The Auslander by Paul Dowswell Read Free Book Online

with his blond hair and sharp features. He would be proud to bring up a boy who looked like that.
    â€˜But he must be a strapping lad – thirteen you say?’ said Frau Kaltenbach. ‘If he was a baby, perhaps the girls would be more likely to accept him.’
    Her husband reached across the table and placed his hand on hers. ‘Liese, having Charlotte nearly killed you. And even if we took the risk of having another child, the probability is almost certainly for another girl. I propose we go and inspect him. Then we shall make our decision.’
    Leave of absence was hastily arranged and Franz and Liese Kaltenbach headed east to the Lebensborn hostel at Landsberg.

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    CHAPTER 7
    Landsberg
    September 2, 1941
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    Piotr sat alone in a spartan side room of the hostel. Fräulein Spreckels had taken him here from the train station and left him with a friendly pinch on the cheek. For the last week or so he had been waiting. Too restless to settle down for long with a book or magazine, Piotr had been allowed to go for walks around the grounds, and no further.
    â€˜I had two of you Polacks bolt on me the other week,’ said the matron when he arrived. ‘That will NOT be happening again.’
    â€˜Frau Matron,’ said Piotr indignantly, ‘I want to go to Germany. Why are you all assuming I’m going to escape?’
    Outside, late summer sunshine fell on the beautifully kept grounds of the hostel. Young women wandered in twos and threes with their babies and prams, chatting together. At first, Piotr had wondered what they were doing there. Then one of the nicer nurses had explained that the Lebensborn hostels weren’t usually for children like him. They were mainly for unmarried young women eager to give a child to the Reich, but anxious to be away from disapproving relatives or gossiping neighbours. Once they had their baby, they would give it up for adoption and go back to their old lives.
    The sunshine made Piotr feel lonely. It was five or six weeks now since his mother and father had been killed. He had stopped thinking about them as if they were still alive. For weeks afterwards he had said to himself ‘Dad will be really pleased with me for doing that’ or ‘I must tell Mum, she’ll find this interesting.’
    Then the reality of it would hit him like a steam train and he would have to fight back his tears. This was the time when he most wished he had a brother or sister to keep him company. He had never felt more alone in his life. Still, what was it his mum had always told him? ‘Try to look on the bright side.’ She used to say that whenever he complained about anything.
    So he did. Yesterday the matron here had told him about the family from Berlin who were very interested in meeting him.
    â€˜They are well-to-do, important people,’ she said. ‘Professor Kaltenbach is an assistant director at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute. Frau Kaltenbach runs a Lebensborn hostel in Berlin like this one. They have three daughters. So if they take you, they’ll make no end of a fuss of you.’
    Now he had been called in and told that they were on their way. As he sat there wondering what they would be like, the clock ticked loudly. Where were they? What was happening?
    He stared at a calendar on the wall. The picture for August showed an SS soldier in full uniform and knee-high black boots, crouching by a wicker pram. He was smiling benevolently at a tiny blond-haired baby who poked his head curiously over the side. Piotr thought of the soldier who had shooed him away from his family’s farm in Wyszkow and shot his dog. He had the same black boots, and the same lightning stripes and death’s-head skulls on his uniform.
    Piotr got up and turned the calendar over. It was September now, after all. This picture showed a proud German mother with five boys – all dressed in the uniform of the Hitler-Jugend , all barely a year apart in age.
    There was