An Eagle Perched on a Star

The sun sat still in the sky, about to clock in for its day’s work; a thunderous thud battered the door. Two SS guards awaited a reply. They stood firm but friendly, army issued hand guns perched on their belts, like an eagle ruling a nest. A silver skull and crossbones displayed proudly on their caps. Their grey uniforms were perfectly ironed. Their faces were clean shaven. Their black knee high boots were buffed like diamonds. One officer tilted his head allowing the light to reveal his piercing green eyes .His black leather gloved hand held a piece of stamped white paper. He explained to me in broken English that there was an opportunity to move our family to a newly built settlement and we were advised to gather all our valuables, jewellery, ornaments and kitchen utensils for our new life. We couldn’t afford to buy new things because we had to pay for our train fare to the settlement. We reluctantly sold my mother’s broche to help our kitty. My mother told me that you can’t put a price on a family heirloom,……evidently she was wrong .As we boarded the cattle cart for the journey my eyes burned from the toxicity of my sadness, we were leaving our miserable life behind but it was a misery we knew. David and the twins asked if they could play outside when we got to the new settlement. The girls wanted to play hopscotch and David wanted to play football. Mira, my wife wanted to join in with the family enthusiasm but she struggled to hide her worry. Her lips were chapped and red from chewing the skin on her lips. The nails on her fingers were bitten down the nail bed. Thousands of other families were joining us on our new life. Nevertheless, I glanced at Mira with a half grinned no teeth smile and tenderly held her hand. Brown wooden railway carts collected us .Ready to take us over the horizon. Families were ordered to pile in until it was full to the brim. Two hundred of us stood like columns, rigid for two days and two nights, I wanted so desperately to raise my arms and comfort my wife and children but my arms remained imprisoned, imprisoned by guilt. I’m the man I should protect them. Why couldn’t I provide a better life for my family? In the Ghetto I spent so many hours wishing to be any where but there. I was about to find out you don’t always want what you wish for.

The train came to a screeching halt. The door was peeled open like a band aid. The smell of stale breath filled my nostrils. Some people didn’t survive the journey. A woman held a blue child, no older than six months in her arms. Another victim. The guards shouted at us to get out of the train. I held Mira’s hand with a falcon like grip. We stood on a platform, flanked by railway tracks either side. A guard marched over to us and released my grip, my hand weak from hunger. One by one we were inspected .He ordered the men to stand on the right hand side. Mira was shoved to the queue with our children on the left. Our Martha sobbed, she sobbed hard until she vomited on Mira’s feet. David stood calmly; two rats fighting for a crumb of bread caught his gaze, the freckle on his nostril barely visible. Eva seemed puzzled by all the commotion. One guard with a clip board and a stetescope draped over his shoulders raced over to Eva and Martha, His square jaw housed his gapped front teeth, and his eyebrows were one elongated tuff of hair.  “Twins?” He asked. Mira proudly nodded. His eyes lit up, he rubbed his leather gloves together and ushered our girls to follow him. “Its ok darlings “whispered Mira. He had accumulated twenty pairs of twins and they all followed him as he led them off into the distance, disappearing into the commotion. I was asked my age and occupation. “I am thirty one years of age and I am a chimney sweep” “Excellent” replied the guard.

The men were divided yet again into young healthy men and older less able men. I along with the other younger men was directed into a large stone constructed building. I was ordered to strip. My tattered lice infested clothes lay on the dusty wooden floor boards. They threw me in to a barber’s chair. The blunt blade dragged across my skin. I was bald. I was handed a white blue stripped pyjama top with matching trousers .A yellow triangle had been sewn into the right shoulder. Each ethnicity had its own identifier on their shoulder. Our differences had brought us all here. I guess we weren’t so different after all. We marched in our bare feet into another block about twenty feet away. It smelled like an abattoir but looked like a prison. Each room was as generic as the next. Grey walls and concrete floors. We were pulled into another queue. I could hear bone chilling cries from the room next door. Their screams felt like finger nails being dragged across a black board. I could feel the bile from my stomach creeping up my throat. I gritted my teeth and swallowed my vomit. I stumbled out of the door way. A guard waving a pistol like a wand pointed to the next activity. “Don’t move Juden” he ushered in a think German accent. The needle tore into my skin, excavating lumps in its path. 2…..3……1…..0…..8…..6 was hacked into my forearm. No ink, just a bloodline. It felt like a cat with two inch nails slowly and deeply etching into my skin “Next” yelled the tattooist. It was a production line of human branding. My arm felt like it was on fire, my flesh red raw from its abuse. My toes were white as milk from the cold. I made my way to the next room that awaited me. Rows and rows of three tiered wooden bunk beds inhabited the space. I fought for space among eleven other people and found a patch on the edge of the urine soaked straw.  I contorted my body into the fetal position. My personal space was being invaded by a network of arms and legs. A fly landed between my eyebrows. His wings hummed and he used the bridge of my nose as a run way to take flight.

The morning sun crept in between the gap under the door frame. The door swung open almost ruptured from its hinges. His black boots commanded the wooden floorboards. His eyes were hidden under the shadow of the peak of his cap. He called out our numbers, “231086 Get over here” I peeled my legs from my chest and began the task of unravelling my limbs. I jerked. My left leg was stuck. I half- heartedly tried to wriggle free. I looked down and a white face stared blankly at me, his lips were blue. Rigor mortis had taken hold. I gently shook his shoulder to try and free my leg. I was caught under dead weight. His dead weight .The sight of a dead body was not a new experience for me. The Ghetto was riddled with dead bodies but this was supposed to be a new life for us, a new start for us. The guard interrupted my reverie; he pushed his way over to my bunk. He grabbed the man by his legs and flung him off the bunk. Our feet shuffled by his body, nobody glanced down at this man, except me. It could have been me, what about his wife and his kids?

We marched in a single file towards another block. This was different. It was set into a hill and smoke coughed from its four chimneys. Empty silver tins labeled cyclone B littered the hill. “You! Get over there and do as he says” I was directed to a ladder at the opposite side of the hill. I put my left foot first on the ladder and dragged my trailing leg to the first step. At the top of the ladder a guard was waiting with copious amounts silver tins.” When the truck engine starts, empty those tins into the openings in the roof. Keep doing it until the engine stops.” The truck’s engines roared into the air. I peeled open the plastic lid and watched as the tiny blue crystals fell into each hatch in the roof. It felt like my eyes had been exposed to pepper spray. Eventually the engines fell silent. I stopped and froze, awaiting my next instruction. I waited for 15 minutes, Frozen with fear and the numbing snow that was falling. “Get down the ladder and do as you’re told” I scrambled down the later and waited for the guard. He ushered me to follow the lead of the other prisoners waiting to enter room inside the front door. Ten of us waited at the door. The door was a water-tight pressure door, the type that would be found on a ship. The door slowly squeaked open. The stench of human excrement immediately clung to the lining of the back of my throat. Hundreds of naked bodies piled up beside the door, in a frantic panic to escape. Finger nail scratch marks were engraved in to the walls as people tried to fight their horrendous internal injuries. There was shower heads hanging down from the ceilings. Water could not have caused this horrific scene. Their skin was discolored pink with red and green spots, some foaming at the mouth, some bleeding from their ears. Death holds no preference, no discrimination of age, sex or creed. These people were murdered. This was a killing machine.

A fellow inmate threw a metal shovel at me and told me to help load the bodies into the wheelbarrows. I robotically started to sift threw the piles. These people didn’t look asleep. They looked tortured. The aching in my arms was trivial compared to the aching in my heart. In this sea of death I noticed the body of a child at the bottom of my feet. I picked him up with my hands and placed him on top of the pile. This was someone’s child. My eyes shot opened, he had a freckle on the underside of his nose, at the opening of his left nostril. This was my child! I held my breath and fell to my knees. I sobbed louder than any engine could roar. I held his tiny head in my hands and pulled him to my cheek. How could I kill my own son? He suffered a horrendous death and at my hands .What about Mira and our girls? Where they in here too? A guard ripped David from my grips and threw him into the wheelbarrow. “Take the garbage in the wheelbarrow around the corner” he sniggered. “This is my son……. you monster” I sobbed. “You Juden were never meant to reproduce in the first place” he fired back. Another prisoner took the wheelbarrow from me. I chased after him around the corner and the immense heat stopped me still. It was a cast iron furnace and the bodies were being loaded onto a tray and the tray was placed into the searing flames. If my David had to be put in here it was going to be me to do it. I held his cheek in the palm of my hand. His closed eyes hid the torture his body had to endure. His pink complexion highlighted the tear stains on his cheeks. I placed him on the tray; I put my bodyweight on the tray to stop myself from collapsing. I closed my eyes and prayed. I prayed that God would forgive me. I prayed that David would forgive me. I prayed that God would protect Mira, Martha and Eva. I took a deep and prolonged breath. I held it and slowly exhaled. I extended my arm and the tray disappeared into the flames.