The Dressmaker and the Hidden Soldier by Doug Gold

Author:Doug Gold [Doug Gold]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Allen & Unwin
Published: 2023-07-10T00:00:00+00:00

Weeks passed, but Thalia couldn’t forget the vivid images of the hanged bodies with their necks twisted sideways. It was the most awful thing she had ever seen. Each night she prayed that she would never again be an unwilling spectator to Nazi retribution or callous cruelty. But of course, it did happen again — and this time much closer to home.

‘They’ve got Pauline. The pigs have got Pauline!’ Thalia said through breathless sobs as she burst into the house. ‘I saw them taking her away. They’ve arrested Pauline.’

‘Pauline? It can’t be true,’ Tasoula exclaimed, hoping that Thalia had made a mistake. The Nazis were targeting Jews, she knew, but Pauline had kept her religion and nationality secret. Only Tasoula, Thalia and Fifi knew.

‘I’m sorry, Mrs Tasoula, but it’s true. I can’t believe it. The brutes dragged her and her parents out on to the street and put them in the back of a truck. There must have been sixty or more jammed in there. They treated the poor souls like cattle — worse than cattle. It was terrible, Mrs Tasoula. Just awful. The whole family had one small suitcase between them, and God knows where they’ll take them. What will become of Pauline? She was such a good friend.’ Thalia broke down in tears.

Pauline was one of Tasoula’s best dressmakers and among her most trusted employees. She hated the Germans even more than Tasoula. ‘It’s just another example of Nazi inhumanity,’ Tasoula said, wrapping her arms around Thalia. ‘The Nazi swine hate the Jews. They’ve shut down synagogues, raided their libraries and ransacked their shops. The devils won’t rest until they’ve wiped them out altogether. Poor beggars.’

Thalia had seen the ‘Juden’ posters plastered over shop windows and the anti-Semitic slogans crudely hand-painted on walls. The rounding up of Jewish people was deliberate and systematic. Most would never return home, the whispers said; the Nazi plan was to exterminate them. Subhuman, the Nazis called them — no better than animals. Tasoula was under no illusions as to the fate of Pauline and her family, but there was no way she could tell Thalia the truth.

Peter was also under no illusions about their fate, and was disconsolate. Pauline was one of the nicest of Tasoula’s girls. Apart from Thalia, she was his favourite — always ready with a joke and sporting a genuine smile. Peter knew her parents, too — the family lived a few doors down the road. He had, in fact, just finished mending a clock for Pauline’s father.

‘Bastards.’ Peter seldom swore, but the barbarity of the round-up and the persecution of thousands of innocent people justified the exception.

Many of Tasoula’s friends were Jewish, as was most of Thessaloniki’s population — it was commonly known as the Jerusalem of the Baltics. Their systematic persecution disgusted her, singled out as they were for no other reason than religion and ethnicity. But there was little she could do to help.

It had started on 11 July 1942, a Saturday. Black Sabbath, they called it, because the Nazis had timed their purge to coincide with the Jewish holy day.

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