Beauty and the Beast

Gates Of Hell

There are some things that just never leave your mind. No matter what you do or where you go in life they follow you like shadows, a gentle but omnipresent reminder of memories or people that you no longer want to remember. I'm sure you have those kinds of memories, Reinhard. The kind that you just can't shake no matter how hard you try. Memories like this shape your mentality, they change your outlook on life irrevocably. I suppose it is because of memories like that that you were relentless in your duty as a high-ranking Nazi to wipe out and eradicate the Jews forever. Just the mention of the word "Jew" alone was enough to make your blood boil. You must have associated it with the days of your boyhood, hisses and taunts of "Jew" echoing in your ears, following you wherever you went. Although you now wore the black and silver uniforms of the most feared and hated men in the Reich, you still remembered how you were known to your classmates only as "Itzig Suss, the Jew", and "Moses Handel, the violin player".

Apparently it wasn't enough to have had such emotional trauma inflicted on you for reasons you couldn't control, was it? You were gracious enough to inflict such trauma on me, even in death. Which brings me to another point: would things have been different if you were still alive? Would this have even happened if my brother and his comrades hadn't attacked you that afternoon? Yes, my son would have died, and yes, I would have probably been left to rot in the hospital bed, but would you have let me die there? Most likely not. As cruel and heartless as you were towards me, to this day I firmly believe that you would have intervened and had me taken out of Bulovka Hospital. Is it because of the twisted emotional connection I established with you, woven from with such passionate hatred that it eventually turned into...something else? I never loved you, Reinhard...or did I? I don't even know myself. Some days I find myself toying with the idea, that no, it's not so bad at all, while other days I push the thought away with disgusted finality: after all he's done to you and those you love, you still have the gall to love him?!

I'm ashamed of myself for even considering it, yes, I am. I should hate you with every fiber of my being, Reinhard. But I had become too internally exhausted to direct any sort of ill will towards you. All I could think of were the good things you had done to me, which were unfortunately very few in number, and had come only after you had done some of the most unimaginable things to me. But the tattered shreds of my sanity still clung to those few events like lint to an old sweater, unable to let go. And slowly, day after day, the longer I stayed locked up in your castle, I started to blot out the rest of the things that had happened to me there: the rape, the beatings, the starvation. All that remained--and all that is there to this day--are the few acts of kindness you deigned to bestow on me. 

Later on, Reinhard, I would extensively read about you: it was the only way I could truly cope. I wanted to see who this man was, where he came from in terms of background, and what happened throughout his life that resulted in the rise of such a tyrannical despot. I came across a story that involved you and a gathering of other high ranking Nazis at a said opera house. You repeatedly expressed your dislike for a certain piece the people on stage were playing, not because it was bad, but because it brought back bad memories for you. At one point during your time as a naval trainee in Kiel, the elders in the barracks who loved to pick on the newcomers would rouse you at obscene times during the night and have you play that same tune for them on your violin over and over and over again. Even after all those years, after your rapid ascent to power, you still remembered those early days with painstaking clarity, and couldn't bear to be reminded of the time when you had been the laughingstock of the entire platoon. 

I will never forget the day I saw my brother dragged out of the Karel Boromjesky church as a corpse. 

For hours Ata and I had huddled on opposite sides of the curb, sitting in defeated and exhausted silence as the SS worked to flush out my brother and his comrades. After what seemed like forever, the SS filed out of the church's massive doors carrying three limp bodies which they hurled unceremoniously to the pavement. A bolt of pain flashed through my chest; I instinctively clutched at the front of my dress, my lips parting as I gasped for air. I willed my throat to open, for my lungs to relax, for my brain to remember how to breathe again, but I couldn't. All I could see were the three corpses lying on the pavement, the SS men standing over them and nudging them with the toes of their boots in an impromptu corpse search, and the mental image of my brother standing in the doorway of my room, his lips split in a wide smile, his blue eyes sparkling with mirth.