Kristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass)

‘We are the Gestapo. The Fuhrer’s orders are our only command, our goal is to eliminate all enemies of our fatherland. To never surrender. To eradicate all that oppose our Fuhrer. Heil Hitler!’
These were the words that would scar me for all eternity, we had become so brainwashed that everything we saw had had all life sucked out of it, we were just mere puppets for the Fuhrer to play with. All humanity inside us had been lost.

The beginning was torture, they had made me kill my best friend with my bare hands, just because he was a Jew. I remember so vividly. My hands ached from gripping his neck so tight, his mother screaming as if she had just seen a demon. He squirmed like a lizard as he tried to escape from my grasp. Then, he fell silent. No longer gasping for air like a fish out of water, he laid there, lifeless as a ragdoll.
My breath quivering, I fell to my knees. It was done. I had killed my best friend.

All to prove to them I could carry out any order that was given to me. To serve the Fuhrer without any hesitation or guilt. They were ruthless.
The more they made us kill the easier it became. The warmth of someone else’s blood on my skin began to feel normal.

The further I went with the Gestapo, the greater the break between myself and reality stretched. We stayed out past curfew, breaking into homes taking out everyone who resisted, the whilst families screamed and sobbed in terror the whole time. It became second nature. We would break down the doors of the houses of suspected resistance fighters and test how well their skulls would resist our bullets.

Then the orders came in. They read, ‘Orders direct from the Fuhrer Adolf Hitler himself; ‘Proceed by any means to apprehend and transport all Jewish men, for they have discriminated and shunned the unstoppable growth and power of the Third Reich. All men collected are to be sent to the correctional facilities nearest to your location. These orders are to be carried out immediately’.
Excitement brewed in the air like the ingredients inside a witch’s cauldron as she prepares a ghastly potion. They had pulled out a list of all the registered Jewish men and women in our area of control. Before long, my hands were sweating and my heart was racing.

I was eager to get out and onto the streets. To capture and eradicate the filthy Jewish vermin that were denying the power of my Fuhrer.
Smashing glass panes, breaking down doors, screaming in the faces of the Jewish men. We were an unstoppable force of blood-thirsty, power hungry Germans, whose soul mission was to follow and obey every order given by our Fuhrer without failure.

We had gathered one hundred men, they were lining the streets following each other like an army of puny little ants. Little did they know, they were slowly marching to their deaths. I slowly made my way down the street to arrive at the door of my next victim. I recall feeling the crackle of the shards of glass under my feet as I took each step, the sound of the other Gestapo screaming their lungs out at the Jewish men to ‘Walk faster’ and ‘Get in line’ as the smell of smoke from their cigarettes filled the air. I clung to my rifle, a looming sense of fear had overcome me when I had realised, I had arrived at the house where I first committed myself to the Gestapo. I had arrived at the place of my first murder. I knew I would not be able to maintain the aggression needed to be able to convince my friend’s father out and onto the street with the rest of the men. I felt again, I was no longer a machine. I was human.

I ran.

I ran as fast and as far away from the monsters who had been controlling me since the very beginning. The officers who blindly follow orders from a man they have never even seen and yet whole-heartedly entrust their lives to him. The people that any sane man would have known were just a group of boys playing a fun game of cat and mouse. The people I called friends. The people I laughed with. The people that made me kill my best friend.

I knew what I had to do. I needed to reach the bridge connecting the town to the train station, bypassing the Gestapo headquarters to pick up the dynamite. It was not long before I had ran to the headquarters gathered the materials and had made it to the bridge, with the dynamite in hand. I lined the centre of the bridge with the dynamite and fed the ignition line behind me as I snuck over to a safe firing location.

*click* BOOM, the night sky lit up and the sound of tons of stone hitting the water and the ground filled the air as the bridge had been blown into oblivion. I heard the familiar voices of my once fellow Gestapo members screaming in confusion and anger. I flinched as the sound of one hundred individual gun shots, one for each Jewish man that had been lured out onto the streets by me. It was me that did this, I was the one to blame for the death of one hundred innocent men who had just tried to live a simple life in an even harder time.

Trembling with the guilt of over one hundred souls on my shoulders, I fell to my knees returning back to the only practice I had learnt to do in times of need and guilt. I prayed. I prayed to the God whom I had convinced myself was the reason my father had died in the great war. I prayed, ‘I am a sinner. You are my saviour and redeemer. You have planned every step of my life. I ask your forgiveness. To eradicate all sin that fills me and to make me pure again. Praise you forever, Amen’.

A tear rolls down my cheek.
I will be forever in debt of the men who lost their lives to the countries monstrous Fuhrer. I thank the heavens everyday that the war has ended.