Only the Brave by Danielle Steel

Author:Danielle Steel [Steel, Danielle]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2024-04-29T00:00:00+00:00

* * *

—

The days were as long and hard as her bunkmates had warned her, and as she had expected. Their shared information made life easier, but the hardships were as severe as they and others told her. Sophia was assigned to the tailor shop, which made the prison uniforms, and uniforms for the SS. Ravensbrück also received most of the confiscated luxury items, like fur coats and fancy clothes confiscated from Jews in Berlin and neighboring towns, which were then passed on to officers’ wives if they wished them. They had to be checked and repaired if necessary, before being sent back to Berlin.

Sophia had no great needlework skills, and making the SS officers’ uniforms was painstaking work. She worked a fourteen- or fifteen-hour day and often missed her evening meal of soup, while she tried to finish a uniform in fabrics that were stiff and hard to work with. And her supervisors were exacting and demanding and critical, and often made her start again.

Other women were lent to factories who hired slave labor from the camp. They frequently lived in barracks outside the camp near the factories, but punishments were harsher there to prevent escapes. One of the factories made electrical components for rockets. And some of the older women knitted sweaters and warm scarves for the army. Everyone had a job, and everyone worked hard with no gratitude or praise. Brigitte was elated when she got transferred to a job in the kitchen washing dishes after a year of cleaning latrines.

As hard as they were, their jobs helped pass the time from one day to the next. They had Sunday off, which most of them spent lying on their bunks, getting ready for another week of forced labor, and some of them slept all day, and didn’t have the strength to do anything else.

Sophia had just finished an SS uniform with relief after three unsuccessful attempts, for an officer in the records office where Tamar worked. He had come for a fitting, and it still hadn’t fit him properly the last time he tried it, and she hoped it would this time. She had pricked her fingers dozens of times, and the sewing machines they used were antiquated. It was the week before Christmas, and she knew he needed it for the Officers’ Dinner in two days.

He arrived to pick it up at the end of the day, and she knew she’d miss the evening meal of watery soup if she stayed, but she had to know if she got it right this time, or if she’d have to work all night to correct it. So she waited, and he showed up minutes before the tailor shop closed. His name was Hans Mahler, and he was a young lieutenant who looked like a poster for Nazi Youth. He was tall, blond, and would have been movie-star handsome if he hadn’t been a Nazi. Knowing what he represented and the punishments he undoubtedly delivered, Sophia was disgusted by him.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.