A girl and her camera

Chapter three

Thanks to those few who are reading! :) pic above is a very young Brigitte Bardot, whom I've pictured Hanna to look like.

After that very first visit to the Ghetto, and her reunion with Samuel Maarden, Martha returned home, quite a happy girl. After the filming, and the promise of her upmost discretion, Martha had slowly begun to earn the trust, of those frequent customers in cafe Lus. And so she walked home from the Ghetto gates, accompanied by her brother, and related back to him, just what had happened on her first day. And Michael, being the proud, elder brother he was, just smiled at Martha, and congratulated her.

"Happy residents are exactly what the red cross wants to see!" Michael told her, "Well done, Mara! Just wait until the Kommadant see's this."

Martha continued to smile, but felt her happiness sinking, when Michael mentioned the Kommadant. He wanted those people so suffer! And yet, he had to make them look somewhat happy, to keep the red cross off his back. It just seemed so...degrading, to Martha. It made her feel, continuously, like a mere pawn in this dangerous, war-game.

"Well, I can't wait to go back." She said, "And Samuel was ever-so like a gentleman. Nothing like what he was as a child."

"Oh, I remember Samuel as a kid," Michael sniggered at the memories. "When our parents took us swimming at one of those old, water-holes, Samuel started a mud-fight to be remembered."

She remembered that too. When the Maardens, and the Gillespie's drove all the way out into Radom, for a camping trip, they ended up pitching their tents beside a nearby lake. This was where Samuel had found himself, quite a satisfactory bank of wet, sludgy mud. With squishy handfuls, he attacked the unsuspecting Martha and Karoline with it, then with an even bigger handful, he dumped a dripping ball of it onto Michaels' head. This started quite a big, raging mud-war between the three victims, and Samuel. One that, to this day, stayed with both the Gillespy siblings in their bank of fond memories.

"Oh yeah," She sighed, smiling genuinely again. "I think Mrs Maarden literally had to hose him down when we were finished."

Relating her first experience in the Ghetto to Michael was one thing; but relating them to her friend, Hanna Gheiretz, was another thing altogether.

At sixteen, going on seventeen, Hanna Gheiretz was far from the shy, sweet creature that she appeared to be. She was at medium height, being just an inch taller than Martha was. She had, often braided and pinned up, mousy hair that was just on the verge of being called 'blond'. A sharp nose, that pointed only slightly. And a pair of big, silver-rimmed glasses that gave Hanna the slight resemblance of an owl. With the modest clothes her mother made her wear, and her slouching posture, Hanna looked every bit like a meek, little school-girl. However, as soon as Hannas' opinion was given, it would not be disgarded.

"You went into the Ghetto?" Hanna had taken to the habit of interrogating Martha. The two were both in the empty classroom, used for writing and putting together the school news papers. "What was it like?"

"It was...strange." Martha replied, "There were terrible things in there, but a few good things as well. It was almost as if they'd skipping that middle between good and bad, and just had the other two."

"Oh, you're so lucky! I'd been trying to get access to that Ghetto for months, but what do you think those Germans do? They deny me. Flat. But, what a scoop it would be! 'Young, rookie reporter exposes the Germans alterior motives to the unsuspecting public.'"

"Hanna, you are positively, far too ambitious." Martha giggled at her friend. "You forget who has absolute reign over everything public."

Hanna frowned, as she absent-mindedly pushed her glasses up, to rest on the bridge of her nose.