The Hand that Signed the Paper by Helen Dale

Author:Helen Dale [Dale, Helen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Ligature
Published: 2017-04-20T14:00:00+00:00

DURING the deportations from the ghetto, Jews with industrial work passes are not to be removed from the ghetto precinct. However, some of these work-Jews try to smuggle their children past the Germans and Ukrainians at the checkpoints around the ghetto, rather than see them sent away. They chloroform their babies and hide them in knapsacks, and one bright, hot day, a knapsack on a father’s back mysteriously starts to cry. The people filing past freeze. The German in charge of the selection lets fly with a stream of filth that makes even Nikolai blush to the roots of his black hair. ‘You cocksucker! What the fuck do you think you’re going to do? Keep your cunts of kids away from here!’ The Jew is the colour of pale puke, his eyes roll up in his head. Vitaly looks at the pallid face, and in the passage of a second, feels immensely sorry for this man with a round, sensitive mouth and thin hair and pathetic, frightened eyes. How can something be so nasty and so nice at the same time? He experiences a series of feelings in that second. Pity. Fear. Longing. Power. Hate. He lunges forward, his long fingers fixing his bayonet. He drives it into the knapsack. Blood runs down his arms, splashes his face and hair. He hears nothing of the wild screams around him, sees nothing of the other Ukrainians trying to keep some sort of order. He stops. The Jew crashes to the pavement, his eyes wide. His body curled foetally. The German is hitting him with his whip, over and over again. Vitaly levels his rifle, and in what he will always consider to be an act of mercy, shoots the man between the eyes.

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