WW2 Germany personal recounts
When sarcasm is put to good use...
ON THE TRAIN
About 10,000 had been loaded into cattle cars, the floors of which were spread with deadly quicklime, bound - we found out later - for Auschwitz. The burning heat and poisonous fumes of the lime left only 400 of them alive when they reached their destination ... only to be gassed there with the other remnants of the Tarnow community....
...They cornered the mother and her frightened little boy, who clung to the hem of her white greatcoat. The color of her coat could not match the pallor of her face as the SS man approached.
"We got her!" he yelled, his fat, red face beaming with pride. "We got them, Herr Hauptscharfuhrer, the mother and the child." Proudly he turned them over to his boss.
A triumphant smile replaced the usual frigidity of Goeth's features. "I told you these Jews are smugglers," he sneered. "They smuggled in a child."
The German hero had won the battle. He had captured the Third Reich's most dangerous enemies, a helpless mother and her innocent child. Victoriously he shoved her down the two steps outside the boxcar.
The door slammed shut; again we were plunged into darkness. No one spoke. The stillness was frightening, as before a thunderstorm. Then came the inevitable. Two shots pierced the air: one for the "smuggler," the other for the eleven-year-old "contraband."
The massive body of compressed human flesh, its unified heart pulsing with love, felt the pain of helplessness, of despair and disappointment. It had offered its one hundred lives on the altar of human love and sacrifice, but could not even save one Jewish child.
Yet even now, as I witnessed the triumph of evil, I felt proud to be part of this wretched, tortured, haunted, yet great people.