Malignant death

The Cold Can Lie

Walking, my feet dragging against the sleet, muscles aching in every recess of my body. Why must we walk? Because they told us to: the Kapo, the Gestapo, the Germans. Because the Nazis told us to.

The snow wasn't pretty this winter. This snow did not make a pigment of beautiful white, did not lay in an even blanket on the surface of the earth, did not make the milky white frozen wonder that God graced upon life every year, no. Here, in Birkenau, the smoke stacks ruined it. Tar-filled smog went up into the sky and permeated through the clouds, blackening heavens, destroying any semblance of a magical snow day, in exchange for this toxic sleet and winter grime.

I walked on, pressing through the blackened ice. Men walk beside me, in front of me, behind me, in all directions there is no sign of child or elder, for how could there be? The Gestapo found no use for them, so they didn't need them. All they know is how we can be used, if we deviate from that end, we end up like the snow. Our idyllic setting destroyed, our bodies poisoned and mutilated. Staring down at the smoke tainted sleet, I found myself disgusted.

Stuffing my hands into trouser pockets, I quicken my pace through the crowd of campers, searching for my friend. The sky is dark with storm clouds, no snow or rain falls, just the murky black of a stormy night falling from the upper atmosphere down to the world below. The only indication we'd even made it to camp was the lightning's macabre dancing, outlining the gates and shacks, following the drawn out harangues of thunder's trumpeting.

There, between the crowd of men, I see the brief flash of my friend Eran's backside in his patchwork coat. I muster the energy to push forward, slipping between the throng of men to catch up with him. As I jolt forward I look over to see if any guards were acknowledging my speedy pace as a disruption. No doubt, the jailers had left the moment we'd passed the gates, leaving the Kapo, the higher-ranking prisoners, in their stead to supervise our return. I catch up with Eran, reaching out to clutch his shoulder, and I'm interrupted by a loud-mouthed official shouting over the sounds of thunder, shrill and harsh, booming through like the incessant buzz of a bee come too close to one's ear. I recoil at the sound.

"Alright! You pigs want to steal food? Want to abuse the kindness we've given you, after we saved you from the ghettos and brought you here? Gave you food and shelter, yet all you Jewpigs do is whine and carry on, unfettered by the gifts we've given you! After you sucked the blood from our great nation, ruined our economy and damned us all, you think you have the right to ask for more?" Eran flinched but turned to look at the source of the voice, frowning. I look over at the man shouting at our crowd, a Nazi official in his fur coat and matching rabbit skin hat, a red Nazi insignia blazoned on the front flap. We would be mugged and killed if any of us were to wear such finery in our old neighborhoods, but a German like him, with that blood soaked symbol atop his brow; no one would dare touch him for he's better than us, not because he is, but because he told us he is, and like animals fearful of the prod, we believed him.

With a lamp in one hand, he pointed to a dark depression on the ground next to him. "This is what happens when you take from us. This! This is what happens when you pigs expect more. We break you. We will break you, and hurt you in the most creative and unpleasant ways." His words burn me, they beat us and frighten us to extents I never could've imagined before. In a sickening way, I'd grown used to it, the dead bodies on the ground, the beatings every time I kicked up dirt in the wrong direction, but his words, this man's words, are different somehow. I still cannot see what he is pointing at, a tire maybe? I'm about to turn away, not even bother with this distraction, when the lightning flashes. My mind takes seconds to register the image that had just lit up in front of me. It's me, crumpled and broken, bloody and battered, I lay there in the dirt. A bone juts out from my collar like a broken pencil, my skull caved in as if it were nothing but a spoiled fruit breaking down at the slightest touch, my jet-black hair soaked with a near indiscernible hue of crimson, plastered against the lifeless white of what's left of my scalp. Then, what seems like a long drawn out nightmare ends as the light disappears.