Pages from History

Sensitivity warning: This story has fictional characters enduring known events that occurred during the holocaust.

1896

Bees and butterflies dispersed into an upwards spiralling dance as he ran, arms outstretched, through the field. He’d awoken to fresh scents and a welcome change in temperature borne from the new season. Finally able to trade the itchy woollen jumper for something more comfortable, he’d rushed through his chores and snuck out hoping to become a ghost for the remainder of the day.

‘Boy, get in here, now.’

His heart dropped and bile rose to his throat at the sound of his father’s voice. There was always something that displeased the man, giving him cause to humiliate and lash out. Especially since Alois, his older brother, had run away, no longer able to take the beatings. The boy, hardened to them now, refused to satisfy his father’s appetite for brutality by showing any pain. Sidling reluctantly up to the house, he heard his mother attempting to soothe her husband as he watched the belt being removed through the open door.

‘You indulge the boy too much, Klara. It only serves to ruin a child,’ his father said.

The first bolt of pain stung his back as he walked into the room; just before his mother threw herself across his seven-year-old body to take the second blow. Small seeds fell within the boy, joining others already firmly rooted and thriving from the history of his past.

1942

The monsters she’d imagined hiding under her bed in the safety of her room, before her family had been moved to the ghetto, were very different from the real-life monsters she’d grown to know lately. Now, she realised, they mostly wore uniforms and they’d been more intense today than usual. From their first-floor apartment she’d heard lots of shouting, children calling for parents, and parents - mostly mothers - screaming and pleading amid gunshots. Trucks had been coming and going all day too.

‘Get in, quickly.’ Mutti had shoved them under the stairs. ‘Stay hidden, don’t speak a word. Not a sound, do you hear? Keep your brother and sister quiet too. No matter what you hear, do not reveal where you are. It’s important. Do you understand, Schatzi?’ My Treasure, Mutti always used her daughter’s pet name.

It was cramped but they did as they were told. Despite the chaos her siblings had fallen asleep, arms encircling one another.

‘It’ll be OK,’ Mutti had said, though her eyes revealed something different.

Heavy footsteps, sounds of shouting in German, demands. Doors opening, slamming, muffled voices, more screaming. Suddenly, light poured through the door of their hideout and black boots appeared. A mountainous shadow now blocked her view.

Schatzi heard Mutti’s voice. ‘Please, don’t take my children.’

But the monster in front didn’t listen. Instead, he wrapped his huge paw around her arm and wrenched her violently to her feet. More brutes, disguised in uniform, grabbed her younger siblings, flinging them under their arms as each child emerged, shocked and wide eyed from their broken sleep. Mutti, now screaming, pulled frantically at the monsters, clawing them like an enraged cat. Schatzi’s heart was racing so wildly she was certain it could be seen through her clothing. She felt it stop momentarily with her sister’s blood curdling cry.

‘Mutti, help, Mutti… Don’t let them take me, Mutti.’

Kicking, arms flailing, they were being dragged down the stairs. Outside, more children were being herded onto trucks. The air was mixed with terror, pleading and screams interspersed by gruff sounds of German commands.

‘Anna, Schatzi, Joseph, don’t take them, please, not my children.’ Her mother was still clawing at the wranglers. She was not alone in her actions.

Taking in terrified faces of neighbours she’d known all her life, Schatzi turned and saw her monster’s face for the first time; set like stone with eyes born of the devil, devoid of emotion, or was it hatred… His movements were methodical as he unclipped his revolver and raised it above his head.

‘Jew dog.’ He bought its butt down swiftly to meet her mother’s temple.

Mutti’s body dropped and she was silenced.

‘You monster,’ Schatzi tried desperately to reach her mother, but he tightened his grip and dragged her on. It was to be the last time Schatzi would see her.

1907

He thought his monster was finally gone when at thirteen, his father dropped dead in the local pub. However, at nineteen, the boy, now a young man, knew that monsters came in many forms. Today’s monster was the cancer killing his mother. With one of her breasts already removed; he anguished as he watched her writhing in pain due to the traumatic, radical treatment prescribed by her Jewish doctor, Edward Bloch. It reminded him of his younger brother, Edward, who’d been taken by measles all those years ago.

Unbeknown to the young man, his father’s death came too late for he’d already cultivated a similar temperament. As head of the household, he’d done as he wished for the past few years knowing he could no longer be disciplined or tamed. He was proud of his efforts to run amok at school while challenging and disrespecting his teachers. He also didn’t see the point in continuing the farcical education which, he was failing, so dropped out at sixteen to rely on his self-teaching ability. His arrogance meant he didn’t care much for the opinions of others.

He loved his mother but, despite her deadly plight, Adolf loved himself more. So, he left her to battle her parasite alone and moved to Vienna to chase his destiny. For he knew he was talented, and he deserved to be a famous artist. However, what a young man feels in his bones and what is the unravelling truth becomes too hard to bear for this young man.

Sitting in an empty room, he read the rejection letter from the Academy of Fine Arts. ‘How dare they suggest my drawings show a lack of artist talent for painting and the human form. These fools don’t know what they’re talking about.’

The letter asked him not to apply again. His only dream, killed in an instant, allow further delusions of grandeur to build. However, it could be wondered; would history have been different if this young man achieved his heart’s desire?

When his mother died a couple of months later, there was nothing left to keep his insanity at bay, so his monsters continued to grow radically in number.

1943

Despite Marie’s resourcefulness, her attempts to get the forged documents from her artist friend, Adolfo Kaminsky, had been futile as they’d missed the meeting point and she hadn’t heard from him since. There were horrific stories of deportees coming from the East so Marie knew she needed to get her thirteen-year-old twins, Elisabeth and Peer, out of the country. Unfortunately, her efforts to obtain false papers left her vulnerable as she’d inadvertently trusted the wrong people. For that, Marie paid with her life. This is how the girls ended up on the long, stuffy train ride to Auschwitz.

Terrified, shrouded in darkness, they’d clung to each other trying to block out the stench of human sweat and excrement mixed with moans of fear and suffering. Hunger and thirst became their enemy but Elisabeth their strength.

‘Think of mother, Peer, hear her words. We are together. So long as we are together, we will survive.’

It wasn’t until the doors flung open emitting splintering, blinding light that the girls felt their short, shallow breath again. Hands knotted together as one, they were herded with other woman and children at gun point to stand before a menacing monster in white gloves.

‘These two, look, they’re identical.’ He was pointing at them. ‘Move, over there.’

A white hand waved them to the opposite side from most of the others. Eyes downcast, Elisabeth tugged her sister to where he was pointing.

Ten additional children, including two sets of twins and two pregnant women had been selected as the special ones. All other cargo now stared at them from the other side, wide eyed, some weeping, each wondering the other’s fate. The girls never saw any of the other group again.

‘You are lucky,’ the white gloved ogre later said, handing them sweets. ‘I’m Uncle Mengele.’

He directed the children, boys and girls, to separate blocks. Here, the girls were forced, side by side, to undress before they were examined and interrogated about family history. Their bodies were measured, their hair and eye lashes counted, then the prodding began. As blood was being stolen from their veins, extracted through blunt needles, Elisabeth heard the blood curdling scream. She turned to see a nurse retreating from an injection delivered through Peer’s abdomen causing her to collapse and spasm in pain. Elisabeth lunged towards her sister, but white coats grabbed her, pulling her violently away, forcing her to watch and listen to the screaming.

‘Elisabeth, help me. Lizzi… Mamma, I want Mamma. Somebody, make it stop. Why won’t you help? Lizzi, it hurts. Someone, please.’

Peer wriggled desperately like a worm trying to find shade in the searing sun until she finally passed out. The girls were returned together to their block. One walked, the other carried by a monster dressed in white.

The daily torture Elisabeth and Peer endured were opposite ends of the earth. Elisabeth was the ‘control’ subject, her sister, the ‘experiment’. Peer was constantly injected with things unknown and forever in pain with Uncle Mengele never far away.

‘Why are we the lucky ones?’ Peer once said to her sister. Elisabeth had no answer.

After six months of internment, examination and brutality, the tables of experiment turned. Elisabeth was dragged from her bed one early morning while her sister was left behind. When she was returned just as violently but unconscious the same day, Peer rushed to Elisabeth’s bedside, only to see in horror, that her right arm was missing.

Through her tears Peer said, ‘why do these monsters do such things?’

1910

‘How dare Stephanie not know who I am,’ the young man, now 21, said to Reinhold, his only friend in the home for poor men.

‘You need to talk to her,’ he’d replied.

‘I don’t. We communicate using intuition’.

Adolf had obsessed over this woman for months, watching her every move, her every interaction, raging when she showed other men attention.

Reinhold had heard it all before, along with the many rants about the Austrian Monarchy and their tolerance of non-German races. Reinhold dared not disagree or he’d incite a fury that could last for days. Every man of the house had made the same unfortunate mistake at some time or another and Adolf’s oratory skills were already far superior to anyone who dared challenge him, so most worked hard to avoid him.

With so much anger growing inside him the young man decided that someone must be to blame; he just couldn’t find the right finger to point. However, that would eventually change when his anger turned to hatred. The monsters that had taken root were slowly growing wild within him year by year and they were finding the nutrients they needed to thrive so that anything could now be justified.

1944

‘Let’s go on an adventure, my love,’ Francoise said taking Louis’ hand as the Nazi soldier marched them from their farmhouse at gunpoint towards the town square. People were still arriving but from what she could tell, all the villagers were here. Francoise saw Juliette and Antione. Their boys were in the same class together, so she shuffled beside them.

‘What’s happening?’ Juliette said.

‘Identification check? Maybe?’ she replied.

Francoise took in the soft, mid-afternoon sun casting its friendly light across the buildings and remembered the times she’d come here with Julliette as children, shopping with their mothers. She’d always loved the excited chatter that ensued as they walked the short road to town.

An officer spoke, ‘we have had word that people of this village have been assisting the resistance by hiding arms and explosives. We intend to find them.’

Then to his troops, ‘move the women and children into the church.’

Panicked women, taking the hands of their children, ferried their way, unknowingly, to their final destination. Juliette and Francoise squeezed closer and the four moved in sync with the other terrified villagers.

‘I’m scared, Mama,’ Louis said.

‘Don’t be, my little cherub, remember, this is an adventure. Let’s sing.’

Bodies began jamming into the church.

‘Move, quicker.’ A monster in uniform pushed the last few in and slammed the doors together violently before securing them with chains.

Panicked screaming split the air and the childhood friends watch in horror as smoke bellowed beneath the heavy, century old wood, smothering the helpless victims. Packed like sardines, there was nowhere for Francoise to move.

‘Mama,’ children’s desperate cries rang out everywhere.

Then the firing started. Shards of leadlight glass fell through the air like coloured rain, sprinkling cowering bodies in needle like pain ensuring the hopeful knew this was not a dream. More smoke, an explosion then a grenade sailed through an already broken window. People dropped; others tried to run over felled bodies even though there was nowhere to escape. Francoise could hear the desperation - banging, pleading, screaming, weeping.

‘Open the doors.’

Then she saw the flames creep from underneath. Invading a sanctuary with such force Francoise wondered if the bodies it consumed was essential to feeding all this hatred. Each glowing claw grew angrier, changing from yellow to blazing red, as they lurch hungrily towards the innocents being held within their wooden entombment.

‘Come here little, Louis,’ she said, pulling him to her, taking in all his being. Then she sat; alongside her childhood friend, among the chaos, the smoke, the death and she started singing as her mind wondered, how do men become such monsters?

2025

The history books now ask the man, who is long dead in his grave.

‘Do you lie in glory, proud that you stained our pages with your name? Having carved your reputation so deeply into our folds, as a man who can never be forgotten. Or do you bow your head and turn in shame knowing the atrocities performed for the greater good of your country under the name Adolf Hitler?

Have you ever wondered what might have happened had your formative years been different? What if you’d used your carefully laid dictation, political astuteness and ability to touch the core of admirers while inciting action for good and not evil? How do you lay today? Could it be that you are now in your own purgatory wishing to erase our pages and start again?’

As the books keep being written, one small, silent page wonders, what words would flow if we could turn them back and cultivate a different beginning in April 1889.