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trying to bar their way, an act of sheer desperation. ‘No, please!’
    One of the men grabbed her by the hair and threw her to the floor, the other pointing his rifle at her. Samuel roared and leapt at the man. Two shots rang out from the Oberleutnant’s pistol and suddenly Samuel was sprawled on the wooden floor, blood seeping from his head.
    Ruth crawled to him, screaming hysterically, but one of the SS men dragged her to her feet. Then the door to the bedroom slowly opened, and Mannie stood there, Rachel in his arms. He was wearing Samuel’s coat which always hung on the peg behind the door, the coat with the Star of David stitched on the left side of the chest.
    â€˜We will go with you quietly,’ he said. ‘We will cause no trouble. Come, come my dear, Rachel needs you.’ The child was crying, and he held her out to her mother. The SS man released Ruth and she took the little girl in her arms, burying Rachel’s face against her shoulder so the child wouldn’t see the body of her father.
    â€˜The report stated there was a family of three in this apartment,’ the Gestapo officer said. ‘The family of Lachmann. Man, wife and child.’
    â€˜That is so,’ Mannie said, his arm about Ruth. She was controlling her hysteria for the sake of her daughter, but her horrified gaze was focussed on the ever-increasing pool of blood around her husband’s head. Mannie pulled her close to him. ‘I am Samuel Lachmann, this is my wife Ruth, and this is our child.’
    â€˜And what of this man?’ the officer demanded, pointing at the body on the floor.
    â€˜My brother – he was visiting us.’
    â€˜His bad luck,’ the Oberleutnant sneered, and the other SS men exchanged smirks. The only good Jew was a dead one, they all agreed.
    The Gestapo officer did not approve of the remark, just as he did not approve of the shooting. His job was to conduct good, swift roundups, neat and efficient. Get the Jews out of his jurisdiction and down to the Grunewald Goods Train Station. The gun-happy thugs of the SS made things messy. There were three more raids to be conducted that night, and God knew how many more bodies there would be for his men to collect in the morning.
    â€˜You are permitted to pack one suitcase. You have three minutes,’ he ordered.
    â€˜We are packed already,’ Mannie said. He knew where Samuel and Ruth kept the suitcase. They had been prepared for such a moment for the past two years.
    One of the SS men accompanied him into the bedroom and watched while Mannie slid the suitcase out from under the bed and took Ruth’s coat with its Star of David from the peg behind the door.
    Mannie didn’t know why he was doing what he was doing. Perhaps it was to assuage his shame as a Roman Catholic, although he was sure his death would serve little purpose. Perhaps it was his love for Ruth and his instinctive desire to protect her. Who could say? He only knew that what he was doing was right, and that he was prepared to pay the price.
    He draped the coat over her shoulders and Ruth, in a state of shock, allowed him to guide her to the door. Mannie glanced back briefly at the body of his friend, the stream of Samuel’s blood now gathering about one of the legs of the dining room table. Then, both oblivious to the officious barking of the Oberleutnant, he and Ruth stepped out into the hall.
    â€˜Juden raus! Raus! Schnell! Schnell!’
    The Gestapo officer switched off the light and pulled the door closed behind them. How he wished the man would shut up.

 

They came from everywhere. Within a matter of months, the mountain work camps and townships of the Monaro rang with a cacophony of unfamiliar accents and languages which confused both the locals and the hundreds of their fellow countrymen who had flocked to the area looking for work. Even city-bred Australians, who’d bumped into the odd ‘Wog’ and considered themselves