I Survived the Nazi Invasion 1944 Page 2

  “No,” the farmer said. “They are searching for people who blew up a Nazi train tonight.”

  A Nazi train, blown up!

  Could that be true?

  And the people who had done it had gotten away?

  The thought gave Max a jolt of excitement.

  He and Zena hurried behind the farmer, running through the field with quiet steps.

  When they got to the barn, the farmer slid the door open just enough for Max and Zena to slip inside.

  “Go quickly up into the hayloft,” he said, pointing to a ladder. “Move as far back as you can, near the wall. Cover yourselves with hay. Do not move, no matter what!”

  Max met the old man’s gentle eyes. No, not everyone had been infected by the Nazis’ hate. He also realized how brave this man was, what a risk he was taking to help Max and Zena — two strangers. People caught hiding Jews were shot.

  Max opened his mouth to thank him, but in a blink the barn door closed tight, and he and Zena were alone in the dark.

  They scrambled blindly up the ladder leading to the hayloft. They had barely covered themselves with hay when they heard thundering voices just outside.

  “Into the barn!” a man’s voice boomed.

  The barn door slammed open. Max peered through the hay. He glimpsed four men: the farmer and three Nazi soldiers.

  And there was something else: a dog — a massive German shepherd. It growled and strained on a steel chain leash, its snarling teeth glowing in the light of the soldiers’ flashlights.

  Max dropped his head and inched closer to Zena, gluing himself to her side.

  “Why are we here?” demanded the old farmer. “I helped the commander search this barn thirty minutes ago. The criminals are hiding in the wheat field.”

  His tone was gruff and bullying, almost as though he was in charge.

  Max understood it was an act. But would he fool the other men?

  “The dog led us to this barn,” said a Nazi with a high, rasping voice.

  “The barn is filled with cats,” the farmer spat back. “Of course the dog wants to search!”

  The dog’s growls rose up.

  Grrrrrrrr.

  Grrrrrrr.

  Terror chewed Max’s insides.

  “We’re giving those criminals time to escape,” the farmer insisted. “The commander will not be pleased! I will tell him how you wasted our time!”

  Men murmured.

  The dog’s growling grew louder.

  Grrrrrr!

  Grrrrrr!

  And finally the rasping man shouted out a command in German.

  “Stille!”

  The dog went silent.

  “We will find those filthy Jews who destroyed our train,” the man rasped. “And we will make them suffer for what they did.”

  Max shivered.

  “We will never find them if we stay in this barn!” the farmer said. “Because of you, they will escape!”

  Max held his breath.

  “All right,” the rasping man said. “To the fields!”

  And in seconds, the men and the dog were gone.

  Max and Zena lay there, frozen in fear, as minutes crawled into hours.

  Voices echoed from the fields, engines roared. Max couldn’t tell if people were coming or going, if they were getting closer or farther away. And just as he felt sure that he would be crushed by his own fear, the barn door slid open again. There was light, and footsteps, and the farmer’s relieved face looking up at him.

  He gave them a small, gruff smile.

  “They’re gone.”

  Max and Zena sat up, brushing pieces of hay from their hair.

  The farmer climbed into the loft.

  “Wait here,” he said, walking to the back wall.

  He took a knife from his back pocket and wedged it between two planks of wood.

  What was happening?

  A plank clattered to the floor, and the farmer stepped aside.

  As Max and Zena stared in shock, three people stepped out of the small, dark opening.

  Max made out the shadowy shapes of three men, each with a rifle slung over his shoulder.

  One by one, they embraced the farmer.

  “Jablonski,” one said. “You are our angel.”

  “You are heroes,” the farmer — Jablonski — said. “That train was carrying even more weapons than we had thought. It’s all destroyed. The mission was a complete success.”

  It took a moment for Max to understand: These were the men who had blown up the train!

  “Who are they?” said another man, noticing Max and Zena.

  “I haven’t exactly figured that out yet,” Mr. Jablonski said, putting a gentle hand on Zena’s head. “But I’d say they’re good guys.”

  The men stepped forward to meet them. But before Max could think, or even take a breath, the smallest of the three men gasped. He dropped his rifle and threw his arms around Max and Zena.

  And that’s when Max realized this person wasn’t a man.

  It was Aunt Hannah.

  The men left the barn quietly, leaving Aunt Hannah, Max, and Zena alone with their hugs and tears. Max and Zena told her about their escape from the brutal Nazi soldier and how Mr. Jablonski had rescued them.

  Aunt Hannah listened with wide eyes, gripping their hands.

  “Where is your papa?” she asked.

  Max and Zena both looked down.

  “The Nazis took him,” Max said finally. “A month ago.”

  “We don’t know where he is,” Zena told her.

  Aunt Hannah seemed to stop breathing. It was a long moment before she spoke.

  “I wanted us all to escape together,” she said softly. “I begged your papa. But he refused. He said it was too dangerous. Like most people, he wanted to believe that if we just went along with the Nazis, things would be okay. He didn’t want to accept the truth — that the Nazis are more evil than we could have ever imagined.”

  Aunt Hannah’s words seemed to burrow deep into Max’s mind, to a place where he kept his darkest fears. And in a flash, he understood: that all of those rumors he’d heard in the ghetto were true. The Nazis were cold-blooded killers.

  “Your papa and I had the most terrible fights,” she said.

  Max remembered the argument he’d overheard, and Aunt Hannah’s pleading words.

  “We all must go.”

  “And then it was too late,” Aunt Hannah said. “I never even got to say good-bye, to tell you where I was going.”

  “Where did you go?” Max asked.

  “There are Jews hiding in the forests who are fighting back against the Nazis,” she said. “There are hundreds of them. I joined them.”

  “You’re a soldier?” Zena asked, her eyes wide.

  “Not a regular soldier,” Aunt Hannah said.

  She explained that she was a partisan, a special kind of fighter. She did not belong to a real army, with uniforms and shining weapons. They could not go into battle against the Nazis — they didn’t stand a chance against the German Panzer tanks and bombers and heavy machine guns.

  Instead, they worked in small groups, plotting surprise attacks.

  They blew up trains loaded with supplies and weapons, burned down factories that made German uniforms and guns, and ambushed troops in daring nighttime raids.

  Aunt Hannah said there were hundreds of partisan groups hiding in the forests around Poland and other countries in the east. Not all partisans were Jewish, but everyone in Aunt Hannah’s group was, including Martin and Lev, the two men here with her.

  Altogether there were twenty-four fighters in Aunt Hannah’s group, she explained. Most were young men. But there were some older people too, and four other women besides Aunt Hannah. They lived together in a hideout deep in Loda Forest, an endless stretch of pitch-black woods about fifteen miles north of here.

  Max stared at his aunt as she talked.

  She had the same glittering green eyes he remembered so well.

  But Aunt Hanna
h had changed, and it wasn’t just her chopped hair and her man’s shirt and trousers. Her dreamy expression had hardened into one of toughness and determination.

  Aunt Hannah was no longer a carefree teenager from Esties.

  She was fighting the Nazis!

  But was it really possible for a group of ragtag soldiers to take on the entire Germany military? Hitler had millions of soldiers fighting for him!

  Then Max thought of a Bible story he’d loved when he was little — about the Jewish boy David who’d fought against the monstrous warrior Goliath.

  The Jews were in the middle of a war back then, too, fighting against their most feared enemy, the Philistines. And Goliath was the most terrifying Philistine warrior of all. He stood nine feet tall, with the finest bronze armor and sharpest sword and javelin.

  Goliath taunted the Jews, daring them to send their toughest soldiers to fight him. But nobody would accept Goliath’s challenge. Even the most famous Jewish warriors said it was hopeless, that no Jew stood a chance against Goliath.

  But David refused to believe that. He wasn’t a soldier, just a shepherd. He didn’t have armor or a sword, only a slingshot. But he was fierce and smart and determined to fight.

  Goliath just laughed when skinny David stepped up to fight him.

  But then David shot at him with his slingshot. One small rock struck Goliath in the head. Goliath fell to the ground. David lunged forward and grabbed Goliath’s sword and — whack! — he chopped off Goliath’s head. The Jews soon won the war, and David became their king.

  Looking at Aunt Hannah now, as she gripped her battered rifle, Max thought she looked every bit as fierce as David must have. And a feeling came over him, as if he’d found something he’d lost, something precious.

  His hope.

  Max had a million more questions to ask Aunt Hannah, but there was no time.

  “It’s a long trip back to the forest,” she said. “We have to leave soon.”

  Max understood that “we” meant him and Zena, too.

  As Aunt Hannah led the way to Mr. Jablonski’s farmhouse, Zena leaned over to whisper in Max’s ear.

  “That robin did bring us luck,” she said.

  Max had almost forgotten all about that little bird, perched on the ghetto barbed wire. He’d never been the type to believe in lucky birds.

  Maybe now he was.

  They all sat together around Mr. Jablonski’s scratched wooden table. It was covered with more food than Max or Zena had seen in a year. There was nothing fancy, just bread, cheese, apples, and a pitcher of frothy milk. But to Max it looked like a holiday feast. Mr. Jablonski filled two plates for Max and Zena, and neither of them even tried to remember their manners. They gobbled their food, washing down huge mouthfuls with gulps of milk.

  Mr. Jablonski kept refilling their plates as Martin and Lev looked on with smiles. The men acted as if Max and Zena were part of their families, too.

  Martin was the youngest of the group — he looked about seventeen. He was as big as a bear, with a quick laugh. Lev seemed to be just a little older than Aunt Hannah, small but very muscular. His round glasses gave him a shy and bookish look. But his eyes were steely, and Max could see by the way the others listened to him that he was the leader of their little group.

  Mr. Jablonski wasn’t Jewish or a partisan — he was a spy. He’d tricked the Nazis into thinking he loved Hitler. He’d even become close friends with the Nazi commander in the area. But secretly he was working with the partisans — helping plot their missions, hiding them in his barn, supplying them with food and news from the outside.

  After Max and Zena finished eating, Lev spread a map across the table. He traced their route back to the forest. If they were lucky, they’d reach their camp by sundown tomorrow night.

  They also talked about the war, showing Max and Zena on the map where the latest battles were being fought. In the ghetto, newspapers and radios had been forbidden. Nobody had any real idea about what was happening outside the barbed wire fence. The Nazis always made it seem as though they were crushing their enemies, and that any day Hitler would be the leader of the entire world.

  But now Max and Zena learned the amazing truth — Germany was losing the war!

  The Nazis still controlled most of the countries in Europe, but their grip was slipping. American and British forces were battering them in France and other areas to the west. But the real trouble for the Nazis was on the other side of the map, in Russia.

  Lev pointed to that giant country, which stretched out to Poland’s east.

  “Hitler has sent millions of German soldiers to Russia,” Lev said. “He figured the Russians would surrender within a few weeks.”

  But the Russians were determined fighters, and the battles dragged on and on. By now, German troops were running low on weapons, food, and warm clothes.

  The Nazis kept loading up trains with supplies.

  But few of these trains made it to Russia.

  “We’re blowing them all up,” Martin said, flashing a smile.

  Different partisan groups were targeting trains all over the east. Lately they’d been destroying hundreds of trains every week.

  “But tonight’s train was one of the most important,” Lev told them.

  It had more than thirty railcars, packed with machine guns, tons of ammunition, and winter uniforms. But most important: Panzer tanks.

  “There were twenty of them,” Martin added.

  Max shuddered as he remembered the enormous steel beasts rumbling through the streets of Esties, their guns powerful enough to blast away an entire building in one shot. For weeks after the invasion, Max had nightmares that a Panzer was chasing him. He’d wake up drenched in sweat, his arms and legs aching as though he’d been running for his life.

  To destroy the train, Aunt Hannah, Lev, and Martin had carried a fifty-pound explosive from their base in the forest. They traveled in the dead of night, dodging Nazi soldiers guarding the tracks. They climbed onto a train bridge that stretched across two high ridges, and tied the bomb to the underside of the tracks.

  Then they hid behind a rock, readied the bomb’s detonator, and waited for the train.

  Hours passed.

  But then, finally …

  Whoooooooooooooooo!

  Whoooooooooooooooo!

  The train barreled toward the bridge. Black smoke belched from the stack of the massive locomotive. A Nazi flag glowed in the moonlight. And there were the Panzer tanks, each sitting on its own flatbed railcar. Behind them, an endless line of railcars was packed with supplies for the Nazi troops.

  The train approached the bridge.

  With a flick of a finger, Lev triggered the blast.

  Kaboom!

  The bomb exploded in a massive ball of fire.

  In a flash, the bridge crumbled, its wooden supports snapping like toothpicks.

  The train’s locomotive seemed to hang helplessly in the air for a moment. And then it started its plunge into the rocky valley hundreds of feet below.

  One by one, the train’s dozens of cars followed the engine in its deadly fall.

  Crash!

  Boom!

  Crash!

  And then,

  Kaboom!

  Tons of ammunition exploded in a tower of fire that shot up thousands of feet into the air.

  Max could picture it all in his mind — the train’s dive from the bridge, the smoldering wreckage, the Nazi flag bursting into flames.

  Thinking about it gave him a jolt of excitement — and also fear.

  He thought of that Nazi soldier with the rasping voice, standing in the barn with his ferocious dog. He remembered his chilling threat.

  “We will make them suffer for what they did.”

  Max looked out the window into the black night.

  It would be a long and dangerous journey back to the forest.

  And suddenly he wondered what would be waiting for them there.

  Lev led the way, taking them on a zigzagging
route along the river, through fields of wheat and rye, and pastures filled with cows and sheep. Aunt Hannah walked between Max and Zena, her eyes narrowed and rifle aimed, her finger glued to the trigger.

  They stayed hidden, avoiding towns, ducking into bushes at the slightest sound — a dog barking, a baby crying, a wagon clattering down a distant road.

  It was just past sunrise when they finally reached the edge of Loda Forest.

  They pushed their way through a wall of thick, thorny bushes, and suddenly they were in a completely new world.

  Enormous trees towered all around them, their branches forming a roof that blocked out all but a few beams of sunlight. Moss hung from branches, and giant, twisted roots rose up from the muddy ground. Max had heard horror stories about Loda when he was a child — about packs of wolves and bloodthirsty bandits. He looked nervously into the shadows, half expecting a hairy arm to reach out and snatch him.

  But Aunt Hannah, Martin, and Lev walked with sure steps, as though this tangled wilderness was their backyard. Soon Max’s eyes adjusted to the darkness, and he got used to the forest sounds — the buzzing and chirping and hooting, the rushing of the streams, the snapping of twigs under their feet.

  He thought of Papa, and those games of hide-and-seek, when Max and Zena were sure they were lost forever. And then they’d hear Papa’s voice calling to them.

  He could almost hear it now, from somewhere far away.

  “Max, Zena, where are you?”

  Max slowed his steps, turning his head, as though the whispering breeze were Papa’s voice.

  He wanted to climb high into a tree and scream out, at the top of his lungs.

  “We’re here, Papa!”

  The words seemed to ring out from his thoughts — We’re here.

  He looked around, as though any second Papa’s smiling face might appear through the leaves.

  “I knew I’d find you!”

  As they got deeper into the forest, the group walked more slowly, making doubly sure that nobody was following them. Lately the Nazis were desperate to capture partisans, Aunt Hannah explained, to track them to their secret camps. They sent search planes buzzing over the forest, like giant birds hunting for prey. Many camps had been discovered and destroyed, their members all killed.