Free Making Bombs For Hitler by Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch

kitchens.
    “Come on,” said Juli, grabbing my hand.
    The hospital was the last place on earth that I wanted to be, but I had no choice. When we got there, Juli held the door open and pulled me in. The first thing I noticed was the strong smell of bleaching powder and I found this comforting. At least it was clean. The entryway was a small room with wooden benches along the wall and a glassed-in reception area beside a second door. Juli nodded to the white-uniformed woman behind the glass and then opened the second door, which revealed a series of rooms on either side of a long wide corridor. I followed her down the painted concrete floors of the hallway, glancing fearfully into each room as we passed. Everything looked so normal. Each room held eight or so wooden beds with straw mattresses similar to the bunks in our barracks, only these were neatly made up with good white cotton sheets, and instead of being stacked in tiers, they were all on the floor. The first room was empty, but in the second, two of the hospital beds were occupied. The man and womanhad a uniformity about them — both were gaunt and motionless — looking more like corpses than patients. No nurse or doctor was in attendance.
    “Are those people forced labourers?” I whispered to Juli.
    She frowned and put a finger to her lips.
    Who would hear us? But just then, a couple of nurses and a man in a white coat stepped out of a room at the end of the hallway. The doctor took no notice of us, but carefully noted something on his clipboard as he slowly walked with the nurses down the hallway towards us.
    He looked up as we drew closer to the group. “I see they gave you a girl to help you make up the other rooms.”
    “Yes, Herr Doctor,” said Juli, nodding to him in deference.
    “Do it quickly, then. The train with the injured is on its way.” He and the nurses continued down the hallway and went out through the door.
    Juli took out a stack of clean sheets from the linen cupboard and handed them to me. I followed her into one of the next rooms. I didn’t think anyone would be able to hear us as we worked so I tried to ask Juli again about the patients, keeping my voice low just in case.
    “They’re Germans,” she whispered. “They’re being slowly starved to death.”
    I could barely hide my shock. “Why would the Nazis starve Germans?”
    “They are no longer useful,” said Juli. “The woman was a warden. She has advanced cancer, and the man has a head injury. He used to be one of the police.”
    I continued to make the beds in silence, but my mindtumbled with conflicting thoughts and fears. A hospital was supposed to be a place of healing, but it was at a hospital that my sister was taken from me. At this hospital some patients had been treated for injuries, but healthy children had been killed for their blood. Now here were Nazis using hospitals to kill even Germans they considered not useful. It seemed that everyone was a piece of a big machine, and if you stopped working, you were thrown out. What part of the machine was my sister being used for? She was so much younger than I. How useful could she possibly be? A dozen terrifying scenarios fluttered through my imagination. Could Larissa survive?
    I made a final snug corner on the sheet of the last bed and put my hands on my hips, regarding all of the newly made-up beds. Would this room be used for healing or killing?
    I heard the chugging of the train as it approached. “Let’s go,” said Juli.
    As I walked beside her to meet the train, all I could think of was that hospital. I didn’t envy Juli, having to work there every day. It had to be horrible for her to witness things she had no way of stopping. The image of those two dying Germans was burned into my mind. If the doctors and nurses were supposed to make them die, why such a long process as starving them? My memory flashed back to when I was little and the Nazis had taken all the Jews and shot them in broad daylight. They shot