Читать книгу We Were Young and at War: The first-hand story of young lives lived and lost in World War Two - Sarah Wallis - Страница 60

‘Don’t leave us under the barbarian’s yoke’

By January 1941, 290 million Europeans were living under Nazi rule, with Hitler declaring that within ‘a hundred years’ the German language would be ‘the language of Europe’. Britain and its Empire now fought alone to prevent Germany’s complete domination of Europe west of the Soviet border. Churchill was determined to ‘aid and stir the people of every conquered country to resistance and revolt’, and planned to be ready to launch a land attack by 1942, having received the ‘tools…necessary for victory’ from the United States, under the Lend-Lease scheme.

Inside the countries of German-occupied Europe people were treated according to Nazi racial policy. Even the daily food rations were allocated according to race, with Jewish Poles clearly intended to starve on 184 calories a day compared to the French on a ration of 1,300. In France there was an element of ‘cooperation’, albeit on unequal terms: France would be plundered but not completely exploited. While the Germans expropriated coal, food and works of art, a French administration continued to exist, universities and schools remained open and the south of the country remained nominally French. In the east, Poland had ceased to exist as an independent country and its lands were taken over as extra ‘living space’ and resettled by Germans. Schools and universities were shut down and the German language imposed. The country’s 3 million Jews were taken from their homes and enclosed in medieval-style ghettos, where they were forced to work for the German authorities.

Dawid Sierakowiak and his family were evicted from their home in Łódź in May 1940 and moved into a ghetto created in the city’s slum area. A perimeter fence sealed in Łódź’s Jewish inhabitants, separating them from the rest of the city, renamed ‘Litzmannstadt’, which was then renovated and resettled with Germans. With no school to attend, at sixteen Dawid was confined to a narrow, perpetually hungry existence in which he and his family struggled to keep their dignity.

In England, Brian Poole had spent the remainder of 1940 enduring the Blitz. A raid on Manchester, in December, had destroyed his father’s office and much of the city centre. Apart from a few gaps in their correspondence, which they put down to shipping losses, Brian and Trudie continued to share details of their lives on either side of the Atlantic.

By the end of July Micheline Singer and her family had moved back into their flat in the fashionable eighth district of Paris, just off the Champs-Élysées. The occupying Germans transformed the area around Micheline’s home: the hotel opposite was requisitioned for high-ranking administrators, the Wehrmacht took over the ministry next door and the Gestapo based themselves just around the corner. Some things continued as before: Micheline and her best friend, Yvette, were back at their old girls’ school, the Lycée Racine, where normal lessons resumed, though they now had to learn German.

After six months under German occupation, Micheline remained passionately Anglophile.