Kingdom of Darkness

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The military convoy ground through the darkness towards its next destination.

In the lead car, a Kübelwagen utility vehicle, SS-Sturmbannführer Erich Kroll used a torch to check a map of the farmland around the town of Pella. His Waffen-SS unit, soldiers of Hitler’s feared Schutzstaffel elite force, were on a mission direct from the Führer: to locate and round up any Jews remaining in the Nazi-occupied zone for deportation to the concentration camps of Treblinka and Auschwitz. The operation had by now been mostly completed to German satisfaction, but, Kroll mused, the Juden were as hard to eradicate as rats — and the task had been made harder by Jewish sympathisers amongst the local population.

The Nazis had their own sympathisers, though. Fascist collaborators had provided their new masters with lists of those suspected of harbouring fugitives, and now the SS was checking each one. On this night, they already had five prisoners in the truck behind: two Jewish women and a boy found in a farm’s loft, as well as the farmer and his wife. A good catch, but Kroll hoped to find more.

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