The Plum Tree

by Ellen Marie Wiseman

Christine skirted the old and middle-aged women trudging along in front of her, wondering if they could remember the giddy thrill of passion before life had forced them to rush through their days without seeing the world.

Christmas was an enduring milestone that came and went, while the world forever changed.

If the wind was right and she opened the window, she could hear the hollow thump-thump of dropping bombs echoing through the earth, like the giant fists of an angry god.

Parents were warned that if their children were eligible and did not join one of Hitler’s youth groups, they’d be put into an orphanage.

rain tapped against the windowpanes like icy fingernails.

She was the key to their survival and the last thread to anything familiar and normal. From food in their stomachs to clean clothes and warm baths, their mother provided the only bits of comfort to be had.

Christine could see bombs falling from the bellies of the planes, like seeds tumbling from a farmer’s hand.

How helpless she must feel, waiting to see if Hitler’s war would be the death of her children.

At first, she tried to count the number of explosions, but the blasts grew too numerous and close together, as if God were having a tantrum and stomping His feet on the earth.

Sleep was an escape, and she wished she could join them.

her body responding to her frame of mind with lethargic movements, as if her limbs were not flesh and blood, but water-soaked timber from a long-sunken shipwreck.

Last night, she’d suffered through terrible dreams; there were none that she could remember, but they’d left her with a feeling of prickly apprehension along with a physical burden that made her legs feel like lead and her body move in slow motion. Even the swirling gray sky seemed to weigh her down.

Her mind, reeling from terror, somehow directed her numb, rag-doll body to take her home.

As Christine and her family walked up the hill toward their house, she wondered if every person on earth had only a certain number of prayers that would be answered. If so, she was sure she had almost run out.

An old, skinny hen pecked at her hand, pinching the skin. Just this slight provocation was enough to make her cry—not that it really hurt, but it took only this minor fracture in the shell of her fragile state to spring the leak that allowed every other pain to find its way to the surface and overflow.

As the train drew closer, the hiss of steam and the screech of brakes grew louder and louder. The train stopped outside the building, pistons pounding, like the giant, beating heart of a mammoth black creature fighting its way through the very walls of the building, so it could eat them alive.

Countless people were crushed into the boxcar like kindling, filling every square inch. It was dark and stifling hot, the stench of urine and feces permeating the air.

As the trains drew closer and closer to the gates of Dachau, each mighty, lumbering exhale of the slowing engines sounded to Christine like the final, dying breath of humanity.

Now, every blade of grass, every insect and sparrow, every leaf and tree had become a spectacular gift. And yet, while the skin on her face and hands felt warm in the sun, inside she still felt frozen, like spring thaw running over river ice.

Only then did the chill that radiated from deep inside her bones seem to retreat.

hold her chin high and look out toward the hills, remembering when the fields had been yellow with sprouting wheat, and row after row of sugar beets had spread toward stone fences like the long, green ribs of a sleeping giant.

Relieved, she’d fall back on her bed, limp and trying to catch her breath, until, in the next instant, realization sent a hollow draft of sorrow through her bones. Maria was dead.

In the distance, she saw row after row of low, dark barracks, like coffins for giants lined up as far as the eye could see.

Four novels I’ve read and enjoyed have also helped guide me through this period in history: Those Who Save Us by Jenna Blum, Skeletons at the Feast by Chris Bohjalian, The Book Thief by Markus Zusak, and Sarah’s Key by Tatiana de Rosnay.