Free For Such a Time by Kate Breslin

of all people.”
    “What has that medal ever done for me?” Morty demanded. “Bought me freedom, or at least given me my own bed to sleep in? Does it clothe me in something warmer than this summer jacket while I root around in the snow like an animal—for worms, rotten potatoes, anything I can shove down my throat to ease the craving in my belly?”
    “What about your pride, Jew?” Yaakov waved a callused fist in the air. “What about your dignity as a soldier?”
    Morty let out a rusty bark of laughter. “Jewish pride is a luxury we can no longer afford, my friends. As for a soldier’s dignity,” he went on, his voice turning bitter, “that no longer exists. These soldiers do not fight for Germany. They fight for Hitler, who fights for a place that doesn’t include us filthy Jews.”
    Yaakov relaxed his stance. “Ja,” he admitted. “Hitler has taken my own Czechoslovakia and turned it into a war zone. Even our beloved city of Terezin.”
    He stared at the fortress behind them, then spit at the frozen ground. “The Nazis have shamed her, turning her into a holding pen for Auschwitz.” He jabbed the head of his pick against the snow. “Resort, my foot.”
    “Paradise . . .” Leo echoed in wheezing disgust.
    “I’ll take over for a while, Leo. You rest.” Morty grabbed the other man’s pick by its handle. Teeth clenched, he drew on allhis strength to raise the axe over his head and let it fall again, chipping away a large chunk of unforgiving earth.
    He understood their resentment; the Nazis had also deceived Morty into believing he was bound for a spa resort, a Paradiesghetto , in Czechoslovakia. “Hitler’s Gift”—a reward for affluent Jews the Reich considered prominent figures in Europe: an eclectic assortment of artists, musicians, writers, and like himself, a few highly decorated heroes from Germany’s first big war.
    Any expectations had vanished once he arrived. Behind Theresienstadt’s stone walls lay squalid living conditions, disease, and death—like a festering boil the most expensive cosmetics could not hide. And food . . .
    Morty actually feared thinking about it. That he never had enough to eat filled him with such despair, his tenuous hold on sanity often stretched to the point of pain.
    Yet at night, in his dreams, he recounted in intimate detail his favorite dishes. Wiener Schnitzel , the lightly breaded veal cooked extra tender and served with red sauerkraut, onion Kuchen , palffy dumplings, glazed fruit bread, and of course plum-filled Zwetschken Strudel for dessert.
    Food had been such an integral part of family life. It brought loved ones together in communion with God’s gifts, shared laughter mingled with the exchanges of news, while problems were unburdened onto the shoulders of those who, above all, understood.
    Each morning as he awakened from the dreams, Morty felt a sense of comfort, of being normal. It sustained him with enough rational thought to face another day in the place Jews called “Hell’s Gate.”
    He glanced back to where the commandant’s Mercedes had been. All that remained was a depression of tire tracks in the snow, like the heaviness that pressed against his heart as he thought of the woman inside that house. She with the blond hair and blue eyes of his beautiful niece . . .
    “You keep standing there holding that pick like a golf club, and the captain will surely be back,” Yaakov warned. “Then we’ll all end up in the Little Fortress and Mrs. Brenner won’t have anything for the pot.”
    Morty raised the pick for another blow.
    “Here, give me that.” Yaakov snatched the pick from his hands. “Already you’ve mangled two potatoes, see? You’ll need to dig out the rest by hand.”
    Morty arched a brow. “You know I have bad knees,” Yaakov grumbled. “Leo’s too weak to dig. You must do it.”
    Morty crouched beside the furrowed hole. “I miss her, Yaakov. The young woman Joseph wrote to us about this morning? She sounds