32,000 words | LIt. Fiction/War (novella)
Synopsis: A German woman whose husband works as a guard at Auschwitz is known for her great sandwiches which she creates from ingredients she finds in the forest. She befriends a young boy who escapes and when she realizes what the camp is doing, she makes a plan to poison all the camp guards with her sandwiches.
Hans sat at the same place every day for his lunch, sein mittagessen. And his lunch consisted of the same thing every day: a sandwich. The sandwich varied from day to day but it was usually either made with pork belly or pickled pig tongue or chopped liver or fat goose neck or shoulder of boar or sometimes venison and on occasion wild roe deer from the pine flats of Belarus, which Hans especially liked. And the sandwich was always piled high with sour pickles and onions and garlic and sauerkraut and mustard and horseradish and sometimes rutabaga or radishes or cabbages or turnip slices, or scallions when they were in season, and then done up and presented on thick rye bread that crumbled just the way it was supposed to when you bit down hard into it. This was not just any sandwich. Hans' pretty wife Emma made the sandwiches. She baked the bread the night before in her clay brick oven that Hans had built with his own hands out of the red brick from a schoolhouse that had been bombed by the Russians. By any means, it was a delicious sandwich just to look at as much as it was to eat. Any person’s mouth would water if they came near one of these incredible sandwiches. It was certainly much better than the food in the barracks where all the other guards ate their lunch, even though the ingredients were very much the same. Hans had a friend who worked as a butcher in the camp kitchen who got him scraps of meat and vegetables in exchange for his wife’s fine breads. But there was a secret that Hans did not know. His wife made the sandwiches with rat meat because the meat Hans got from the camp was rancid. She told him it was rabbit that she had caught in the woods with traps she had set herself, but it was all a lie.
Hans ate under a tree just a few short meters from the wire fence that ran the perimeter of the prison camp but there was a thicket of grey alder trees that hid the camp from him and him from the camp or any guards who might be patrolling the perimeter. It was his secret place, away from all the other guards and the watchful eyes of camp officers. He had only recently discovered this place of solitude and relaxation, something that was difficult to find in such a place. The year was 1943 and the hard Polish winter was gradually thawing into spring. Hans was so happy to have a place to be alone. He did not like the army life and life as a prison guard was not easy. Certainly the story of the people in the camp was much different, but Hans tried not to think of such things. Even the mention of the camp and what it did and what happened inside it could land you in prison or worse, you could be sent to the front in Russia where the winters were worse than the war which itself had a casualty rate of over 90 percent. His older brother had a job back in Munich as a city official—he worked in tax collections, a bureaucrat. He didn’t have to be out here in this place called Poland in the heat of summer and the bitter cold of winter tending to the prisoners.
The solitude was bliss to Hans. As the weather grew warmer and he no longer needed his greatcoat, Hans started stealing away little naps in the warm spring sunshine whenever he could. His sergeant, whose name was Fritz, reprimanded him for being late for his guard duties but Hans could not resist the time to be by himself. He hated Fritz. He was fat and bald and he picked his nose and his breath was horrible and he had big broad white flat feet and he always bragged that he had killed a dozen Russians on the Eastern Front, all with his bare hands. He even claimed to have pulled a man’s tongue out of his mouth and eaten it raw while the man was staring at him. Hans knew it was all a lie.
Hans had never fought in battle. He had been disqualified from duty because he couldn’t see in his left eye. His younger brother had put it out with a rock when they were both children and had gotten in an argument about a toy. That brother had been killed at Dunkirk. Hans had always dreamed of being in the glorious Luftwaffe and riding high above the realities of war, but that would never be possible with his bad eye and for other reasons that Hans could not admit to himself.
One day it was particularly warm and the flowers were blooming as if they’d never seen the beautiful yellow sunshine of spring before. Hans was napping with his face to the yellow orb when there was a noise from inside the wire. He looked over to see a little girl of about seven years in age. She was dressed in the usual striped grey camp uniforms and her hair was stringy and she was carrying a doll made of straw and rags. The camp had no special provisions for the clothing of children—their clothes were the same as all the other prisoners. The little girl was staring in his direction but when he moved, he realized she was staring at the sandwich which he had laid across his chest as he took his nap.
“Go away,” he said to her.
He could see the tattoos on the arms of the children. He closed his eyes at the thought of tattooing a child. The child did not budge or blink her big eyes. She kept staring at the sandwich. He unwrapped it from the thick butcher paper which his wife had so lovingly secured it with then he took a glorious bite. She kept looking at him with those huge eyes as he savored the taste of the ingredients. He looked at the six-digit tattoo on her forearm and for some reason, repeat the number to himself: 983212. No one could make a better sandwich than his wife, he thought. When he opened his eyes, he could see the child still staring at him. He yelled at the child again again and waved his arms, but she would not move. She stared at him with those big eyes until he could take it no more. He finally tore off a corner of the sandwich and gave her a bite, but it was not much more than a mouse could chew.
“You tell no one,” he said, wagging his big finger at her which had streaks of mustard on it as she greedily ate the morsels of food.
She said nothing but continued to stare. A waif. He gave her some more of the sandwich and then picked a yellow flower and motioned for her to move toward him. She put her body close to the fence and he took the flower and gently placed it in her hair. There were no yellow flowers on her side of the fence. Anything that grew there had been eaten, even the grass. There were no flowers of any kind on her side of the fence. She smiled at him in thanks for the flower then held out her hand for more of the sandwich.
“No more. Too much and your stomach will hurt. Now go!”
He made a growling motion like a bear and she ran away to a group of children who were playing some type of a game as if there was nothing out of the ordinary, that they were not imprisoned in a German concentration camp that had a row of red brick buildings with smoke stacks on top that belched thick black smoke on certain days of the week and after the trains arrived with new prisoners.
The next day as Hans sat in the sunshine in his secret place, the little girl came back. Another little girl was with her. She had bright red hair that hung in ringlets down her face. They both stared at Hans and his beautiful sandwich as he bit into it.
“Shoo!” he said.
They didn’t move. They both clutched their dolls, watching him.
“What are your names?”
“Anna,” said the first girl.
“Izzie,” said the second girl.
Hans could now see that Izzie’s face was full of freckles which the spring sun was flushing out with its warm energy. She was a beautiful and delicate child, he thought, much like Emma when he had first seen her when they were in grade school.
“Why is your hair not cropped like the others?”
They shrugged, not answering.
“What’s your name?” they both asked in unison.
He thought a moment as he savoured the sandwich.
“Hans,” he said as he smacked his lips and licked his fingers.
“Hansel,” they both said with ticklish laughter.
“No! It is Hans to you.”
He didn’t like being called Hansel except by his wife and even that sometimes made him angry. He heard a stomping noise and looked behind a grove of poplar trees to see his Fritz, his sergeant, making his way toward him.
“Shoo!” he yelled to the children.
The children scattered like flies as the big sergeant came over.
“What were you saying to those little brats?”
“Nothing. They lost their ball.”
Fritz squinted at the children, trying to see what game they were playing.
“What ball? I see no ball.”
“There,” Hans said, lying and pointing to an imaginary ball. There was no ball.
“Why do you not eat with the men in the mess?”
“The army food makes me ill.”
Fritz laughed his big belly laugh that made his fat face jiggle like a sow.
“Tens of thousands of starving people and you complain about the mess.”
He paused a moment and grabbed his big belly.
“You are right. The food isn’t fit for a dog.”
He then grabbed the glorious sandwich from Hans and took a big slobbering bite. He nodded his head at how good it was and then he walked away, eating the sandwich and making the odd sounds of a man who was satiated, at least temporarily.