Underground in Amsterdam
Published in Issue #15(Excerpt from a Novel)
subscribe to unlock the full story
As she scanned the faces of the other five workers she’d been trained not to recognize, Rachel was sure she’d seen the old man sitting across from her before. Her chair felt rickety. Despite the warm July evening, the Amsterdam basement smelled moldy, and the air felt slimy and chilly. At least, if anything went wrong, there was an exit into the back garden. She was thankful to be young and strong and a good runner.
Their host was a man she thought she’d seen before, Mr. De Vries, a short elderly figure with a slight hump on his back. He kept trying unsuccessfully to focus on the urgent subject that had brought them together for a rare meeting: brainstorming more addresses where people could hide.
“Why are the raids getting so much worse?” a young woman with a perpetual frown asked.
Rolling his eyes, a man who called himself Walther snarled, “It’s the property they’re after! What else?”
Rachel pointed out that all Jewish assets of any size had long since been seized. What more could the Nazis want?
“Our apartments and all that fine furniture the rich Jews brought with them from Berlin.” Walther spoke as if this was crushingly obvious.
“Just a minute,” an icy male voice interjected. His accent meant he was probably a German refugee. “We’ve been warning you about the Nazis since 1938. Most of us had to abandon everything to come to Amsterdam. We thought other Jews would take care of us . . .”
“And we have,” Walther said....
Subscribe now to keep reading
Please enter your email to log in or create a new account.