross parcels.’
    ‘This is why they haven’t
punished the Roma. They’re waiting until after the Red Cross visit.’
    ‘It didn’t stop them killing
those brave young Greeks yesterday.’
    ‘They were only a few… and
they rebelled.’
    ‘The Jews of Hungary will be
forever in their debt. They chose not to gas Jews.’ Miriam lowered her voice.
‘Is it true the British and Americans have invaded France?’
    ‘Where did you hear that?’
    ‘Someone, somewhere.’
    He smiled. Lives depended on
secrecy. ‘News of the war is suppressed, but something is making high-command
nervous. You’ve heard Rome has fallen to the Allies?’
    She nodded. ‘A Jew from
Poland spoke of the Polish Resistance… the Home Army, gathering momentum in
Warsaw.’
    ‘And the two Slovaks who
escaped in April… they got through.’
    ‘How do you know?’
    ‘The SS would never admit to
it but it was broadcast on Swiss radio, apparently. The world knows what’s
happening here, Miriam. And there’s more.’ He glanced from side to side.
‘According to my source the Soviets are in Eastern Belorussia, pushing towards
Warsaw.’
    ‘Resistance inside the camp
is building. Do you think we dare hope, doctor?’
    ***
    July, the Red Cross visit over, and life
returned to horrific normality. Hope ebbed as the remaining men, women and
children of Theresienstadt were marched to the gas chambers. Worry grew again
for the Roma and Sinti: the fit and able, the younger men, as the guard had
predicted, had been transported to other work camps.
    As Miriam feared, the vital
Red Cross parcels stopped arriving. So did the transports of Hungarian Jews.
News filtered through courtesy of the camp radio, a set built from parts
organised from Kanada, the barracks where the belongings of the gassed and
imprisoned were sorted and sent back to the Fatherland. He’d discovered the
radio’s existence from a delirious typhus sufferer in the isolation camp though
he didn’t know, and didn’t want to know, where it was hidden.
    News from Europe spread
across the camp by word of mouth in urgent whispers. The Soviets liberated
Vilnius, capital of Lithuania, and ten days later, Majdanek concentration camp
near Lublin, east of the camp. Allied forces had broken out of the beach-heads
of Normandy. Hope took wing again and hovered on an uneasy breeze.
    July gave way to August. Hot
sun baked the earth by day and steamed it by night. Not a blade of grass grew,
not a bird sang. Water became scarcer than ever. Women on the infirmary bunks
moaned, sleepless with claustrophobic heat: Miriam wiped sweat from her face
and neck with a cloth, and then fanned her face.
    He motioned her outside. Daylight
leached from the sky, stars shone pale and a full moon hung in the heavens. The
air from the surrounding swamp still sweated with the heat of day, forming
banks of steaming fog.  He passed her a bottle with a little water in
it.               
     She sank to the ground
and savoured the water. ‘I don’t know if it’s true. I heard the Polish Home
Army has risen up against the Germans.’
    He squatted beside her.
‘When?’
    ‘It’s happening