Peenemunde

True story, once a girl shattered my nose with a strike from her forearm.  Surgery was required to put things back where they belonged.  When I woke up, I was extremely disoriented.  I didn’t know where I was, or what had happened.

 

The nurse explained that, aside from the medication that put me to sleep, part of the disorientation was physical.  I had been put to sleep in the hospital’s surgical suite, then moved to the post-anesthesia recovery area before I woke up.  Humans know their physical location subconsciously.  We expect to wake up in the same place we went to sleep.

 

When Artur and his family emerged from the basement after the bombing of Warsaw, it must have been something like that.  A few days before, when they descended the stairs seeking shelter, there was a bakery, and an ancient, historic city just above them.  When they emerged, everything was gone.  The bakery, and much of the city, had been replaced with smoldering fires and endless piles of rubble.

 

For the first time in his life, Piotr felt helpless.  He had no idea how he was going to support his family.  The roof of the bakery had caved in, the walls collapsed.  The ovens and most of the equipment had been crushed by falling debris.  They were only able to get out of the basement after firemen cleared away the rubble in the stairwell.

 

Their house fared no better.  A torrid fire set off by the bombs raged through their neighborhood and burned everything to the ground.

 

Piotr took stock of his situation.  His country had been overrun by hostile invaders.  His business and his house had been destroyed.  He had almost no money. 

 

Amazingly enough, no one in his immediate family had been killed or injured.  The deep basement of the bakery had protected them while Hell’s fury raged above.

 

He wasn’t sure what to do next.  But he was a baker, and he knew people must have food. 

 

Piotr asked one of the firemen how Krucza Street fared during the bombing.  That was where Mleczny Bakery was located.  Piotr’s main competitor in their part of Warsaw.  The fireman said that area was less damaged than here.

 

Piotr and his family gathered up their few belongings and worked their way through the debris to Krucza Street.

 

He didn’t even like Dominik Mleczny.  They had been rivals in school before they each took over their family’s business, just a few blocks apart.  A week ago, he would have rather cut off an arm than ask Dominik for a job.  But life had changed in a drastic fashion, and there was no going back.

 

Assuming he was still alive, and his bakery intact, Piotr had no idea how Dominik would receive him.  He particularly regretted the black eye he gave Dominik when they were teenagers.  But there was no point worrying about the past.  Piotr took a deep breath when he rounded the corner and saw that the building was still there.  The unmistakable smell of warm bread confirmed that the walk had been worth the effort.

 

The rest of his concerns evaporated when he walked through the door.  Dominik gave Piotr a hug, then burst into tears.  Although his bakery suffered little more than broken windows, the same could not be said for the Mleczny family.  Dominik lost his wife and two of his three children in the bombing.  His home, like Piotr’s, had burned to the ground.

 

The previous issues between the men seemed trivial.  They were both in the same badly damaged boat.  The way forward was obvious.  The two families would join forces.  Those in the city who survived the bombing needed to eat.  Within a few minutes, Piotr was back in business.

 

Artur curled up in the corner of the basement that evening and contemplated the future.  His dreams of becoming a professor at the University were obviously on hold.  A dark cloud hung over the world and tomorrow was an unknown.  A terrifying thought gripped his mind as he fell asleep.  He loved his family and would do anything for them.  But he did not want to spend the rest of his life working in a bakery.

 

Warsaw limped forward and people began to grasp how life would be under Nazi rule.  It was not pretty.  Stories of people being arrested, then not heard from again, began to circulate.  Piotr counselled his family on how they were to behave.

 

“Trust no one.  Say nothing that isn’t necessary.  Under no circumstances are you to be disrespectful to the Nazis.  Do as you are told.  Keep a low profile.  Do not draw attention to yourself.”

 

Piotr didn’t know what a radar was.  But he was telling his family, “If you want to survive, you must fly under the radar.”

 

Artur took his father’s advice to heart.  Which was why he was surprised, a few months later, when the German soldiers walked into the bakery, asking for him by name.

 

Piotr ran out of the back and begged the officer, “Please, take me, do not take my son!  He’s a boy, he’s done nothing!”  The man pushed him away.  “Nie, nie, nie.”  He was shaking his head and saying “No, you don’t understand.”

 

The officer’s command of Polish was limited and it took a few minutes for him to explain.  At one point, he extended his arms in front of him, then made a long whooshing sound with his mouth.  While he did that, he slowly raised his arms up until they were pointed at the ceiling. 

 

That was when Artur grasped the word the man was attempting to pronounce.  Rakieta.  It meant rocket.  He’d never heard of a German town named Peenemunde, but that was where he was going.  To build rockets.  He had never heard of the man who noticed his work in Acta Mathematica.

 

Artur had no idea how useful mathematics could be when it came to making a rocket fly straight.  He had no idea he would become a partner to murder when bombs were attached to the rockets he helped design.  He had no idea men would one day fly his rockets to the Moon.

 

The young mathematician from Warsaw did not comprehend any of that, the day he stepped off of the train in Peenemunde, and shook hands with Wernher von Braun.