Concentration

Chapter One

Harry's POV:

Are zombies real? You hear about humans dying and resurrecting into these mindless flesh-eating creatures, but they're all in horror films and believe to be monstrous creatures created by man's imagination. No, zombies are real. I know this because I walk among them. Granted they're not the flesh-eating, resurrecting kind. No, these zombies are humans, and they have yet to experience death.

I'm surrounded by them, the zombies. There's thousands among thousands and everywhere I look my eyes fall upon another hoard of them. They're all dressed the same: blue and grey stripped pajamas and slippers that offer no protection against the harsh elements. This is the uniform they are given when they enter hell. The Nazis' don't bother with asking for your size; whatever they throw in your face is what you wear for the duration of your stay here in hell. Their possessions are ripped from them and they're all forced to wear the same uniform; they try to make it inhumane as possible by taking way individuality and self-expression.

You can tell how long a prisoner has been in hell by their physical and mental state. The ones who still show emotion are the new arrivals- shock still envelopes their being at what their life has succumbed to unwillingly. The ones who show no emotion, who slowly shuffle along, not looking up to meet anyone's gaze because they don't feel human enough to look at anything but the dirt ground, those are the experienced ones- those are the zombies.

The first day I entered Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp was the day after she left. The day proceeding the night I lay in the bed that still smelled of her soft, delicate, and warming skin and cried myself into the realm of unconsciousness. My unconscious deceiving me with hallucinations of her fingertips on me, her alluring smile, and soft blue eyes. My unconscious became my enemy. I hated him.

I'll never be able to rid my memory of that abdominal first day at Natzweiler-Struthof. My French uniform was tainted with the stitching of the swastika. The French government wasn't strong enough to withstand Hitler and fell victim to his regime, another pawn in his sick game of chess. The pungent odor that assaulted my sense of smell when I exited the truck was enough make bile rise in my throat; I suppressed it until that night when I was in the privacy of my flat where I emptied my body of everything it was holding. Another French soldier, who appeared to be my age, asked for the source of the smell, the Nazis' laughing him off as if there was a joke we all haven't been informed of but will become aware of soon enough.

On a soldiers first day they're gracious enough to award you a tour of the camp: the factories, the prisoners barracks, the cafeteria, the small hospital on site, and the prisoners toilets which are a measly hole the prisoners kneel over. Though everything they had shown me was inhabitable on any standard, it still wasn't the most atrocious of evils, no that was still to be revealed.

We were shown the trenches where they line up prisoners, executing them all with the bullets of their machine guns. Where their bodies fell would be their permanent resting spot, dirt was thrown over the mass grave and no head stones where given. You were erased from this earth as if your existence was just a figment of everyone you came into contact with imagination.

We were shown the gallows, were death by hanging was another one of their execution techniques.

Next it was the "shower houses" which in reality were gas chambers. They give prisoners the false sense of security and optimism that they're being rewarded a shower, when in reality they were being rewarded freedom from hell through death. Death being their liberator and salvation. After you entered the construction you were locked in and canisters of toxic fumes are dropped from the ceilings; the effluvium suffocating their lungs until no breath parted their lips.