“Co-operate and live, or disobey and die”
I was innocent. I had done absolutely nothing wrong.
I was born in Vienna in 1924, in the urban-decaying wasteland of Eastern Austria. I had wealthy and educated parents who wanted the best for our family. So when I was just twelve years of age, we moved into our ever prosperous neighbouring Germany. It was fine then; Germany had made our lives a considerable deal better. Later I joined the Hitler Youth, because my parents wanted to give something back to the great new society. I appeared to be of the Aryan blood and of Protestant faith. But this was my cover story. Indeed I had wavy blonde hair, blue eyes and had a muscular body figure; but I was Jewish.
“Fritz! Pass! Pass! I’m open!” I passed the ball to Gunter, and carried on my run into the opponent’s area.
“Yes! Cross!” I shouted back. The ball flew through the air, and when I had judged the ball’s flight perfectly, I jumped. At the same time in the corner of my eye, I saw the goalkeeper rise, the ball was coming directly towards my head, and I powered the ball into the bottom corner of the goal. However, I was not smiling for long. The goalkeeper had gone unnoticed, and then something hit me. It was like a ton of bricks hitting me straight in the face, I remember crumpling to the floor, and that was it.
I woke up later to acknowledge a brightly lit room, a shadowy figure blocking the light.
“Fritz! Gott-Sie-Dank!” Gunter exclaimed. “Thank God,” he repeated in German. “That was a serious beating! You look pretty terrible but at least you have no permanent damage! The nurse wanted me to tell you two things, firstly you can phone your parents, with that phone over there,” he pointed to the phone booth at the end of the ward. “Also you need to fill out this form.” Gunter handed him a blue clipboard with a form on it, headed in German ‘Patient Information’. Gunter looked at the clock above the bed, “Sorry Fritz, I really need to get back home, but honestly mate, I will come see you later. Ok? Bye!” Gunter casually walked out of the door, giving me a nod of approval as he left. Gunter really was a good friend. I looked down at the form, sighed, and started to fill it in. It was the usual information, name, date of birth, religion, race and so on.
I woke, and rubbed the sleep out of my eyes, in the distance I could see a tall and skinny figure rapidly coming towards me.
“Hey Fritz, hope your doing fine, just got back from the old Hitler Youth, we built some tents today, it was ok, you didn’t miss much.” He sat on the stool adjacent to my bed and sighed. “Did you hear about what happened to Dr Reichmann?” I shook my head.
“No, what happened?” I questioned, Gunter continued.
“The Gestapo made a visit to his house, and he got accused of being Jewish. Now, the poor guy’s been shipped off to a concentration camp.” My heart sank to the bottom of my stomach. “The Chancellor put out a massive broadcast on the radio, condemning all of the Jews to be people of sincere sin.” There was silence; my thoughts went back to home, had the same fate come of my family? “But, those Jewish scums are of no concern to us, are they?” I laughed, continuing my false charade. But the bad news just kept coming. “And the best news is that you get rewards for telling the Gestapo who is Jewish. So when you get out, we can go hunting, get some money for our families, what do you say?” My ears received this statement, but my brain did not process it. To tell the truth, I was scared. More scared than ever in before in my life. I was deep in thought, when a voice came running through my head. ‘You spelt your name wrong’. I was confused, was it my conscience? I shook my head, I must be going mad. But the voice came again, it sounded familiar. ‘You spelt your name wrong’. Fear again set in, and I cleared my head coming back into the real world. I looked at Gunter; he was giving me a quizzical look. His lips moved, ‘You spelt your name wrong’. I finally realised what I was being told. I looked down, and noticed that Gunter was holding my patient information form.
“It doesn’t matter,” I replied. I looked over at the clipboard. He was right, and I chuckled at my ridiculous mistake. I handed it back to him. Gunter was also laughing as he received it; I finished my amusement when the clipboard clattered to the floor. I looked up, Gunter had an astonished look on his face, he turned towards me, and suddenly I felt alienated, nobody had ever looked at me with that isolation I was being forced under.
“You’re, a J-J-Jew,” he stuttered.
“No, no I’m not.” I replied.
“You always said you w-were a Protestant, so why did you write Jewish?”
“It was a mistake, last night I was feeling really drowsy, and had a massive headache, so I wasn’t really thinking straight.” I lied. I looked up at Gunter through my watery eyes. Would he see through my veil of lies or would he fall for it?
“I’m sorry, Fritz, I’m so sorry, I have no choice. I have to do it. If I don’t my whole family could be executed. Fritz, I have no choice.” He stood up, again nodded in my direction and ran.
“Gunter!” I called out, “Come back, I can explain.” I attempted to get out of bed. But my legs were unable to co-operate, I crumpled to the floor, watching Gunter’s shadow fade away into the distance.
I couldn’t sleep that night. The thoughts that ran through my mind were so daunting, I didn’t get any sleep. I kept hearing strange noises, which intimidated me further. The owl hooted from outside the veiled window and the light in the hallway flickered like a candle flame.
Then they came. The commotion in the hallway alerted me to their presence. The heavy and gruff German voices were an assurance that they meant business. I heard my name mentioned, now it was certain. I knew I was going to die. The doors to the ward flew aside, and I could vaguely make out the figures of five men. Then in my surprise the blanket I was holding onto, soared out of my grip, I was thrown out of my bed, and put sternly into a cold pair of metal handcuffs. A black sack was irately forced over my face, I was blind. Then they tried to offload me to the hallway, but I struggled. Stupidly, I tried to fight the five or so men, that were about to kill me. I knew it was a reckless attempt. They dropped me onto the floor. I heard a clunk of metal clash against the ground. I could just see the tall, brooding figure, pick up this weapon, and with a solid thump. I lost consciousness.
The lorry rumbled along the road. The bumpy ride was the uncomfortable element that woke me. A sign of sheer reality, I opened my eyes, and I saw the black night, indistinctly seeing the moon through the holes in the canvas above. I sat up, and looked around the grimy and dusty lorry. I was alone -or so I thought- someone coughed. I peered into the darkness attempting to see the owner, someone coughed again.
“Who’s there?” I asked, into the seemingly empty lorry. There was yet another cough.
“I am going to say this only once.” The strong German accent echoed throughout my mind. “Do you understand?” He continued. I remained motionless, waiting for him to continue. “I said, DO YOU UNDERSTAND!” He hit me with the back of his hand as he screamed in my ear. I nodded, and continued:
“Yes, I understand,”
“We have been reliably informed that you are a threat, a threat to the new modern society, which Germany is becoming. Therefore, to filter out the bad seeds, in this new era, we will exterminate these outcasts in the proud name of the great Adolf H...” His speech ended abruptly when I swore, I had to release my anger, and it was a burning fire inside my heart that was ready to be released like a storm of lightning. He smacked me again. I panted, tired from my outburst.
“To get to the point, you are going to a concentration camp, the most fearful of all of Europe, Bergen-Belsen; you will either co-operate and live, or disobey and die.”
“W-Where are my family,” I murmured.
“They are dead.” My jaw dropped. I was struggling to come to terms with this frightening news. My teeth grit, I was heartbroken, my family, who had loved and cared for me, were now dead, I suddenly felt alone. I was vulnerable and scared. I lay down, rested my bleeding head on my arm while handcuffed to the lorry, as it rumbled into the distance.
“Out, NOW.” The guard demanded. I opened one eye, and saw a group of people bound out of the lorry. I got up, and after being uncuffed, hurried out of the dusty and fly-ridden lorry, into a smoky and smelly campus. It smelt like burnt hair, the rancid and disgusting smell, was as repulsive as it looked. Aged wooden shacks lined the outside of the camp, and in the centre was a modern-looking metal plated building. It shone in the sunlight as I was led towards it. In the far distance I could see people, but they were not normal people, dressed in ragged white shorts and t-shirts and with laborious expressions, they were being ushered into a large wooden complex at the back of the camp. We waited outside for two hours, and within this period of time, approximately two-hundred men, women, and children went in. None came out. I now realised that the stern man in the truck was being deadly serious.
“Fritz Müller, und Moritz Mümpkopf. Cell twenty-four.” The man announced, and we were led together towards one of the large wooden huts. The man walking besides me was old, and had greying hair; he must have been about forty. He looked at me, and I stared into those blood-shot eyes, he looked insane, I had a sudden thought that my cell mate could be a psychopathic killer. Then thought matched reality. Moritz hurried forward, and raised his cuffed hands, and threw them round the neck of the escorting guard. The guard had his hands on his rifle, so was unable to retaliate to Moritz’s valiant fight back. Within moments the guard was dead. The killing was as silent as the tranquil sea, however an outbreak of bullets flew behind me, rustling the trees and shuddering against the ground upon which I walked. I dived to the floor, and looked up at Moritz who had remained standing in the flurry of fire. The firing continued, and it was clear that they were shooting to kill. Finally someone hit the target; a hole appeared in the middle of Moritz’s chest, and then his thigh, and suddenly a barrage of holes flew into him, Moritz tumbled over like a decrepit tree. I closed my eyes, praying this was just a dream; I would wake up in the hospital, with my family and Gunter at my side. I opened my eyes, to see a large pair of black boots; they seemed to be smiling at me. I looked up at the owner of these boots, and saw the same guard that escorted me to this horrible place.
“I warned you, if you disobey…you die.” The guard seemed to imitate his boots’ personality; he was grinning like a Cheshire cat.
“Come,” he attempted to pick me up from the ground, but instinctively I struggled, forcing the guard to retrieve the baton from his belt, a heard the swish of the air, and that was the last I could remember.
The room was illuminated with a bright fluorescent light. The walls were tiled, and the only prominent features in the room, was a metal door, and the air conditioning vents lining the top of the walls. I was alone. An unrecognisable voice rang through the room, echoing as the sound rebounded off the walls.
“You were told that if you disobey, you die. Obviously you did disobey our orders, you killed a guard, who worked for and believed in the greater good. Someone must pay for his loss of life.” A siren blared from outside the room, probably the last humane sound I would hear. I was now more scared than describable, my spine was tingling, my hand wouldn’t stop shaking, and no wonder, I was about to die. The fact it was inevitable terrified me most, and as I saw green vapour float through the vents lining the room, I started to feel drowsy. Suddenly my life flashed before my eyes, my upbringing, the smile on my parents’ faces, Gunter storming out of the ward and finally, the deadly toxic gases coming out of the daunting vents. Suddenly my throat was burning; it felt like the fires of hell had gathered in the base of my throat. My limbs went numb, and there seemed to be a constant humming in my ears. Eventually my eyes started to sting, and I was forced to shut them, to prevent the excruciating pain from worsening. I could feel my brain start to slow, it became lazy and unfocussed. The pain declined, and I fell into a long, deep sleep.
Also, if he was Jewish, he would be more likely to have a first name that originated from Hebrew (biblical names from the old testament mostly) or a variation. He wouldn't be called Fritz.
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