A book of poems and short stories

The War

Sept. 14, 1942,

When will this dreadful war end? Will it be days from now or years from now? Will I ever see the end of it? The day is filled with rain, mudd, the pounding sounds of guns, and the haunting screams of the fallen. I want to go back home, back to my mutter back to my sweetheart. I want this nightmare to end.This isn't how I wanted to spend the day of my birth; I don't want to be surrounded by death everywhere I turn. I don't want to be surrounded by the stench of rotting flesh, the smell of burning bones. I want to go back to what life was before the war. How I could sit and listen to Amillia play the piano, or smell the fresh bread my mutter would bake every Sunday. I would give my life to hear my vater's deep gruffiling laugh, or talk to him about the newspaper. But all of that is gone. Mutter and Amillia are at home and my vater is dead. I'm nineteen, and I have experienced more hell than the devil himself. I pray to God every night, asking that they stay safe. I pray to God that I am able to stay safe. Until tomorrow.
Leon Bergmann.

I close the book as General Lange calls for me, "Bergmann! Get your arsch over here!" I followed the command, jogging to get into line. Role call. It's a daily thing here; every morning and every night. It's to keep up with who has died, to see who's left, to see if we need more. We always need more. The Americans are too much, always trying to get us, us trying to get them. It's a cycle; we get recruiters, we go to battle, we lose men, the Americans lose men, we both get more and start over. We eat, breathe, and sleep in war. The General called off men;

"Müller!"

"Hier."

"Meyer!"

"Hier."

"Schmidt!"

"Hier."

"Hoffmann!... Hoffmann! Answer me!" Silence. Not a single word, no one was breathing. We all know what that means. "Right then, Schröder!"

"Hier." This is how it goes, General Lange calls the roll, when he gets to a fallen everyone gets deathly quiet, General clears his throat and continues down the line. Once he finishes, we are ordered to bed down or take our shifts to look out. Without speaking to anyone I take my sleeping bag and move underneath a tree. For the first time in days I'm able to finally close my eyes and rest. But it wasn't long before the screams started up. It's just another day in the camps. I get up and start the day, calling my trusted dog, Owen, and going down to the prisoners.

Screams, cries, the undeniable sounds of whips ripping skin. I clutch my eyes closed, hoping I could get a moment of peace. Something I haven't had since I was put into this dreaded place. The German soldiers march up and down the barrak halls, whacking and smacking the prisoners who look suspicious. Life was so much better before the war. I was able to go to school, have food to eat. I was able to go and do what I pleased. Now I'm just a jew. I have no name, no home, and no family. I miss all that. My parents, siblings, cousins, uncles, aunts. Gone. Dead. My name, Simon Lewandowski, has no meaning. My age is nothing but a number, nineteen. I want this war to end. I want to go to America, where I know I can be free.
My mind starts to drift; I start to think about mother. What she would be doing if she were alive. I wonder if Alice, my sister, ever got away. She didn't live with mother, father, and I, she moved after she graduated school. I hope she is alive. I thought about food. Warm buttered bread, sweet frosting off of a chocolate cake. The rich taste of the puff pastries grandmother used to make. The potatoes, carrots, and beans we use to grow in our garden; how mother would roast them over the stove. The tender juicy meat father would cook. Sausage, chicken, beef. My stomach rumbles and tumbles at the sound of the delectable foods. Saliva gathered around my tongue. I can only hope for food that sounds so good. We get the same thing every morning and every night, watered down soup, with an occasional hunk of a potato; or if you're really lucky, a hunk of meat. For lunch we normally get a small slice of moldy bread, sometimes, when the guards are feeling generous, we get a small carrot. But it's not like we can really eat a raw carrot, our teeth aren't used to it. It would take ages for us to chomp down the crunchy, orange stick.
I rolled over, trying to get comfortable on these tiny, stone bunks. Just as I closed my eyes one of the guards came marching down the hall, banging on the cell doors, waking everyone in them.

"Get your arsch up! Get up I say! Move!"

Together all the prisoners move. Slowly we shuffle our numb feet, absolutely dreading what's going to happen. Role call. Every morning before we eat, and every night before we eat. The guards order us into lines with our right arms out. Like I said before, our names mean nothing, our age is nothing but a number, the only number that matters is the one tattooed on every prisoner's arm. C2890. That's mine. Prisoner C2890. They don't care that I might have a family, or that I'm barely an adult. I'm their enemy. And we are to be treated as such. One of the guards, Bergmann, walked up and down the rows with a german shepherd by his side. Burgmann roughly grabs each prisoner's arms, copies the number, and drops the arm as if it had burned him. The dog followed every step he made; growling and barking up a storm. Occasionally the dog would tear into someone's hand, or completely tear them to shreds.
They were right beside me, the dog was looking at me. Bergmann harshly grabbed my arm, writing the horrible numbers down, then dropping my arm. The dog growled at me, no not at me, it was growling at the man beside me. The ratchet dog started to bark and nipp and the man. He was my bunkmate, I have never spoken to him. Never had a reason to talk. No reason to make friends. Bergmann searched him, pulled him out of line and stripped him clean. Bread. He had bundles and bundles of bread on him. How? I will never know, because right then Bergmann shot him dead. Right there in front of everyone. No one cried, no one looked at his body, no one mumbered a word. He will lie there until someone decides to pick him up and God only knows what they will do with him. Bergmann puts his gun back into the holter and continues on. The dog clawed and tore at the man's skin, making sure he was dead.This is how it's done in death camps. You can only pray to God that you make it out alive.