The Laughing Girl

Sometimes in life you have a choice, and when you do it is the best thing in the world. Having lived in a world where choosing wasn't an option, I promise you, there is nothing more important.

When I was 18, I didn't have a choice. I did what I was told to do. I joined the army, if I didn't I would die. It didn't matter whether or not I agreed with what I was fighting for, I fought for it.

I should make myself more clear. I lived in Germany. In the 1930's. Make a little more sense now?

I joined the army almost the second after Herr. Hitler gained power. I'm not proud of it, but I was scared. I was scared of what I saw at his many rallies. He didn't seem reasonable to me. He seemed crazy. What he was saying, what he was doing, everything pointed to somebody who would do anything if it would further his own desires. So I put my feet on the path to be the perfect little puppet. Somebody to whom the beloved Führer would never spare a glance. Then, perhaps, I would be safe.

I was lucky. I was Aryan and I was obedient. I did everything that was ever asked of me. In return, I went unnoticed. I survived. At least, my body did. But I can't go a single day without hearing the screams and seeing the blood. I was eventually posted to Auschwitz, and I could tell you horror stories forever, but one always stood out in my mind. My eyes have remained bone dry through the retellings of stories that reduce others to hysterics, causing several people to question my sanity. But this one memory always touches something deep down inside me, tearing sobs from my chest and tears from my eyes.

I don't recall exactly what the weather was like that day. I think it was overcast, but that may have just been the sense of hopelessness that pervaded the entire establishment creating an illusion of fog. We were due to receive a new shipment that day. One more trainload of starving, desperate people. People with souls that we were trying to forget, with stories that we were pushing to the backs of our minds.

On that particular day we didn't have anymore room to store these particular jews, so it seemed much more efficient to shoot them upon arrival. I remember standing and staring at the train as they disembarked, wondering at the cruelty of the world, that these innocent souls were walking straight to their deaths. I caught some of their eyes, against my better judgement, and found myself looking away, unable to bear the infinite pain contained just below the surface.

I didn't see the girl then. She was too small, lost in the shuffle of legs and feet. But I definitely saw her when she and her mother came before the firing squad among a throng of others.

She was so small, no more than 11 or 12. Too young to die. She walked out to stand in front of the guns with her mother, clinging to her hand. She knew exactly what was going on; how could she not? She was trying so hard to be brave, but I could see from the tremor in her steps that she was terrified. It was all I could do not to run and throw myself infront of her, to shield her from the onslaught of bullets that would tear that beautiful young soul from her body.

I saw her wince with every shot that was fired (as an added cruelty they were being shot slowly, one by one). The row of the dead crept closer to her, until it was only she and her mother left standing. Then her mother was dead on the ground.

I will never forget what happened next. It is a moment engrained in my mind. I see it over and over again, when I close my eyes. That little girl looked down at her mother lying at her side, and she took a deep breath as though to sob. But instead she laughed. Great shrieking laughs that seemed to rip from her throat against her will. Perhaps she was laughing at the ridiculousness of it all, of the entire third reich. Or perhaps the constant pressure of living as a jew in Nazi Germany and then having her mother dead at her feet had broken her sanity. The reason will never be discovered. All I know is that we all stood there for a complete minute in silence, staring at this little girl, laughing hysterically in the middle of a death camp.

Eventually one of the firing squad members regained his senses and raised his gun, but even while staring death in the face, that little girl never stopped laughing. And she died with a laugh still on her lips.

All was silent for a moment. Or perhaps that was just my imagination. But as the ghost of her last laugh faded into the air, I couldn't help but think that this world had destroyed that girl. She should have been running through the streets or the fields playing tag with her friends, worrying about school and boys - not laughing an uncontrollable, heartbroken laugh until a bullet took her life.

I tell myself that I didn't have a choice, that I had to join the Nazi army. But what about that girl, and all the others like her. What choice did they have? Should I have died myself rather than be a part of what put them in front of firing squads or in death camps? It's a question that will haunt me until I die. And I swear that the last sound in my ears before I leave this life for another, will be the shrieking laugh of that little girl, so long ago.