Winfred

vii

Freidrich Von Steubon, Captain, SS

Count to one hundred...a hundred times, until it is ten thousand. Close your eyes and empty your mind, until you cannot think of anything, and you feel at peace. Stare at the wall and let your vision go out of focus until your eyes finally close. If you are very desperate, count sheep, as well-meaning parents advise their children to do.

There are some nights when none of this works. When you try and you try to fall asleep, to escape the torture of your waking moments, for just some time. For just a few, blissful hours, you will be oblivious, and you tell yourself this, encouraging yourself that if you can only manage to fall asleep, you can escape it all for just a little while...to no avail.

You feel tired, and your entire body and mind is exhausted, yet sleep is a stranger.

It was two nights following the evening that I had seen the Jewish man, and I could not rid my mind of his face. It was like he was haunting me. Dietrich said today that he was dying. The man was going to die and I would finally be rid of him.

Why then, did I feel, pressing at the back of my mind, that I should do something?

Finally, at midnight, I could take it no longer. I was desperate for sleep, for rest, for respite from everything.

The only way I could go to sleep was if I somehow assuaged my guilt.

I was so desperate that I could no longer ignore the one idea that had presented itself to me hours ago. If this would give me a chance to escape this terrible guilt, I would do anything.

So I returned to the man's cell. He was still in solitary, so it was not hard to be unseen. There were not even guards in that corridor, because they knew that this man was in no condition to move.

I entered the small room, and he hardly even opened his eyes, only lifting his lids just enough to make me out.

"God, please," I heard him mumble. "I have taken it, and taken it, gracefully, but I cannot survive anymore."

"Stop mumbling your foolish prayers," I snapped. "Before I change my mind and decide that hitting you is, after all the more sane option on my part."

I was an unwilling volunteer for the job at hand. If I could have made any other soldier do it, without their questioning my sanity, I would have preferred not to dirty my hands. Better to let someone else do the work, while I received the benefit of relief of my guilt without having to humiliate myself in the process.

But there was only me to perform this task.

"Why are you here?" his voice croaked. "I thought I would have peace while I died...I have prayed for relief of this pain for days...I thought I would finally die tonight, and yet here you are, to make my dying moments a living hell."

I squatted before him, grabbing his chin a bit too roughly and lifting his head so that he was forced to make eye contact with me.

"The next hour is going to be living hell for you," I said, icily. "But not for the reasons you think. And with your attitude, forgive me if I take pleasure in it."

I pulled him to his feet and over to the small bench built into the wall, noting that he had been too weak to even move himself to the more comfortable bench, rather than the hard, cold stone wall he had been sitting against.

"What are you...doing?" he asked, raggedly.

"I am, quite possibly, doing the most foolish thing I have ever done," I said. "It goes against everything that has been drilled into me; it makes a mockery of all the things I have been rigorously trained to do. But it is the only thing I can think of that might make it so I am able to sleep. So I am going to save your sorry life."

He laughed, his mirth eventually trailing off in a cough.

"It is not a funny thing, nor is it something to be grateful for. You are going to be in pain, pain worse than what you are in now. I can only promise that, at the end of it all, you will feel relief."

"Relief," he said, a small smile gracing his lips. He chuckled again.

"If you think this is funny, I can change my mind and leave you to die at any moment."

"It is funny though, if you stop to think about it. You are a Nazi; I am a Jew."

"Be quiet and bite down on this," I said. I handed him a rag. He obediently bit down on it, stifling groans of pain. He was as resigned to this as he was to everything else, and made much less sound than even some of the toughest German soldiers would have made, even though I was not the most gentle medic. I found myself making no effort to not be rough, and yet he made no complaint.

His wounds were nothing short of disgusting, having been left to fester for several days. Finally finished with treating his back, I relocated his shoulder. It was finished. I gave him an antibiotic to help with any infection in his back. "This is the best I can do, under the circumstances," I said. "You had best live out the rest of your time at this prison walking the line carefully. Do not question authority. Work until you cannot work anymore when you are on work detail. This is no longer your life to foolishly throw away."

My eyes narrowed, as I was suddenly overcome by a wave of anger at myself. How could I be this foolish? I knelt down once more, to look in his eyes. "You may not fully understand the things I have risked in coming here tonight. Do you understand who I am? I am the commander of this camp. I am the one who would normally be expected to shoot in the head, anyone who attempted something of the nature of the deed I have performed tonight. I have risked my life, to save yours. That makes me a fool...an idiot. Do not make me any more of a fool by going and throwing my efforts away."

I stood and turned to leave, rolling my sleeves down once more and putting my uniform jacket on again, once more the picture of the German soldier, decked out in black, a scowl on my face that would normally make any lesser man than the one I had just helped shrink back in fear.

He was laughing again. "And to think that, I prayed so hard for the blessing of relief that I thought would come in death, when God provided a different way to give me that blessing."

I turned to look at him, a disbelieving smirk twisting my features. "You would call me a blessing?"

He nodded, smiling.

"You are more foolish than I thought, Jew. Look at me. I am a Nazi. A monster. They say the Jews are the scum of the earth, but I go to bed at night feeling that I am the one who is scum. We are a curse, if we are even worthy to be called anything. We wear the black uniforms, the color of death, and we parade around with the lives of people...humans...in our hands, caring not who we step on or harm in the process. If someone dies, so be it. It is simply an... occurrence..."

Suddenly, it felt clear to me, the feeling I had been trying so hard to come to terms with ever since this man arrived. This was why I felt so guilty.

"I destroy wives, murder husbands, and beat sons and daughters, with little thought that I am actually hurting someone's brother, or someone's father...someone's mother. With little thought that...it could have very well been me. That it could be me, if I do the wrong thing, or don't appease Hitler. That my own countrymen would so easily turn on me..."

I felt troubled, but differently from before. I knew then that I could no longer continue on as I had been up until this point; now it was only a matter of how to proceed from here. I finished more quietly. "No, Sir," I stated. "I am not a blessing. I am a nightmare."