Welcome to the Camps!

Welcome to the Camps

Since the election I have read on Twitter the most ignorant comments and questions like:

When do we move to the camps?

What will our names be at the camps?

When will re-education camps start?

Do you have a clue what you are playing down for a laugh?

So here I am at 5 AM with the phrase, “Welcome to the Camps,” being said over and over again in my head.

My dear departed friend, William Gilman, told me stories about horror. His mother, Zelda Wolf (RIP), blessedly, was in the Blitz enduring night after night of bombings from the Nazis. I say it was a blessing compared to some of her relatives who were taken into concentration camps and exterminated with gas so lethal, you would think the Nazis were spraying for cockroaches.

This is not humorous but written to make a point. People are placed into concentration camps to work until death or to just die.

Now barely anyone who can relive a day of arrival to one of the big death camps in Poland are alive. Most who are still alive were children or babies in their mother’s arms at the time of their encampment.

So in honor of the 6,000,000 Jews who perished, here is something I wrote for a yet to be published book.

The context is a German man, who is the grandson of a Nazi general and his wife. For years, he’s been a black market dealer of Nazi souvenirs in the 21st century. Victor has been judged by God and sent back to 1940. He has just arrived at the railyard in Auschwitz.

An excerpt from “The Devil is a Babysitter”:

Victor screamed, “No!” until the darkness cleared. He was in line at a rail yard where the warning signs and instructions were all in German, Polish and about six other languages. The sun looked like a ball that had just bounced into the sky and the air was cool. Birds could be heard singing in the trees and brush. Flocks of them would take off into the sky and then return to their starting point.

In the distance were fenced compounds with a child’s playground, tennis and mintonette (volleyball) courts and a good sized field. In a place that looked inviting enough to come with the family and kick the ball around for the day, Victor found himself in a long line of people that had just exited the rail cars and were heading toward a field in front of a number of barracks. He could see that the men were being separated from the women and children by guards whose steel faces pushed and prodded the first to arrive until the point was taken and the crowd separated without being asked.

Victor took his place in the fifth row. He was positioned just to the right of the podium. He turned his head to look around and a sharp “Augen nach vorne! Eyes forward!” screamed in his ears.

He did not know a guard was walking the lines with others and taking watches, hats, pins and other jewelry. Some men were hesitant and were met with force by a baton or a flat punch to their midsection as the items were forcefully removed. The guard in his line came to his side and asked in German, “Welche Wertsachen hast du? What valuables do you have?”

He looked at their uniforms and saw these were not the normal Luftwaffe soldiers who guarded the prisoners of war camps. They were the soldiers of the SS or what was once called the Death Squads. Victor cringed and said, “Ikh bin a aryan mentsh aun fodern tsu nemen mir tsu der kamandant gleykh“ or “I am an Aryan man and demand to be taken to the commandant at once.”

The guard responded by looking at Victor and then threw two punches into Victor’s stomach. He doubled over but was righted by another guard who made him stand straight at attention. He had spoken in Yiddish and didn’t know it. The only word that made sense was commandant. Which was heard by a delegation that walked up to him and stared with eyes that were as gray and cold as a hawk.

Victor blinked in surprise as he saw his grandfather, general Otto Gossinger, standing before him with his wife Elsa, his grandmother whom he watched flash into flames moments before arriving.

“Was willst du? What do you want?” the man asked.

There was no warmth in his words or expression and his grandmother whose arms he spent so many a morning while she sang and fed him looked on from behind with equal disgust for the group in front of them. Victor raised his courage and spoke, “I am,” he began to say, “Victor-”, but what came out was, “Joshua Rosenberg and I demand to be taken from here.”

General Gossinger looked at his men and asked, “Does anyone speak his language?”

A deferential major stepped up and replied, “We were not told to have any interpreters, Oberst General. Should I send for one?”

“No. Your orders were correct, major. Let’s move on,” the general said.

His wife held tight to his back. Her eyes were wide and there was an edge to them that was very cold and unforgiving.

Victor began to cry. He had done nothing wrong. He was being condemned by his own family to a camp that did not have the correct number of barracks for the size of the group. He then realized what this camp was and how it would end for him. He had to warn the others, he began to scream and found that he did not have a voice. He began to cough and sputter trying to make some sound, any sounds and realized he had been silenced. He moved his eyes to the others around him. Men who looked solid and sturdy were weeping and handing over family treasures and money belts to men who would just melt down the items into gold and silver bars that would be smuggled to caches in South America and pocket the cash.

Soon the humiliation increased and many of the men around him found their pants around their ankles and were not allowed to bend down and pull them up. The smell of piss and sweat filled the air.

“Please, gentlemen pick up your pants and ladies do not cry,” a now smiling general Gossinger said just after taking the podium but the smile did not meet his eyes.

“I want to welcome you to this camp our Fuhrer has set up while your cities are rebuilt. We are sorry to remove your valuables but you know this war against the Communists is costly and every German must contribute their fair share,” the general said.

“Or all of it,” Victor heard as a loud whisper from the back. Several men snorted but did not move or shake with nervous laughter

The comment was not noticed and general Gossinger continued, “We assure you all your needs will be met and we can sit out the duration of the war in modest comfort.”

Behind the general, four doors opened into the barracks. Guards led the way through a corral of ropes and stood to each side of the door. Over the speakers, General Gossinger said, “One hundred fifty will be processed at a time. Be patient and you will soon be settled into your new homes.”

The general waived his arm towards the beautiful neighborhood Victor has seen walking in.

Victor walked toward the door, he was in the first group. He noticed there was no longer a view of the camp with its little cottages and playground. He looked at General Gossinger and his wife and eyed them with a cold stare. “How could they have been so proud of their Third Reich? The bastards and their Gott-verdammin leader,” he thought.

The threshold broke the stare and Victor turned into a clean brand new set of barracks. The pine floors smelled of linseed oil and the bedding was freshly made. The walls had been recently whitewashed and light poured in from the long row of windows.

“All guests are required to shower. Disrobe and please enter the shower area,” the guard ordered.

Victor tried to stall but he could only feel, smell and taste. He did not have control of his movements as he followed instructions and took all his clothing and put them in the bags on each bed.

“All of you come this way and throw your bags into the chute. Come, come we have a wonderful banquet waiting for you,” the guard said with the tiniest smile.

Victor was the tenth man into the shower area. It too was new but all concrete with tracks of wood flooring spaced so water could run between the slats. By the time every man was in there was only room enough to reach out with his forearm. “Here it comes,” he said to no one.

The guard closed the door and the men thought they could hear the sound of water being poured through a shaft but Victor knew that the Zyklon 12 needed water to activate and the sound of hissing pipes filled the room with gas as each man coughed and collapsed to the floor. Victor’s body fell last but his eyes did not close. He could not breath either and his body felt like he was in a permanent state of choking. He looked around at the others to see if there was any movement but there was none. After a few minutes, the air movers kicked in and fresh air was swept into the room and the doors finally unlocked. Men in labor attire came in and began to take the bodies and lay them on the conveyors that lay under the wooden slats. Then belts took the bodies along the floor and down chutes.

Victor’s body was placed on a belt and he began to move. He tried to scream and roll off the belt but he couldn’t budge. He felt the air go past him as he hit the chute. There was darkness as he slid out of the showers but it did not remain dark as a white blue light appeared. He could feel the heat and then felt the flames as he hit the “ovens” and the skin of his body and the flesh of his eyes burned and peeled away. There was no mercy from the pain as the fire boiled his blood within his bones and they burst from the steam, his brain was protected and held in the liquid like a faulty pressure cooker. His final scream was real as the pressure burst his skull in many pieces and he woke in his bed. He was next to his wife. He was about to scream when a hand held his mouth firm.

###

Please understand there are probably many things I may have written incorrectly about the arrival and the camps but all of this is to prove a point and that is, a very charming and well spoken man convinced an entire country in fact the world that Germany was a peace loving country that had been conned by one race of people and their banking.

He did this with a style and grace that captured his audience into unrelenting fervor. There are films.

Remember he was voted in by the people who were convinced by a singular source of information to appear as if all the different media companies were in agreement.

This sounds similar to how we arrived into 2021 with so many people agreeing with a singular narrative in the media. Something that has never occurred in history before 2010 unless you go back to the election of Adolph Hitler.

It is disgusting that so many Jewish people and minorities voted for the narrative’s man when they were warned of the signs from their parents and grandparents about how it started in 1932.

Now I have no clue what the real endgame is here but it seems the world is overpopulated to some people, the world is warming up, and they need to rectify it by reducing our numbers drastically. I believe in many ways the Earth throws her power around when she is sick and right now the world is sick.

Whatever the narrative, mainstream media, is throwing its power against, be warned, that someone is targeting an enemy and no one is safe until they can see it.

Let’s not have another story that begins with you waiting your turn in line.