Free Such Good Girls by R. D. Rosen Page B

building and Zofia joined a group of Polish workers at the window. What she saw was inexplicable.
    In the courtyard, six uniformed Nazi officials—Herr Leming among them—circled a long, black Mercedes touring car, festooned with tiny Nazi flags. The men were evenly spaced and moved slowly counterclockwise. As each of them passed one of the tires, he would kick it softly without breaking stride. On a command from one of them, they reversed direction and continued to circle the car clockwise. On another order, each man’s right arm shot up in unison to “Heil Hitler!” Then they all piled into the car and drove off through the courtyard gate.
    Laura couldn’t help relishing the sight of German soldiers throwing their weapons away en masse and fleeing just ahead of the Russians. But the killings continued. The retreating Nazis were emptying the camps and forcing the prisoners on death marches westward to relocate them to labor camps for a last-ditch effort to win the unwinnable. As if not enough Jews had already died, hundreds of thousands more would succumb to starvation, illness, and exposure to the cold. And despite Churchill’s promise of their imminent arrival, the Allied forces had not yet come to stop them.
    In the spring of 1945, with Germany’s defeat assured, Laura and Putzi were both concerned that they hadn’t heard from Fryda in many weeks. There had been no acknowledgment of the last two food packages. Fryda’s new camp and the factory where she worked were close to a rail line, and when reports of repeated heavy Allied bombing of Germany began circulating, Laura feared the worst. Rail lines were a primary target.
    Why, she thought? Why hadn’t the Allies managed to bomb any of the rail lines carrying Jews to their deaths in the last few years, yet they could somehow manage to bomb her sister, poor Fryda, the prettiest of them all?
    Laura accepted that it was just the three of them now, plus a cousin Toncia in Israel, and her uncle Max Schaerf, who had left Austria for Cuba and had since settled in New York City—where Laura now dreamed of going. She didn’t allow herself to feel safe even for a moment. The Germans might be on the run, but the Poles in Busko-Zdrój weren’t exactly kind to the Jews. When those who had survived both deportation and the gas chambers came filtering back to reclaim their homes, they found their fellow townspeople ensconced there with no intention of moving, or even letting the Jews reclaim their possessions. Instead the Poles threatened to—and maybe did, as far as Laura knew—shoot their own homeless countrymen. What recourse did the Jews have anyway? Complain to the new Soviet authorities, immersed as they were in setting up a local government, and who despised the Jews even more than they despised the Poles? Every Jew in Poland was doing his or her best to get out of the country.
    The Soviets came and were as loud as the Germans. They were peasants. They camped with their horses in courtyards, including Laura’s and Zofia’s, drinking vodka all the time, paring off chunks of black bread from huge round loaves (and offering pieces to Zofia), and biting into raw onions as if they were apples. They relieved themselves wherever they wanted, even in the courtyard—even in an empty office at the agricultural cooperative, where Laura continued to work. They moved into Poles’ apartments. They ate horse meat. Most of the Soviet soldiers seemed to know nothing of modern life. Laura’s daughter stared in amazement one day when a soldier, frightened by a ticking pocket watch, shot it with his service revolver.
    But the cloud of fear had lifted for Laura. In the May Day parade, she marched behind her neighbor, the mayor, with a rainbow ribbon across her chest, and with Zofia by her side.
    Putzi was a bigger concern for the moment. She was tempting fate with a new boyfriend she’d acquired after starring opposite him in a local play at the cooperative. He was a handsome