THE GIRL

HAUPTHELFERIN GELI NAHLICH - AGE 23

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EXCERPT FROM CHAPTER 38

 

She said, “You know about the Ghetto, surely? In Warsaw?”

He shrugged inadequately. “I’ve heard rumours… I don’t know what to believe…”

“He was my mother’s brother. Somehow… Somehow he got out. In the first days of the uprising.”

“The uprising?”

She had a funny, canted look. “You see, you don’t know. They don’t tell you anything—“

“There was a battle, yes, I know about that.”

There was anger in her eyes, and he thought her beautiful. “Everyone says it was the Polish Resistance, mounting a cowardly attack on our courageous boys, killing them with rocket launchers and cannon.”

“I couldn’t say—“

“Well, it wasn’t that. It was us! Our courageous army, with tanks and cannon and machine guns blasting into a vast slum that we, Eric, we had created. Killing starving and trapped civilians because they were Jewish. We did this, Erich. We did it, because we want to wipe them off the map.”

“I don’t know how reliable—“

“My uncle wrote this to me!” Geli cried, shaking the letter, dirty and torn. “He wrote this because he was there.” She thrust it towards him. “Here, look at it. Look at it!”

But he didn’t look; he didn’t know Polish.

Trembling, she read. “Here he says, ‘They used flame throwers to burn the houses, street by street. Women and children..!”

“But he couldn’t really know—”

“Erich!” she almost shouted, tears flooding her eyes, “He wrote this to me, and he knew others who escaped, who saw the same things. It’s true, I tell you.”

Lochner tried to pull her towards him but she resisted, her eyes liquid, fiery. He didn’t know what to say.

After a moment she wiped away the tears with the backs of her hands. Quietly, she said. “You know it’s true, don’t you? You can believe we do such things, can’t you? The Waffen-SS; those people. You’ve seen all this…” She motioned her head towards the barracks, towards the airfield, towards the war. “I hate the war of course, but I detest our part in it the most. It’s wrong. I know it’s wrong.” She looked at him. “I feel dirty. Don’t you?”

He thought of Dieter and Peter Sigmund and Muldorf - and the other pilots. Of his Funker, Leo, and his gunner, Heitmann. He couldn’t hate them; they were his comrades. But Goering, the Fuhrer, Goebbels and the rest of their gang? He could hate them. They were the enemy, not Edward.

“Well?” she urged. “We talked about it. What we’re doing is wrong.”