635798

My suitcase was waiting for me at a barrack. This barrack wasn’t your – uh – typical “Auschwitz” barrack, shall you say. It was specifically designed for the Nazis to rest in and some even lived here. Vater and I were two of the people now living here. Other barracks were made for the Nazis too. They were scattered around certain parts of the death camp. Some were even eating quarters. A mansion stood about a mile from Auschwitz. The family of the general lived there. According to Vater, he held parties often. So often the Nazis practically lived there themselves.

Vater came up to me as I was bent over my new cot, unpacking my suitcase. A German shepherd was by his side.

“And who is this?” I asked while bending down in front of the dog. I patted his head.

“Wolfgang, this is Jonji. Jonji, Wolfgang,” Vater said.

The dog barked.

I stoop up. I almost went back to unpacking but Vater’s voice stopped me.

“How was your first hour on the job?”

I closed my eyes and tried to block out the screaming of the children. I took in a deep breath and before exhaling I asked, “Will I have to do that every day?”

“Every other.”

I exhaled silently.

“It’s what Hitler wants, Wolfgang. You’re going to have to accept that,” Vater said.

I shook my head and opened my eyes. If I had to bring people to their deaths and hear them scream constantly, then no. I wasn’t going to accept that.

After every prisoner died, another Nazi and I helped carry the bodies to the crematoriums. Many eyes were open, but obviously no longer seeing. Children held hands with a loved one. Mothers held pale babies. Elders had their mouths agape, showing they were yelling or praying as they died. The scene, in all honestly, made my heart break. Carrying the bodies to the ovens didn’t help very much either. I almost lost it when an inmate, whose job was to burn the dead bodies in the ovens, recognized a woman as his sister and her baby as his nephew. I watched the crying man put the bodies in the oven and together, we watched them burn.

I wanted to kill myself for letting it all happen. And to think I would have to keep doing that every other day until the war was over.

The air still reeked of burning bodies. I looked at Vater. “When will the smell go away?”

“In a few hours. Unless they put in another load,” Vater said.

Another “load”? He talked as if these people weren’t humans. He talked about them like they were simply pieces of junk one would find under a child’s bed!

Then again, Vater was a loyal Nazi. What did I expect?

Suddenly, the door to the barrack opened. Everyone stopped what they were doing and looked. Even Jonji did this. A man wearing black pants and a white doctor’s coat stood in the doorway. His dark hair was held back by gel and parted neatly at the side. He smiled.

“Bruno!” he called.

“Josef!” Vater replied happily.

The man walked over and he and Vater hugged like old pals. The man pulled away and looked at me.

“This must be Wolfgang!” he exclaimed.

“Wolfgang, this is Josef Mengele,” Vater said.

My eyes widened. I heard about this man. He had a fetish for twins. Rumor had it that he would do experiments on them. Scary experiments. According to the rumors, Arzt Josef Mengele would try to conjoin the twins he experimented on. Apparently he would also try to change their eye color. Sometimes he cut them open to look at organs and he even killed people on purpose and took note of what happened. That was why his nickname was the Angel of Death.

“If you need me Wolfgang, I’ll be in Block Ten in the male’s ward,” Arzt Mengele said. He faced Vater. “I heard you arrived and I just came into say hello so I must be on my way now. New experiments are waiting for me.” He winked, and then he left the barrack.

“I have a bad feeling about that man,” I whispered.

“Oh, Wolfgang. He causes no harm,” Vater said.

I rolled my eyes. Alright then. It wasn’t as if rumors were flying around about him.

“Let’s go. Duty calls,” Vater told me.

I closed my suitcase to hide the belongings that were not yet unpacked. Vater pulled Jonji by the rope that was his leash. I followed the two out of the barrack and into Auschwitz.

Vater served some of his time as a soldier here before. He knew his way around this dump perfectly, despite its vast size. I made sure to keep up so I wouldn’t get lost. All around me were barracks. Some were falling apart while others stood tall and new. Some offered comfortable cots for Nazis while others provided the hard, uncomfortable bunks the prisoners were forced to sleep on. The only people I saw were Nazis who weren’t on duty and Kapos. Kapos were prisoners, but they were chosen by the SS men to do some of their dirty work. Some Kapos acted humane while others, not so much. The ones who weren’t humane acted like Nazis themselves, sometimes even worse. It was only to save their own skin. They didn’t have to wear the striped uniform but they did have to wear a band around their arm to indicate they were still prisoners.

The prisoners who wore the striped clothing weren’t here because they were in Buna, the work area of Auschwitz. Some of the jobs they did were pointless but very, very, painful. Some dug random holes and some were forced to carry rocks back and forth. It was just to “give them something to do”. Others dug graves for prisoners and some collected things that belonged to them. Both men and women did this. Children? Maybe. But from what I was told, Auschwitz didn’t particularly allow children. Unless they were twins of course. You know, for Arzt Mengele experiments.

Vater, Jonji, and I were soon walking down a grassy path. Well, it would’ve been grassy if it all just wasn’t so… dead. To both my left and right were electrified barbed-wire fences. When I looked up, I saw SS men in a steeple with loaded machine guns. They were allowed to shoot prisoners if they stopped working or disobeyed rules. They were even allowed to shoot them if they just felt like it. Cynical, I knew

Vater and I kept walking down the path in silence. Jonji was sniffing around frantically. He pulled on his leash and every so often he would start digging.

Suddenly, from a distance I saw a woman with brunette hair behind the barbed-wire fence on my right. Her hair looked as if it once had locks but due to the horrid conditions here, they were no longer able to form. The tips of her hair were covering her ears. That length meant that the woman had been here for a while. But how? Father said the usual survival time here was six weeks. Clearly the woman had been here longer. Hair didn’t grow that fast in six weeks. How was she not sent to the gas chambers yet?

The woman seemed to be somewhere in her twenties. I was able to guess this only because of her height and her facial features seemed to tell the story of a woman that age at one point. Otherwise the woman looked like a fragile child. Her camp uniform was dirty and dried. Mud climbed up her bony legs. She wore no shoes so mud soaked her feet as she crouched down in it. It looked as if she was looking for something. A way to escape, perhaps?

As the woman stroked her fingers through the dead grass and mud, I tapped Vater’s shoulder and pointed her out to him. His chocolate brown eyes narrowed and Jonji’s body tensed up. They were on full alert. Clearly they saw what was wrong here. The woman was supposed to be working but yet, there she was, searching for something in dead grass and mud. Vater and Jonji ran towards her. I followed as quickly as I was able to.

“HEY!” Vater shouted. “YOU! WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU’RE DOING?”

Jonji barked angrily at the woman.

The woman gasped. She was caught off guard and ended up falling on her butt in the mud. She stayed in that position as we reached her.

Her eyes – chocolate brown like mine – were wide with fear and tears began to slowly roll down her cheeks.