Random Stuff I Write

Never Again

"Arbeit Macht Frei." Yeri stood under the gate entrance again after 67 years. "'Work will set you free' they said. The SS told us that if we worked hard we would be treated well in our new society just for Jews."

"Did work set you free, Grandpa?" his 9 year old grandson asked reaching up and grabbing his wrinkled hand.

"No, Peter, it didn't," he sighed. As the two walked through Auschwitz Yeri swore he could hear the voices of the 1.5 million men, women, children, and elderly that had lost their lives here. 1.3 million of them killed just for being Jewish.

He slowly walked up the stairs and through the door of his old barrack, Block 15. "This is where I slept for two and a half years." Yeri gestured around the room with wooden shelves along every wall. "I had to share a shelf with four other men. We had no blankets or pillows or mattresses."

As he looked down the hall he saw that every shelf was full of men who were nothing more than bags of bones. He began to smell death, sweat, and blood all over again. Yeri looked down immediately and made his way out of the building as fast as he could manage. Outside he took a long breath of fresh air, trying to forget the sight he saw.

"This, Peter, is where we would line up every morning and every night." The old man showed his grandson the dirt courtyard. "You had to stand straight and tall with not even the slightest movement or sound. If you any kind of noise the SS guards or the kapos would beat you with their clubs." Peter had a look of horror on his face.

Just before the two moved on Yeri froze. A moment before the yard was empty as could be, but now it was filled with prisoners standing in lines as SS guards walked through the crowd with their clipboards. One of the men up front fell to his knees and the kapos immedeatly began beating him with their clubs. The man just laid there with his face in the dirt as the kapos beat him to death.

Yeri grabbed his grandson's hand and lead him to the gas chambers. "They would shove many people in here and drop canisters of zyklon b in here and wait as until everyone in here was dead."

"Did the people know that they were going to get gassed?" Peter asked.

"No. The guards told them they were going to take a shower." Again Yeri watched as women, children, and the elderly filled into one of the chambers not knowing their fate. As the soldiers locked the door to that chamber he heard the screams of the people inside. Then all the screaming stopped and the soldiers opened the doors back up. Bodies of all shapes and sizes tumbled out.

As they walked away Peter asked, "Did they bury the bodies Grandpa?"

"Some they did, but most got burned in the furnace." He led Peter over to the stone wall that surrounded the camp. "I had a friend here. His name was Dovid and he was innocent. Never did a bad thing in his life, but, like me, he was brought here just for being a Jew. One day him and a handful of other men were told to go dig a trench. That night they never returned."

He looked and watched as his old friend and other men were told to line up along the edge of the trench. The SS guard walked down the line of men shooting each in the head and each landed in the trench with a loud thump. Yeri looked at his friend's face then looked away. The gun went off and he heard the thump. Later some men were told to cover the bodies and once those bodies were covered theirs' were added to the trench. It was a continuous cycle. Once they couldn't fill that trench with other bodies they made another one.

Yeri took the flowers from Peter and place them on his friend's final resting place. He walked away with tears rolling down his face. As they made their way to the gate Yeri saw prisoners, guards, doctors, and a few children that were being dragged away from their mothers for experiments.

802 escaped while 7000 were freed that January day in 1945. Yeri thought. Only a small fraction of the number who had once been here. 7802 survived. And I'm one.