Beauty and the Beast

Part 1: Beauty and the Beast

Hello, Reinhard.
It's so good to see you...or is it?
I suppose it's both.
It's good because it means that I've finally healed enough to come to the spot where you have been condemned to lay forever, watching and listening to the world go by. It's good because it signifies that I've finally reclaimed my life; that I'm no longer living in your shadow and that of what you did to me.
But it's also not good because it means...I've never truly been able to forget you.
But has anyone in the Czech Republic been able to do that after all the pain and hardship you inflicted on them during your year long reign?

Being in Prague brings back so many memories. The place where I now stand, the place where your memorial used to be, brings back even more.
Maybe, once I have healed psychologically  enough to go back to Panenske Brezany, my mind will swim with memories of you.
One day, I will.
I promised myself I would live to see the end of you. I did that—on the outside at least. I died on the inside a long time ago, but I suppose that by making it far along enough to stand here, I've kept that first promise.
I also promised myself I would heal.
I have to honor that promise now...don't I?

It's not as if you will understand where I'm coming from. After all, what would you know about keeping promises, Reinhard? About decency, about honor?
How would you ever understand my point of view—you, whom Hitler called "The Man With the Iron Heart"?
You were never one to honor promises, or to make them in the first place. I shouldn't even be asking you.

Do you still remember me, Reinhard? Do you remember who I am? Do you remember what you did to me? Can you even hear me, six feet underground? Does my pain, does my anguish penetrate the four dirt walls of your grave and fling itself upon you?

You know, I'm an old woman by my standards. In my opinion, I have aged faster than I would prefer to—but for good reason.
In the past, it had been imposed on my eyes to witness repugnant things; my ears had been forced to hear execrable things. My feet had been forced to take me to unspeakable places; my hands are black with sin, sin I was demanded to commit.

To the rest of the world, however, I am the heroine Sophie Gabcikova, because I am the sister of the man that, along with many others, was the reason why you now lie prostrate in a wooden box. They are also the reason why many more Czechs still live on today and are not lying in mass graves in the fields of the countryside, victims of another mass shooting.

And yet...the worst part of it all? It is you that have aged me—you, of all people. In less than two minutes, you stole my childhood, my youth—everything I ever was and wanted to be. You crushed my dreams; dashed my hopes—you obliterated me. The woman that stands here before you today isn't who I used to be. I live my life as a husk of who I used to be—because there's no bringing that back. There's no bringing back my innocence, my carefreeness, my optimism. There's no bringing back my love for life and the people in it. Those are all things that, along with the girl I used to be, are buried in the empty rooms of the Lower Chateau at Panenske Brezany.
Perhaps, when I have mustered the emotional strength to do so, I will visit their graves, and shed tears over dreams that  could have been reality, if not for you.

They say that having children ages you beyond repair. They say that it distorts your body, sallows your face—and yet your heart is still as youthful as it once was. Children make you want to start your life all over again.
Because of you, I will never know such joy. Whatever children I have given birth to are dead by your hand. I can have no more because of the things you did to me. Marriage and sex are abhorrent to me because of you. I was all alone, even when you were with me, and now I am—and will be—alone forever.

That doesn't matter to you, though, does it. It doesn't. I don't think it ever did—because you never expected me to leave you and live. You never gave a shit about my future because you had no future planned for me past my time with you. You treated me lower than you would a Jewess, lower than you would any candidate for your concentration camps. Exactly why you did that or what I did to you to deserve that, I don't know. But I know I will never get my answer, because you cheated me out of it by dying.