Flight of the Valkyrie by Christopher Vale

Author:Christopher Vale [Vale, Christopher]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2016-05-23T23:00:00+00:00

***

Axel handed Brygida a cup of coffee. “Thank you,” she said and took a sip. She turned to Rolf who still stared down at his plate. She frowned before turning back to her coffee. Axel noticed his brother.

“Rolf are you okay?” he asked. Rolf nodded but would not look up at him.

Axel lowered himself into a chair next to Brygida. “You’ll have to forgive us, this is all quite shocking,” he said.

Brygida nodded. “I know, Axel. I don’t know if it would have been better if I had approached you on the street as I had planned to do so many times. I guess any way is better than this way though,” she said with a nervous chuckle before sipping her coffee. “I had rehearsed what I would say to you when we finally met over and over in my mind, but now, I don’t know what to say.”

Axel nodded. “Well, start at the beginning,” he said.

“The beginning?” she asked.

“Yes,” Axel replied. “Who are you?”

Brygida looked up and he saw tears building in her eyes. “Alright,” she said. “My name is Brygida Dubenski. I was born in small town in Poland in 1916. My mother’s name was Sara and my father’s name was Micah. In fact, I was going to name one of you after my father and the other one after…” Brygida stopped as the memories of the night her husband Noah was killed came flooding back to her. She set her coffee cup on the table and covered her mouth in a failed attempt to force back a sob.

Axel reached out and placed a hand gently on her arm. “It is alright,” he said. “We don’t have to talk about it.”

Brygida shook her head, wiped her eyes with her fingers and composed herself. “No, Axel,” she said. “We need to talk about it.” She glanced over at Rolf who had peeked at her briefly, but now returned to staring at his plate when she turned to look at him.

“It was late in 1939. The Germans had taken over Poland, of course, and were ordering that all Jews be relocated to a ghetto in Warsaw.” She stopped and looked up into Axel’s eyes. “My husband, Noah, knew what was happening. So many others just went along with them, piling into trains to go to Warsaw as instructed. But Noah, he said they were just getting us together to kill us more easily. I’m sure you know how Warsaw turned out.” Axel nodded.

The Nazis had done just that, though not without resistance from the residents of the ghetto. In 1943, the Nazis attempted to transport the remaining Jewish residents of Warsaw to the Treblinka death camp. The fighting between the Germans and the Jews lasted nearly a month, but the Jewish resistance lost in the end. The Germans burnt down the ghetto, block by block and some thirteen thousand Jews died. At least half of them were burnt to death.

“Anyway we didn’t go to Warsaw. We fled. Noah had found a nice couple—a Catholic couple—who said they would help us.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.