Free Underground Soldier by Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch

after the Nazis display the corpses in the woods, I wake up to the ground shaking. A piece of plaster falls from the ceiling and crashes down inches from my head. “What is happening?” I yelp, jumping out of bed.
    “Come on,” says David, slipping his feet into a pair of shoes.
    When we get out to the street, a billow of smoke drifts beyond Pecherska Lavra. Many people mill about, startled awake like us.
    “The Soviets planted a bomb in the arsenal before they left,” says a man, breathlessly running down the street in his pyjamas.
    “It wasn’t the Soviets,” says an old woman with swollen ankles sitting on the steps of a crumbling building. “It’s probably the Jews again.”
    “How can you say such a thing?” I ask her.
    “It talks about a similar incident right here,” she says, pointing to an article in the Nazi paper. “And they’ve arrested some of the culprits.”
    The only Jews who are left in the city are the sick and elderly, women and children — not any different than the people left behind who aren’t Jewish. Everyone who was important has been evacuated to safety. And we all know now that the young leaders of the city who were opposed to Stalin have been murdered at Bykivnia.
    On September 24 we are ordered to register at the makeshift German government office in the old hotel on Svertlov Street. Thousands wait patiently in line as the new city clerks try their best to fill out the German forms.
    When it is finally my turn, I notice that the clerks have three columns of names.
    “Why do you have three lists?” I ask.
    “Our Nazi leaders have more respect for your beliefs than the Soviets ever did,” he says. “We’re listing how many Jews, Russians, Ukrainians live here. That way the Nazis can reopen the right number of churches and synagogues.”
    I turn and leave, wondering about his comment. Does that mean that they will turn Pecherska Lavra back into a monastery? An interesting idea.
    I am a hundred metres away from the registration building when there is a loud, rumbling roar. Suddenly I fly through the air, pieces of concrete raining on my back. I land on my hands in the cobblestone road, scraping my face, the wind knocked out of me. The upper floor of the toy store beside the registration building flies off in the explosion and lands on top of dozens of people waiting in line.
    My face is wet with blood and the back of my shirt in shreds. A frail man comes out from one of the houses and mops my face with his handkerchief. Just then, a second explosion rocks the street. The registration building is engulfed in smoke and rubble.
    “Another gift from Stalin,” the man grumbles, folding up his bloodied handkerchief. “I guess we can expect another announcement that the Jews did it.”
    For the next two days, buildings explode every few minutes from bombs planted by the NKVD before they escaped. Soviet undercover agents throw Molotov cocktails, igniting buildings. Because the fire department has abandoned the city, a massive fire burns for a week and a huge cloud of ash hangs yet again over Kyiv.
    We do all that we can to get the fires out, but the flames rage on. In retaliation, the Nazis shoot anyone who lives in a building beside one that burned — for not trying hard enough to put the fire out, they claim, though David says that they are just looking for excuses to kill us.
    At dusk on the last Sunday in September, I stand on the roof of our communal flat, David beside me. All around, Kyiv burns.
    “What is to become of us?” I ask.
    David shrugs, then points to a soldier who is nailing a notice to a post down the street. “Let’s go see what it says.”
    A small crowd gathers on the street in front of the sign, blocking our view. Someone at the front says, “They’re ordering all the Jews to assemble near the cemetery on Monday at eight o’clock in the morning. They’re to pack for travel.”
    As we walk back home, David says, “Where do you think they’re going