When Death Stalked Europe.

Family Life.

Mother still ill with her cold. Father weeping at the lack of medicine.

Sister trying to ignore the siege mentality.

1942, and still they are alive. This is no normal city. This is Berlin. Unspeakable hatred grips the nation.

To be Jewish can be difficult at times. Now it is a state crime. Penalty is death.

Rumours abound of death camps.

Johann Kranse does not believe such horror stories. Twelve and still trusting his elders.

Dark haired and vulnerable.

Even though he has been warned, he is not afraid of the Nazi thugs.
Even as his friends are taken from the streets.

News bulletins say that Russia is collapsing. Father is adamant, it is lies.

Stalin will never give in so easily.

Only the future can know the truth. Sister believes they will be dead soon.

Will they? Family life no more.

The Deportation Order.

For Johanne Kranse the worst has happened. Just one day after he saw the result of Nazi tactics.

Broken doors and windows.

One old man shot dead because he was too ill to move. But now disaster has come.

Two men handed mother a paper.

Go to Berlin station tomorrow, for relocation east. Mother faints at the news.

Sister and father remain calm.

It was expected. Johann follows his sister into the small bedroom.
She sits upon the bed.

Shocked to the core.

Twenty, and quite attractive. She had never had a boyfriend. She looks around her room.

Now she cries. Openly.

Relocation east. What can it mean? Sister has her own ideas. “They mean to kill us all.”

Such horror cannot be true.

Tomorrow we will find out. A train journey, but to where? A new home?

Or a savage end?
 
Hell’s Departure Lounge.

Bare concrete platform greets the family as they arrive. One small suitcase each.

Their world possessions.

Over a hundred people here. Each one wearing the yellow star of David.

There are guards everywhere.

Each one armed. Johann is holding his sister’s hand. Mother and father walking together.

A dark train stands silent with its plain horsebox carriages. The guards start to prod the people on.

Just like cattle.

Johann watches as an old man in his seventies is beaten to the ground.

Blood flowing freely from his head. A single shot.

Semon tries to hide these horrors from her brother. It is too late. He has seen it.

Now it is their turn.

Mother stumbles as she is pushed. Father tries to help, but both are battered by rifle butts.

The Long Wait.

Now they are locked within a carriage. Thirty others crammed in, Semon tends her injured parents.

Both are slipping in and out of sleep. Their pale faces drawn and in pain.

Semon shakes her head.

They remain there for hours. Johann can see his fellow passengers.
A woman and her crying baby. Hungry or scared.

Adults and children crammed together. Nobody knows their destination.

Whispers of Poland. Johann feels his neck hair rise.

As Johann tries to understand, one middle-aged man batters his head to a bloody mass against the locked door.

An hour later, he is dead. But nobody calls to the guards. Now there is a whistle blown, and the train moves off.

Slowly at first, but gathering speed. Into the unknown it went.
Carrying people who were born Jewish.

Their only crime.

Train To Damnation.

Wheels clunking over wet rails. Boxcars filled with fearful deprived people.

Some exhausted by the hours of travelling.

No water to be found on this carriage. Little children suffer in the terrible heat and cramped conditions.

Adults now stripped of their self-respect, defecating upon the wooden floor.

No longer caring that others can see.

In one corner, a mother feeds her newly delivered child. But there is no sucking at her breast.

This child is dead.

Another small lad looks on. Mother, father, have already gone.

Thrown from the train at the last checkpoint.

There is no humanity here. No calls for mercy. They are things of the past.

Useless and empty.

This is a train. Train to damnation.
 
Within Hell’s Cauldron.

The train slowly came to a halt. Without warning, it is opened, and cold air rushed in.

The smell hits Johann first. Reminding him of burnt pork. Semon turns her head and retches.

The survivors of the journey pile onto the platform. Tired and nearly asleep.

Semon grabs her brother’s hand.

The guards kick and lash out at their charges. Bodies fall. Those that can stand in line do so.

No arguing here.

They are marched off together in a long line. They pass a doctor who stops Johann.

“Can he work?” “Yes.”

“Continue.”

Murmurs move through the people. The old and the very young are being separated for delousing.

They are marched towards the camp.

Now they are separated again. Men and women to separate barracks.

Johann can stay.
 
The Execution Party.

The women are stopped. Something Is happening. They can see two guards leading a female prisoner towards a stone wall.

Johann notices a rope hanging from a gibbet, and a stool upon which the prisoner is placed upon.

He watches as a noose is placed around her throat, and a ‘charge’ read out.

The stool is kicked away.

The woman is dangling and chocking. Her face turns blue as the guards laugh at the spectacle.

Her body is still now. The hanging Is over. The women are marched to their barracks.

A name is whispered. Auschwitz.

These are simple huts. Two hundred can sleep two to a bunk. Semon and Johann decide to sleep together.

At least they are alive. To have got this far is an achievement in itself.

Now they must live. If they can.
 
Evening Nightmare.

Now night has come. But the stench is strong here. They know that this is a death camp.

Johann’s mind is racing. This is the place that they will meet their maker.

So he believes.

Even his sister’s arms, around his waist cannot help. There is too much to think about.

Now they have to wear a uniform.

He tried to drop off. One woman started screaming. He rolled over to find out why.

She was being raped.

Horrible. Even though the law forbade sex between Jews and Gentiles.

The guard could be shot.

But he could not report him. He would not be believed. After all, he was only twelve.

Now he lay awake, fearful for the future. For Semon, for himself.

Rape of Semon.

Everyone had gone off to work at IG Farben. Only he and his sister were left in the barracks.

They had two guards looking after them. Both handling their weapons,
Semon did look afraid.

Johan was afraid for them both. The guards locked the door and strode towards her, she stood her ground.

She was struck across her face with such force that she fell to the floor.

She did not scream as her clothes were ripped from her.

Even as the guards molested and took their pleasure, she remained silent.

Her brother could not intervene. Afterwards, he did his best to comfort her.

She remained silent however. Only that night did she react.

Then she went to pieces. As time passed she calmed down. At least they had not killed.
 
Down the Line.

Eight months have passed so quickly, outside it is snowing. At Auschwitz, the killing goes on.

Johann has discovered a lot in this time. Four gas chambers where two thousand died at one time.

Crematoria, where the bodies were reduced to ashes before disposal in the Sula.

This was the camp’s job.

Johann too had a job. His was to pack the shoes into boxes before they were sent into the Reich.

Who would want to wear the shoes of the dead? As for Semon, She worked in the camp.

Repairing the clothes of the prisoners with needle and thread. She would remain quiet during the day.

Then at night, she would talk of the horrors she had heard. These were not rumours.

These were facts.
 
Art of Extermination.

Such tales that Johann found hard to believe. For example, four gas chambers that could murder two thousand at once.

Jews that were packed inside like sardines. Cold and naked. Before
Zyclon B, hydrogen cyanide crystals were dropped inside.

Panic inside before they dropped. When this was over, special prisoners moved in.

No gas inside to worry about.

Using cruel metal hooks, they tore the clammy pile of flesh apart.

The floor thick with vomit and faeces.

Then the gold was broken from their teeth. Rings stolen. Hair shaved off, to be used in pillows.

Then they were cremated. No longer human. Just a product. Even the fat was used to make candles and ointments.

Almost indescribable horror. But true, never the less!
 
A Scene from Auschwitz.

Then there were the people. Some of them terribly thin. So thin that you could see every bone in their bodies.

One inmate hanged herself. The guards were so incensed that the barrack was cleared.

They went to the gas chamber.

A rumour went around the camp that a Jewish woman saw her newborn babe murdered, before her eyes.

Its skull smashed like an egg.

Johann could smell death. Two women died in their sleep. They had been so weak that they could not even walk.

Malnutrition was rife. Semon had not been well. Cold and feverish, despite some good news.

Rumours that the Allies had landed in Italy. Mussolini dismissed. Russia advancing.

Could they be true?

Only a few months to 1944. Still, they were alive. Millions were not so lucky.
 
New Year. New Horror.

For Johann it was a bad year. Fourteen years old, and chosen to do the Nazis dirty work.

Semon no longer saw him.

People were dying like flies. Thousands of them. The gassings continued.

The crematoria could not keep up.

He was moved from his job of shoe packer, and from his sister’s barracks, and placed in Hell.

He could hardly describe it.

A massive pit had been dug. Into this, the bodies were thrown.

Johann helped.

He and another inmate.

Overhead, a yellow sun hung in a sickly sky. The air was thick with human ash.

Within the pit, lay the bodies of the dead.

Cold and still. Some like human skeletons. When the pit was full, petrol was used to ignite it, but still they were thrown in.

Looking down, Johann could see an arm burning. Somewhere else a babe’s hair.

He could not take more of this.

To Suffer no More.

Semon is dead. She was gassed to death like so many others. Even the news of the landings in France could not cheer Johann.

He was still at the burning pit. Alive at least. His heart hardened by the life he was forced to lead.

He too had lost weight. His face was painfully thin. His arms reduced to twigs.

Walking was an ordeal.

Many he had known were gone. He expected to join them soon. As he watched the bodies burning, he saw a vision of himself.

Within the pit.

Those were Hungarian Jews. As innocent as his sister. There seemed no end to this nightmare.

If only the Allies could reach here soon.

Whatever. By the time they arrived, all the Jews would be dead. Did they know what was happening here?

Did they care?

Johann collapsed. Exhausted at last. He knew that he had to get up.

If he wanted to live.
 
Hell On Earth.

How long it lasted, Johann could not tell. It seemed to go on forever.

He awoke in his bunk, with an inmate bathing his forehead.

He had been dreaming of his childhood. Long summer days and short, but cold winter nights.

His mother slaving over the coal fired cooker. Father working in the factory.

This was before Hitler came to power.

Now he believed it was nearly over. He was undernourished and almost feverish.

His battered body could not take much more.

Someone whispered that it was August now. The war continued. He had to recover.

There was not much time.

Typhus was everywhere in the camp. The death toll was mounting.

Six thousand per day. Perhaps more. Auschwitz was Hell on Earth.
 
The Walking Dead.

Weak but still alive, Johann walked. He walked around the camp and took in the awful scene.

Inmates lay upon the ground unmoving. Eyelids at half-mast. Flies feasting upon a rotting corpse.

He saw such horrors that can only be imagined. One person lay with his stomach ripped open.

Maggots wriggled within the decaying organs. Another body lay without a face.

Another hanging from a gibbet.

He saw others like himself. Walking dead he called them. He knew that he was one of them.

He looked towards the crematoria. Thick black smoke rose into the air.

They still burned the overflow in the pit.

How long would this continue? Nobody could tell him.

Day of Freedom.

Johann knew it was January. The Germans were gone. The camp was now in Russian hands.

Their advancing armies had driven the Nazis back inside their own land.

Auschwitz had been liberated.

He walked over to where his sister had died. Tears welled up as he thought of her.

Just one of many.

He turned and walked away. He saw some of the Russians burying those that had just died.

The deaths still haunted him. This Was still a death camp. Even without its masters, it continued to murder the inmates.

It had taken on a life of its own. It had risen from the bowels of hell, and was refusing to return.

Day of freedom the survivors called it. Freedom for whom? They remained in the camp.

Grim Conclusion.

Johann did survive in the end. He lived to see the German warlords pay the price.

He lived to return to Berlin. Until the Russians threw him out to build their wall.

He lived to see the wall fall. For Germany to be reunited. For an end to the USSR.

He lived to see Yugoslavia explode Into war. He read the accounts of the ethnic cleansing.

Of the mass murders and the death camps. Not as evil as Auschwitz, but just as effective.

He lived to hear the voices of the six million crying, “Why is it happening again?

Are you blind to our memory?”

History had been repeated in Europe. It had happened again. We had let it happen.

Death stalks Europe still.

Author’s Comment.

Man will never learn the truth about himself. Twice within one century, he has massacred those different from himself. He has proved beyond doubt, that he is not fit to be called civilised.

To call himself human is a liberty.

Such aberrations have occurred, and no doubt will occur again.
As we approach the new century, the horrors here recorded will remain as a permanent stain upon our kind. As long as man lasts upon this planet, it will never be removed.

From the author.

Please read, despite its descriptive horror. The world must never forget!

When I wrote this in the early 90's, I found the experience terrifying. However, with the Balkan War underway, reports of genocide, I felt the world needed reminding of the past.

A Jewish poet wrote, "Whoever forgets history, is doomed to relive it."


A sentiment I believe in.

This series, published in Memories of a lost Century, and available on Amazon Kindle, Lulu under my own name. I own copyright.

Thanks for reading.

xxx