The Subterranean Exit By Alessandro Cowley “Aw mum do I have to clean it?” said Julian “You bet” said Mrs. Johnson
“But there’s like rats and roaches up there…gross”
“Don’t be a girl about it, here’s the broom, go and clean it” “Yeah thanks a lot…”
“Don’t get smart with me kiddo; you’re the one that started running your mouth at soccer training” “But mum…”
“This is your punishment, unless you would rather be grounded until Armageddon?”
“Hmm…Give me the broom…”
“What did you say? Remember who you’re speaking too…” “Please give me the broom mum”
“That’s my boy, now be down at seven for supper” “Yeah if I don’t get eaten alive by those raccoons”
Julian reluctantly went towards the attic, his large wooden broom scraping against the stairs. “Mum there’s no lights”
“First one to the left Julian” “Oh right mum, thanks” “Get to work now”
Julian started to clean the attic, bit by bit he kept sweeping it, the dust and mold smothered the air, he keep sweeping and sweeping and
sweeping. Then in the midst of the smothered air, Julian’s broom hit a pile of books, he examined the books and then cross examined them, he picked up this old black leather strap on book, gashed to bits, dusty and
moldy making it look like an antique treasure map, Julian stared at it and
put it on top of the pile. But then he noticed that a picture had fallen out, he picked up the brittle picture, it smelt really old, he looked at it,
through the brown stained mold and the dimmed orange 12 watt light, he could make out a face, a face of a boy not much older than himself,
the picture was black and white, very dusty and the face was barely
recognizable, he looked at it carefully, he saw the arm of this boy, there looked to be an imprint of some sort of numbers, the boy was with
another boy in the image, they looked exactly the same, except the other boy was much bigger than him, looked older and he had his arm in a sling.
Julian thought nothing much of it at the time, he just opened the leather book and placed the photograph back in, but then he realized that it
wasn’t a book, it was a diary, he got curious and started reading it, when he read the first line though, he was hooked.
“This is the final will and testament of, Maarten-Alexander Adler, I don’t know the outcome and the results of my actions after writing this, if
you’re reading this, then you will know our story and know the price I had to pay for our freedom, this is my story…” Julian purred through the book, he thought he might as well read
something about this “Maarten-Alexander guy”, what a weird name though, thought Julian as he flipped to the next brittle page in this diary. “I was born to Aaby Adler and Laila-Susanne Adler on June 25th 1924, in Oranienburg, Southern Germany. My childhood was the best time of my life, the fourteen years which I spent in our run down farm in the
countryside of German was full of adventure and activities, a new one everyday. My older sister, Soraya Adler and the eldest out of us three, my brother Lamarv Adler were the backbone of my childhood, those
memories of playing on our farm, riding those horses were bittersweet.
Bitter in how I can never experience that joy again, but sweet in how I can embrace myself back to those memories and recall the fun good times. My father served in the great war of 1918 for Germany, he was the
commander of the naval ranch, but since the war finished he hasn’t sought to be involved with the army anymore, he returned back to the
farm. He hardly ever spoke about his war time experience, when I told him I wanted to join the army when I was older, it was the first time he
told us about his experience, he said that what he was forced to do and
what he saw left a scar in his very heart, he said he couldn’t describe the pain and he said that taking a life away doesn’t ever make you a man. My childhood was pretty ordinary, I loved structures and I loved the way structures worked, I always wanted to be a structural engineer, I had excellent grades at school, but when I was 13 I had to stop going to
school, the government started taking away all our income and my dad said it was because we were Jewish. In early 1939, I remember that my father got a letter in the mail; it was
asking us to gather at Sachsenhausen. My father straight away knew that this was what was all around the news, the whole world was slowly
finding out about Sachsenhausen, the government said it was a secret domain to keep the public safe; the government said that they wanted the Jews first. I can remember one night after dad got that letter, he was
really angry – yelling, shouting and my mother was equally mad. They
were fighting a lot, my mother wanted us to go to Sachsenhausen, but my dad was totally against it. It was really late at night, perhaps past
midnight; I tried to crawl downstairs to hear what my parents were trying to say. My mother thought that we going to Sachsenhausen could mean a new start for our family, but dad told her that I wouldn’t like it there; he also told my mother that he didn’t trust the government anymore. After a few weeks, a major stream announcement came to us over the
radio, it announced that the government has ordered all Jewish people to come to Sachsenhausen, saying that it was compulsory, my father
sullenly accepted that we should go, so we started packing, but it was just about then, my father’s old friend from the military came to visit us.
He told us the most horrific things I have ever heard in my life, he told us that Sachsenhausen was a living hell, no one was fed, there were no
homes, no toilets – all you did was hard labor and if you objected you would go straight to the gas chamber. My father didn’t know what to do, I think his name was Anthony, or maybe it was Frank, I just can’t
remember but my dad’s friend told us that it would be best if we stay in
hiding until this ‘thing’ passes, then we could be able to leave the country or play it by ear, it seemed like the best option at the time, so we decided to go ahead with it. We had to move out of the farm, we packed everything and started to
leave, it was a tiresome journey, but we had to do it. My father said that the only way we would not go to Sachsenhausen was if we started to
think like the government, we always had to be three moves ahead. We moved into a small townhouse in Oranienburg, it was in the suburbs, not the outskirts as our farm was. This was a type of close-knit town, where everybody knew everybody, it was pretty difficult for me to live here, I
wasn’t allowed out to play, all we did was sit and listen to the radio, play cards and that’s about it, for the whole day, it was like being stuck in solitary, my father’s friend brought us food supplies every week.
One week though, I think it was when we heard over the radio that Poland had been taken over, we also heard that the government is searching for “Jew lovers”, who want to stop Jews coming to the government camps,
since then my father’s friend who had been so kind and nice to us before never came back to give us supplies, we were left to fend for ourselves. Once a week my father would go down to the shops to buy some
supplies, it was winter now and food prices were over the roof and firewood was a commodity we simply could not afford. It was in
December 1939 that my father fell ill, he was sick, we needed some medicine. I went down to the shops that day to buy medication, my father always told us if we were going to step outside we must be aware of
everyone around us. It was the first time I had been exposed to the open world in months, I was looking up at the sky, I didn’t listen to what my father said, I was getting so much attention, people were looking and
pointing at me, I slowly went to the shop and bought the medicine, I then checked everyone around me and saw it was clear and went back home. That December night, the cold wind chapped my lips and tore the bond
of love from my very soul; I will never forget it, in life or in death. It must have been three in the morning when we heard a knock on the door.
“Open now, Nazi representation of Germany”. We froze. Soraya held my hand and I held hers back. My father who was weakened by the illness
told us to hide up back under the rug and my mother and father went to open the door. Ten military soldiers poured into the room.
“Are you Aaby Adler?” My father spewed up enough courage, and in a
defining tone said “I am”.
The Nazi guards said that my parents have five minutes to carry
whatever belongs they wish and then come with them. My father looked down and started to go towards his bedroom, as my mother followed
him, I noticed one of the guards heading my way, just as that happened, Soraya let out a bursting cry, and got the guard more interested, I think he signaled for more to come towards us, but then out of the blue
through the hole in the fabric cloth I saw my father, standing up six feet
and a half high, he pulled out a rifle and held it to the guards head. “Back off son, if you know what’s good for you.” The other Nazi guards
immediately came towards him; one of them grabbed my mothers arm, and made her kneel down, then pulled a revolver and put it to her ear.
“You choose Mr Adler, your beloved wife, or what your trying to hide in the next room”. I saw my mother die. That sad December night, on the
22nd of December 1939, it was now just my brother, my sister and I. My dad flared with the rifle, from where we were hiding all we heard was the spray of bullets violently crossed with the scream of men, then we heard an all too familiar scream…My dad’s…He must have taken down five of
the guards, but he got shot seventeen times in the process. He lay there, blood dripping from the insides of his skin and rolling down the sleeve of his jacket, that scream still echoes through my ears and the vision that my eyes saw fragments the scene to perfection when I close my eyes every night, I shake and tremble but it will never leave me, what happened that December night. The guards picked us up and chucked us in the back of a truck, we didn’t talk to anyone, the truck was full, I was just holding Soraya’s hand and my elder brother was hugging me and telling me all would be fine. We went by truck to the train station before my sister was told to go in
another compartment, I didn’t let go of her hand, Lamarv told me to let it
go, but I simply couldn’t, the Nazi guards took a bamboo stick out and
started hitting me on the arm, forcing me let go. I was stuck to my sister, I wasn’t budging, they pulled and pulled, but then they got nasty they
turned that bamboo stick into a beating rod for my sister’s arm too, I let go then, I looked my sister in the eye, I didn’t know what the future held and we parted ways right then..”
Julian was in shock, he closed the book on his thumb to keep the page, his breath was all over the place, and he was in utter shock. How could this happen to this boy? What wrong did he do? What wrong did his
family do, besides being Jewish? Julian was born and raised Jewish, he heard about the Holocaust and watched movies which captivated the
stories of Anne Frank, but never before had he read such a detailed and real life document of the real time proceedings like this…Julian was in
despair, he dropped the broom and sat on the floor leaning on the old cobwebs crushed on the wall in the attic, he removed his thumb and started to read once more. “That very night we arrived at Sachsenhausen, it was just as I imagined it – but worse. The girls and women were taken to a separate camp, while we were forced to stay in the men’s quarters. They picked my five foot
eight inch body up with ease and threw me on this table, I was held down and I saw a rectangular metal pole, with numbers and letters on it, they took it and put it into a furnace and brought it down onto my arm. I
screamed, shook, kicked my legs and moaned. It hurt. It hurt like hell. I was crying and kicking and running after they did it, the guards had a
laugh and then it was Lamarv’s turn. The numbers 7918729d will forever be inscribed in my arm, my brother yelled too, but he took it like a man, no kicking, crying or screaming. I was known as “fish” to everyone in the camp, for weeks all I could do
was think about that night, the night where I lost it all…my mother, my father, my sister and my freedom. It was just me and my brother now. We were given a job to make trenches, we were forced to work sixteen hours a day, whenever we would stop to take a breather or have a refreshing
drink of ‘muddy water’, the guards would take it as an opportunity to
crack a whip on our backs. Most people because of this reason never took rest and got sick. One night, it must have been a month since we were put into the camp, it was about early February 1940, it was ever so cold, I went outside our tent to try to find a blanket, then next to the fence I heard crying, I
walked towards the fence, very slowly, strutting and squatting almost the whole way. I took something out of my pocket, it was a piece of bread
from a few weeks ago, it was decaying with green moisture and I said to the mysterious shadow,
“Would you like some bread?” The shadow turned, it stopped crying and looked me in the eye, It was Soraya…she looked at me In the darkness, I could make out she was shivering terrible, her hair which once was a
beautiful straight thin black curve now died to a curled up bong of sweat and tears.
“I’ve missed you so much Maartey” I felt a tear stroll down my cheek, the
sour liquid hydrated my dehydrated lips, the cracking pain from sore lips was erased from my nerves, because the joy of seeing my sister overwhelmed me.
“What have they done to you sis…”,
“It’s alright” she said, she then pulled up her torn shirt and showed me her back. I simply couldn’t believe it, my heart ripped and there was
nothing more I wanted to do but hug her. The lashes on her back was thick, the scars were fresh. I couldn’t bear it anymore. “Who did this to you..”
“You wouldn’t know them Maartey”
I was so disgusted. I flicked the bread slice towards the fence and saw something that pushed me five feet from the fence, when I threw the
bread piece the fence turned electric, it burnt the bread to a crisp, hence the sign “60,000 volts BEWARE”. The guards were coming and I knew we had to part ways once more. I tried to say something to her but I didn’t know what to say. “I have ten more days Maartey”
“Huh, what do you mean?”
“I’m getting put in the gas chamber…” “How do you know?”
“My friend warned me, she saw the guards sheet while cleaning the room” I was guttering, clamped out and beyond belief, I couldn’t even muster enough strength to talk.
“I won’t let that happen Soraya...I promise, you’re my sister and I love you so much”
I had to leave, the guards were coming, they were coming quickly too.” The whole next day, I didn’t speak to anyone, even Lamarv. I was just looking around at the surroundings-“ “Julian how’s the cleaning going?” asked Mrs. Johnson “Yeah it’s going good mum” replied Julian
“That’s good, I’ll be up after I finish cooking to check out the progress” “Yes mum…”
“-trying to see if there was a possible way out of here. I went into the shed to get some more tools, I put a spanner on the door and tried to
have a look at the shed, all the tools were here, I started pocketing some tools, took some and hid them in my jacket, but also I noticed that there
were some controls, I saw it read “electricity”. I could control electricity if I got into the shed and did the manual override. I had to find a way out of
here, I had to escape, not for me and not for Lamarv – but for Soraya my sister. I told her the plan that night, I told her how we needed to do it for her
and that I found a way. I kept going at the tools and hiding them under my jacket, taking them to my tent, digging a hole and burying them. I now actually had to think of a plan to escape, a way to get out, I spoke to one of the old inmates in the camp, they told me that in late ’38, the
fire alarm went off and all the guards went into the guards room and in about 10 minutes appeared on the other side of the camp.
I could only think that this meant one thing. Inside that guards room, there is a Subterranean exit. That would be the escape passage, all I
needed to do now was think of a way to get from the fence where Soraya would be to the guards room in pitch darkness. I didn’t have time to think, I just did it.
That night, I dug up all the tools, Lamarv and I went to the fence, I buried the tools under there and we went back to the shed, I used the spanner
to break the lock and we were in. I changed the settings for the electrical circuit and we went back to Soraya. We started clipping away furiously at the fence, bit by bit it was breaking. It took us an hour, but we chopped
away a small hole, enough for a 5 foot 4 skinny girl like my sister to get
through, she slowly managed to scrap her way into our territory, now we had to run. The distance from the fence to the guards room had to be
about 500 metres, we were running there, in pitch darkness, but luckily we managed to get there, but there was one problem, one big problem –
this being that it was full of guards, there would be no way that we could get in and out of there alive, we needed some other option, we knew that there must have been another way..
We kept running, fast and fast, until we were out of breath, you can’t cease to imagine the sheer size of this camp, it was a prison surrounded
by electrical fences, and how often do you hear about Prison Breaks? The likes of that happening was the likes of us breaking out of here, but we had to do it, we had to be positive.
We kept running and running, the diameter of the camp was possibly 20 kilometres if not more, we had to run that in about four hours before sun rise. I was running at top speed, we were dead in the middle, probably
half way, there was no possibility of escaping from here, we had to keep
running, Soraya kept falling and her legs were bleeding, Lamarv couldn’t carry her because of his broken arm, so I did, I carried my elder sister, I
was running and carrying her at the same time, we were eccentric in the surroundings of absolutely nothing, then in the whelm of darkness we
saw it, we saw the fence, it was in our eye range, I was charging, running towards it, as fast as I could.
Then when we reached I saw it…The fence was electrocuted. I looked at Soraya and Lamarv. I dropped Soraya down. “The fence is electrocuted”
“So what are we going to do?”, said Soraya “It’s alright, I know what I must do…” “What is it?” asked Soraya
“I need to defuse the fence” “How?” said Soraya
“I need to electrocute my body…” “What do you mean? Yelled Soraya and Lamarv almost simultaneously “It’s the only way…”
“But-t.. Maartey…I-I, L-love-e you…” Soraya stuttered
“I love you too, you are the best brothers and sisters anyone could have asked for”
“Please Maartey there has to be another way…” “There’s no other way Soraya, but it’s alright, this is what I want, I have
no regrets, if I could do this again I would want to have it done this way, I love you Soraya”
“No!! No!! Maartey you’re my little brother I can’t let you do this…” “There’s no other way Soraya…” “I-I…”
“It’s okay Soraya, when the fence gets touched, 60,000 volts will go
coursing through my body, I will die instantly, but the power drain will be so much that you will have five minutes to escape.” Silence broke between us, then “Lamarv, promise me to take care of Soraya as you took care of me, I
know you aren’t on the best of terms, but please take care of each other”
I bit my lip and told Soraya and Lamarv,
“I love you both, you Soraya my beautiful sister, and Lamarv, my caring brother. I have always loved you and always will, my love for you transcends time an eternity itself”.
I took a breath, looked them in the eye, put on a smile in my fear and touched the fence…” Julian was on the verge of tears, if the dust and mold in the attic hadn’t lodged in his tear duct, the hand written ink on the pages of this diary would have been smudged. Julian looked at the diary again, a lot of pages had been ripped out, but
then he found a page where he could read properly, he realized that the writing style was different, it was more cursive and it was a completely different pen that was in use beforehand…
“We were on the train, stuck in the cabin where clothes are stored, it was freezing cold, it was just about to be dawn, the first dawn in fifteen years without my little brother...I will never forget his sacrifice, he died in my place, oh how I will miss him… “We made him a promise Lamarv, I don’t have any intentions of breaking the promise…”
“What do you mean Soraya” “He’s gone Lamarv…”
“I guess I still can’t get my head around it” “Neither can I…”
“I guess were just in shock”
“Shock or no shock, Lamarv, he died for us and we made a promise to him, we told him that we will start to clear out our relationship”
“Your right, were the only ones left in our family, we have to have each other’s backs”
“Lets put all the things behind us now Lamarv, lets start off fresh and clear out the turbulence…”
“I just miss him so much Soraya, when his body was flinging on that fence…”
“I know, it was killing me seeing that too” “Was it painful Soraya?”
“He paid a price for our freedom, he died in my place” “I mean, did he have a painful death”
“He had sixty thousand volts of electricity coursing through his body Lamarv, what does that tell you?”
“Wouldn’t he have died the moment he touched it”
“I hope so, the way he was moving and we could smell burnt flesh…Its just so wrong”
“Soraya, lets not talk about this again, he’s our brother, we love him and he deserves to be buried”
“Lamarv, you did pick him up, but he’s burnt, his body is burnt to the core”
“I don’t care Soraya, he deserves to be buried” “Whatever you say Lamarv” “I mean it Soraya…”
“Lamarv, did you hear that noise?” “What noise?”
“I think the trains stopping” “Soraya get back now”
“I’m scared Lamarv, what is it” “Only one way to find out…”
I can still recall that moment, Lamarv walked out of the train as it stopped, I don’t know who he saw, but I’m guessing it was the guards
that were searching for us...I could see a small glance of him through the window in the compartment.
Lamarv looked at me, his face looked scared, I heard a lot of shouting, I think he wanted me to squat down, so I did. BANG! BANG! BANG! “Got him boss”
“Good work solider, now circle the train and look for the others” “Yes boss”
I was crying. My tears were over flowing, it hurt so much, I just can’t describe the pain by words alone, here was a person I knew for my entire life, he was always there for me, we fought, yelled and did everything
siblings are supposed to, but now he’s gone, I lost two brothers inside a quarter of a day. I’m sorry but I couldn’t hold the emotion, looking back on this, I can’t write about this anymore, the pain it causes me…God…” Julian looked up hearing a nose, it was his mum, she had just climbed up the attic and the look on her face as she saw the book in his hand was that of thrill and shock. “You weren’t meant to read that” said Mrs. Johnson “Why mum?” said Julian
“Because I thought I hid it all those years ago” “You knew about this?”
“I found the diary in that same condition when I was your age Julian, twenty years ago now”
“Mum, can you tell me what happened?” “Follow me Julian”
Mrs. Johnson took Julian in the car and drove, they hardly spoke while they were in the car, Julian who had the diary with him flicked through the photos, there were countless photos of this farm, a happy family
together, it was a delightful scene, then the images got more and more
complex, for each event in the diary, it was backed up with images, there was a sheet he found in the diary, it was in German, but he could read
some German, he made out the words “Gas chamber” and the date as 25 th February 1940, below it he saw “Soraya Adler”. The car stopped at a graveyard. “Why are we stopping here mum?” asked Julian
“You’ll see” said Mrs. Johnson Julian slowly got out of the car, his mum gestured him towards the
graveyard and they walked for a bit. They walked and walked, into the epicenter of the graveyard and then came to this marble grave. It read: “Soraya Adler-Clarke 1921-2005
Beloved, mother, sister, aunty and friend
‘Love is a powerful weapon, it’s the greatest gift in life’ “ Julian felt his tear duct unblock, he was crying, he hugged his mum and his mum hugged him back. “Who was she?”
“Your great grandmother Julian” “Tell me her story mum” “She had a very rough life, after diary ended, where Lamarv got shot and died, she was recaptured by the Nazi’s, they took her back to
Sachsenhausen and flogged the living daylights out of her every single day…She survived in Sachsenhausen from December 22nd 1939 to
September 1st 1945, she survived basically the whole second world war, she was the longest serving inmate at Sachsenhausen” “What happened to her in there mum?” “They would torture her, give her electric shocks, beat her – on a daily
basis, every single day after they beat her and tortured her, she would say that one of the guards would ask if she would start torturing other female inmates, if she agreed, they would stop torturing her, but she
didn’t want to be like them, so she refused, day after day the same offer
was made for five years, then it was in early 1945, she agreed, she
couldn’t take it anymore, she did it longer than anyone else would, she said this was what scared her, she changed so much in those nine
months she tortured people than in the years she spend getting tortured in Sachsenhausen, she lost count of how many people she put up on the rack and tortured.”
Julian was speechless, he couldn’t believe this, a part of him was hurt, his heart was in pain, he was simply bankrupt for words, even though he never knew this woman before…
“After she got released from Sachsenhausen, she claimed possession of the farm, sold it and with the money she came to America, she married
your great grandfather when she was 25, and had your grandmother, who had me in 1973, she was a quiet person, she hardly talked, the pain she
went through at such a young age must be impossible for us to imagine.” Julian plucked a flower from the ground and took out a paper crane from his pocket…He put it on the gravestone and kissed it. Julian and his mum walked off in the sunset, heading towards their car, there minds overheating with vivid imagery of the diary’s content…
By Alessandro Cowley (Parramatta Marist High School) Year 10.