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that she could trust this
good soldier.
    "I live a few blocks from here."
    "My name is Thomas. Here, stack as much as you can in
my helmet and arms."
    "My, my name is Jessica," she replied whilst
tentatively placing some bread into his cradling arms, glancing up at him with
trepidation and wonder.
    She was pretty Thomas thought to himself. Jessica is also a
pretty name, though he refrained of course from telling the girl this. Her eyes
were a little red and her cheeks puffy - he guessed that the poor girl had been
crying - but still she was strikingly attractive. Her face was a little drawn
and skin pale but yet there was still an intelligence and comeliness in her
features. Despite her unflattering garb and malnutrition Thomas could easily
imagine what her figure must've looked like a few years ago. Yes, she was
beautiful and her long fair hair reminded the Corporal of how Maria's used to
look - but he hoped and believed that that was not the reason why he was
helping her. Later that night Thomas even feared for Jessica because of her
beauty and uncomfortably wondered if she had suffered for it - or would suffer
for it - at the hands of some of his more barbarous SS and Eastern European
comrades?
     

 
    3.
     
    Halina Rubenstein scrunched her face up in discomfort. Her
feet, sweaty and swollen, pinched inside of her stiff shoes. Yet still she
refused to take her husband's advice to just wear the woollen socks he had
bartered for her six months ago. They were ugly and it was common to wear just
socks in the home she had argued. Halina had been on her feet all day, washing,
sewing, haggling, cleaning and delousing. Finally she was cooking and about to
set the table, the task which signalled the end to her day nearly. All she had
to do was mash the potatoes - which had been cooked in one of the tenement's
three communal kitchens - and slice and ration the bread.
    The last three years had aged the Jewish matriarch more than
the last fifteen. Her auburn hair had turned grey and brittle. Crows’ feet
perched upon her eyes and, where most of the old women in the ghetto looked
glum with sunken cheeks, Halina strangely looked glum through having developed
jowls. Her calloused hands had suddenly become liver-spotted over the course of
the summer although at first she fancied that they were just freckles. The heat
from the kitchens exhausted the once supercilious socialite but still she
refused to take the weight off her feet whilst waiting to serve dinner. They
were a family and they would eat as a family. Halina nervously looked at her
watch again and flared her nostrils in frustration at her daughter's tardiness.
    "Where is she?"
    Halina Rubenstein had repeated this question again in hope
of getting an answer or at least a comment, from her husband sitting at the
table - but he either deliberately ignored his wife or was just "away with
the fairies again". Nowadays she couldn't tell.
    "Can't we eat now?" Kolya pleaded once more, his
fork upright in his tiny hand.
    "No!" his mother snapped back, "Be patient!
We always eat as a family. Don't be so selfish. You're not the only one who's
hungry."
    Witnessing the chastised expression on his face and
understanding how hungry her child must have been the mother cut off a piece of
bread for him, said sorry and stroked him on the cheek. As famished as Kolya was
he savoured the ration by slowly chewing each bite-sized piece of the stale
bread which he broke off from the thin slice.
    Solomon Rubenstein broke into what was for him a smile upon
witnessing the lively enthusiasm and satisfaction on his son's face as he
enjoyed his bread. Father and son had all but swapped roles over the last two
years. Kolya now took care of his "Papa"   - often washing, dressing and feeding him when his mother
couldn't manage or was busy. The boy had replaced Solomon as, quite literally,
the principle bread winner in the house, running dangerous errands (which he
insisted were quite safe) for the Jewish