Prologue
WOLA, POLAND, 1944.
He pressed back against brick and stone, arms over his head, shielding himself as the buildings shook and the earth beneath him rumbled.
When the blast subsided and he opened his eyes, the square was shrouded in white dust and ash, a sight both curiously beautiful and chilling, as tiny fragments of the town and the people in it spread like unearthly snow all round. This was not destruction from a single grenade, that comparatively tiny, violent salvo of resistance, nor was this from the Nazis’ devastating Goliath tracked mines. For days the west of the city had been raided and torched, residents shot on the spot or tortured for information, and so he knew this ash was not only the remains of building and concrete, but also the remains of those who had perished within the village square during days of tireless massacre. The Verbrennungskommando, ‘the burning detachment’, was destroying evidence of the massacre here, and so his photographs, if he could smuggle them out, would matter all the more. He tried not to breathe in the deathly smoke, tried not to let it inside him. Over the past two days he had not eaten, had barely found a sip of water, and he was almost glad somehow, as the stench in the air would surely have made him retch.
There had been shouting and movement, a grenade explosion, and now the noises stopped, a kind of respite to match the eerie, slowly falling ash. He wiped his face, raised his camera.
Crouching, he moved forward on one knee. It was not safe. None of this was safe. Just a few more shots and he would retreat to the makeshift shelter inside the bombed-out building behind him, the building that for now obscured his presence, and that of his ever-present camera. But he would have to find a safer place before the dogs were let loose to seek out survivors to be killed. Already half of his focus was on escaping with his photographs. He had been in tight situations before, smuggling film out in empty toothpaste tubes, but this, he feared, was yet more serious. How would he do it? The conflict had quickly revealed itself to be a homegrown uprising of Polish rebels against a well-planned and -resourced Nazi mission of outright extermination. The German soldiers were killing all citizens, all witnesses. If they found him, they would not let him live. That, he knew.
Makeshift barricades constructed of torn-up and shattered flagstones had been manned by several young Polish boys with rifles and homemade grenades and bombs – one of which, no doubt, had caused the latest blast – but as the dust cleared, he noticed the brave boys were nowhere to be seen, their modest supply against the Wehrmacht, Dirlewanger Brigade ‘Black Hunters’ and SS Police Battalions doubtless spent. He seemed alone in the bloody square, though he doubted that was the case. Had the resistance – such as they were after five years of occupation and days of non-stop fighting – retreated to where they had a better stronghold, the square now ceded? The dusty air that, moments before, had been alive with bullets, boots and ash had now settled, it seemed, to make way for something greater, something slow and menacing. He heard the heavy crunch of tracks moving over the ground and knew instantly what it was. There was shouting in German, but he could not make out the words. From somewhere came a woman’s screams, disturbingly urgent and clear in the temporary quiet. A new rumbling grew louder.
Something was coming.
A German tank moved into the square, gun first. It was a mighty Tiger II, weighing nearly seventy tons, moving right into the line of sight of his Argus camera. The massive machine, with its brutal gun turret, thundered steadily into the square, towards the makeshift barricades, lumbering inelegantly over each bump like a great impenetrable beast, crushing everything in its path. No barricade would be equal to it. He pushed his back into the dusty building again and his shutter clicked, clicked again. He brought the camera down from his face.
No, he was not mistaken. There was something hanging on the front of the tank. Something tied there.
Not something, someone.
A woman.
It was her screams he had heard – a woman in civilian dress, tethered by the wrists to the huge gun, her body dwarfed by its size and stretched out, legs pulled back and secured by the ankles to either side of the front of the tank. Her dress was dirty and torn, her white face twisted in horror and framed by lank, brown hair. Petite and terrified, she might have been fourteen or forty, a mother or a child. All he saw was primal terror in her large, dark eyes. Again, her screams filled the square, far above the din of the tank’s infernal rumbling.
The sound proved too much.
Before he’d even begun to comprehend his actions, begun to form a plan, he foolishly rushed forward, hands outstretched, his Argus swinging awkwardly at his side, momentarily forgotten. He crossed the square in seconds and leapt onto the front of the massive, slow-moving monolith, which would not pause for him, not for anyone save its master at the helm. Caught in a kind of temporary madness, he tore at the ropes that bound the struggling woman with a singular focus. Once he had freed her left ankle, she twisted in place and gestured to her other ankle. ‘Tamten!’ she shouted in Polish. That one! He had to get the other next or she could fall face-first before the tank and be crushed under it. He tore at the binds, and heard the great hull opening, a soldier shouting.
There was no time; the soldier was climbing out and reaching for his pistol.
From the corner of his eye, he caught the movement as the woman – she was indeed an adult woman, perhaps in her twenties, he realised – swung herself nimbly upwards onto the mammoth gun with a grunt of effort and locked her dirt-streaked legs around it. She was hanging upside-down beneath the gun, and, despite his own dangerous position, he watched as if mesmerised as she inched herself forward with surprising speed and a survivor’s will, as nimble as any acrobatic performer, until her secured wrists slipped off the end of the giant gun and she fell backwards, swimming in the air, dress and hair hanging, suspended by her legs, the ropes now loose and no longer binding her. With a mechanical grinding the gun turret moved to the left, taking her with it, and she let go, throwing herself from the giant tank, then disappearing from view.
There was a pistol shot, then another, and reality came back to him with a crash as he realised how exposed he was, the precariousness of his position on the enemy tank. He turned to jump but was not fast enough; the Nazi soldier was faster, and as he hurled himself off the tank’s side he was caught across the neck, body jerking back and upwards, killing all breath, a sick, gurgling sound in his ears. He hung like a rag doll from the side of the tank by his own leather camera strap, and the mighty Tiger II continued through the square, gun roving, the great beast not halting, not even slowing.
Desperately, he clutched the strap at his neck, frantic for air, and saw blood on his fingers, his hands. It was his own, he realised. The strap of his camera was cutting in, his neck opening up. There was shouting in German, another pistol shot, and the world went black.
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