Five Ways Ludwig Montag Killed Daniel Abrahmowicz (And One Way He Saved Him)
anonymous
April 7 2009, 20:28:35 UTC
5
Daniel shivers, more from nervousness than cold, as they mull about on the platform, simply glad to taste fresh air after the hours jostling together in the stink of the cattle car. He pulls his coat tighter around him. He spies Ludwig, crisp and immaculate in his Schutzstaffel black.
“All right!” Ludwig barks, tapping his boot impatiently. "Line up in an orderly fashion and proceed in the direction indicated.
“You, left. Left. Right. Left. Right. To the right.”
Daniel shifts from foot to foot. Resettlement. He doesn’t like it. If Ludwig wants him to go, he’ll go (would go, tried to go, but no one would take him in, and it’s not unexpected, except it is, because he thought someone would -) but he doesn’t like Ludwig taking control of it. He doesn’t even know when he’s going to get his luggage back. He brushes his thumb over the tefellin jammed in his pocket and calms a little. God will make a way, however terrible it gets, he reminds himself.
Still, days like this, he misses the reconquista.
Daniel reaches the front of the line and gazes into Ludwig’s cold eyes. He faces them squarely, standing strait, trying to say
I lived with you for decades. Centuries. It hasn’t been perfect but it’s been good, sometimes, hasn’t it? You haven’t lied to me, you won’t hurt them. Not too much. Will you?
without saying a thing. Ludwig’s eyes flash, whether in answer (or what answer) or merely recognition, Daniel can’t tell.
“You go left,” Ludwig tells him, firmly. More emphatically than the others. Daniel nods, throat tight. He’s been sending the children left. This is good. This is - he’ll be able to take care of them. Ludwig will let him do that, at least. He follows the line and the instructions of another officer into a vast room lined with showerheads, fumbling and tripping over his feat as more and more people, many of them young or else very old, a few swaying women with bulging bellies, are pushed in behind him.
And then his ears are filled with hissing, like the buzz of a thousand locusts, and cries of worry that snap and break off in coughing, and the locusts are swarming his vision and it is all hissing, hissing, hissing.
He is loaded on the frames with the others and slid unceremoniously into the ovens. If the Sonderkommandos wonder at the selektion of what appears to be a strong young man (albeit faintly ill-looking) well within working age being reduced to ashes along with the usual bodies, they know better than to comment.
Five Ways Ludwig Montag Killed Daniel Abrahmowicz (And One Way He Saved Him)
anonymous
April 7 2009, 21:10:23 UTC
1
“Ludwig, what are you doing to me?” Daniel exclaimed as Ludwig dragged him by a painful grip on his elbow, the hastily prepared bag Ludwig had insisted he bring banging against his leg.
“Damnit, Daniel, don’t ask me that,” Ludwig snarled, tugging Daniel swiftly through alleyways in the middle of the night. “You won’t like the answer,” he muttered, half to himself.
“It’s past the curfew you said I had to -”
“Fuck the curfew,” Ludwig snapped, “And also, shut up unless you want to get caught.”
Daniel closed his mouth, grimacing in annoyance.
“Okay, here,” Ludwig said at last, when they reached a factory, locked up for the night. He pulled a key out his pocket and opened the heavy padlock, beckoning Daniel to follow him as he slipped through the gate.
“What is this place?” Daniel asked as Ludwig clicked the padlock shut behind them.
“It’s a munitions factory. Or, well, it used to manufacture buttons, but it’s going to make bullets soon. So it shouldn’t be raided.”
“Raided?”
“The lists are going up tomorrow. And your name will be on them, even if it wasn’t on the census.”
“What list? And how do you know?”
Ludwig glared at him, as they walked along empty assembly lines to a supply closet, where Ludwig opened a panel of the wall to reveal an extra space. “Okay, stupid question,” Daniel admitted. “What the hell is this?”
“It was a smuggler’s hoard for cocaine. Now it’s your new home.”
“Are you fucking serious? Your bosses are planning something so fucking horrible you have to hide me in a drug den smaller than a fucking prison cell?”
Ludwig’s lips twitched down in the way that Daniel knew, from long experience, meant that Ludwig wanted to tell him to stop kvetching, but for whatever reason, couldn’t bring himself to actually say so. Ludwig grabbed Daniel’s face in one gloved hand, forcing Daniel to meet his eyes, only inches away.
“Yes,” he answered flatly, low horror rolling in his voice. “They are. So be quiet, and stay put. I’ll find someone to feed you when I - when have to be away. I’m going to try and get you to Vash, but if I can’t -” he broke off, let go of Daniel’s cheek, and looked jerkily away.
“You’ll be. You be safe here. Until. Until I can find a way to get you somewhere else.”
Daniel swallowed, hard.
“Ludwig, if my people are suffering, I’ll suffer.”
“Stay put,” Ludwig repeated. “Just. Just survive. Even if it feels like you’re dying. Please. Please let me. I have to hide you.” Daniel reached out and traced a finger over the lines of anguish in Ludwig’s face. He felt, for a brief, mad moment, that if he applied just a little pressure, Ludwig would tear into pieces.
“Okay,” he promised. “I’ll. I won’t do anything. Reckless. I. Thank you for the place to hide.”
He brushed a kiss over Ludwig’s forehead, murmuring a Talmudic prayer.
Why are you so afraid for me? he didn’t ask, nor How can you live with all that loathing in your eyes?
Ludwig nodded, once, in acceptance, then closed the invisible door, sealing Daniel inside.
*
Notes: Krystallnacht, or the Night of Broken Glass, was one of the largest anti-Jewish pogroms that took place during the reich. Shops were broken into and destroyed, and synagogues were set on fire. Thousands of Jews were arrested. One of the explicit aims of the pogrom was the disarmament of German Jews. Guns were confiscated and Jews who fought back wer killed.
About a quarter of the Jews killed by the Nazis never saw a concentration camp; they were shot by mobile death squads, usually after being forced to dig their own mass graves.
Many Jews in the camps died of starvation, dehydration, disease, or freezing. They were deliberately given insufficient rations to live on. Sonderkommandos were prisoners whose work detail was operating the cremation furnaces. Kapos were prisoners, usually ethnic Germans sent to the camps for criminal offenses (green triangle), whom guards chose as work captains and had authority over the other prisoners.
Re: Five Ways Ludwig Montag Killed Daniel Abrahmowicz (And One Way He Saved Him)
anonymous
April 7 2009, 22:19:43 UTC
OP here and speechless. I have to be honest, I really wasn't sure what to expect, but I think you handled it really well. Thank you for taking on this task and writing such an emotional piece. It really is interesting to have this fandom take on a more serious tone since history isn't ever (hardly ever) a nice thing. Again, thank you so much for writing this.
Re: Five Ways Ludwig Montag Killed Daniel Abrahmowicz (And One Way He Saved Him)
anonymous
April 8 2009, 08:52:42 UTC
The other, potential writer here. This was very, very powerful, anonwriter. That last scene was... just amazing. I would write more, but right now I just can't type anything coherent because this was so good. I'm really liking Daniel, too- and of course he's not a child, because Israel and the Jews have existed for around four thousand years, if my history teacher is correct.
Re: Five Ways Ludwig Montag Killed Daniel Abrahmowicz (And One Way He Saved Him)
anonymous
April 8 2009, 17:22:31 UTC
Thank you.
I thought about have a Jewish-diaspora-tan seperate from a young Israel-tan (especially since Israel today is multi-religious), like, with JDT handing off the baby/child to Ludwig to hide before going off to suffer in the camps, but that's another story. I really like having the continuous Israel from the first temple kingdom era all the way to the present, just to spite everyone and everything that's tried to break him, from Babylon and Rome right on down the line.
Four thousand? Woah. I thought it was more in the ballpark of 3000-2600, the point stands, I suppose.
Re: Five Ways Ludwig Montag Killed Daniel Abrahmowicz (And One Way He Saved Him)
anonymous
April 8 2009, 18:09:25 UTC
This is interesting!
I always though Israel-tan would have grown separate from the others, "discovered" by Ashkenazim-tan during the first push of Zionism in the 1890s.
But, writer!anon, I am really glad you wrote this -- your other story with Daniel is the only Israel I've ever liked, and I was worried that this story would turn into revisionist history stuff.
Re: Five Ways Ludwig Montag Killed Daniel Abrahmowicz (And One Way He Saved Him)
anonymous
April 8 2009, 18:22:24 UTC
My other story? <.< >.>
Unless I've been sleep-posting, this is the first thing I've done with Daniel.
Did you mean this one?
*is confused and needs coffee*
I loved zed-azrael's fic with Israel as a changed Ashkenazim.
I like exploring different ways -tans can be overlaid on the history/people, you know?
(Although I will never stop loving the image of Daniel slouching around Europe with a backpack, sleeping on different people's couches/attics/basements until they kick him out because he doesn't have a house. It's funny because it's tragic true.)
Re: Five Ways Ludwig Montag Killed Daniel Abrahmowicz (And One Way He Saved Him)
anonymous
April 10 2009, 14:31:58 UTC
Why have I ignored your reply for so long. Sorry >.<
Anyway- I really like this idea! I myself have been playing around with the idea of an Ancient Israel, sorta a father to Israel-tan the way there is an Ancient Greece to modern Greece, or a Mother Egypt to the modern one? Ah, but yes, the Jewish population has become multi-religious only after Israel's independence, or at least openly, so the JDT could have died during WWII, and the new Israel-tan would have replaced her/him. Also- I really like having the continuous Israel from the first temple kingdom era all the way to the present, just to spite everyone and everything that's tried to break him, from Babylon and Rome right on down the line.- I really like this idea too. Wow, so many possibilities!
Hmm, my history class didn't go too much in depth when it comes to Jewish history, so we were only told a little bit, and I don't exactly remember it detailed, and what I know of Jewish history is from around the 15th century to present time, so I'm not too good with that.
(wow, I never talk this much. At all, in fact. Sorry for anyone whose internets I killed D:)
Re: Five Ways Ludwig Montag Killed Daniel Abrahmowicz (And One Way He Saved Him)
anonymous
April 11 2009, 07:04:11 UTC
Anon...this was quite possibly one of the most powerful fics I've read for this fandom. And this fandom is highly talented and really good at powerful stuff, so that's saying A LOT. Thank you for writing this. It was just perfect.
Daniel shivers, more from nervousness than cold, as they mull about on the platform, simply glad to taste fresh air after the hours jostling together in the stink of the cattle car. He pulls his coat tighter around him. He spies Ludwig, crisp and immaculate in his Schutzstaffel black.
“All right!” Ludwig barks, tapping his boot impatiently. "Line up in an orderly fashion and proceed in the direction indicated.
“You, left. Left. Right. Left. Right. To the right.”
Daniel shifts from foot to foot. Resettlement. He doesn’t like it. If Ludwig wants him to go, he’ll go (would go, tried to go, but no one would take him in, and it’s not unexpected, except it is, because he thought someone would -) but he doesn’t like Ludwig taking control of it. He doesn’t even know when he’s going to get his luggage back. He brushes his thumb over the tefellin jammed in his pocket and calms a little. God will make a way, however terrible it gets, he reminds himself.
Still, days like this, he misses the reconquista.
Daniel reaches the front of the line and gazes into Ludwig’s cold eyes. He faces them squarely, standing strait, trying to say
I lived with you for decades. Centuries. It hasn’t been perfect but it’s been good, sometimes, hasn’t it? You haven’t lied to me, you won’t hurt them. Not too much. Will you?
without saying a thing. Ludwig’s eyes flash, whether in answer (or what answer) or merely recognition, Daniel can’t tell.
“You go left,” Ludwig tells him, firmly. More emphatically than the others. Daniel nods, throat tight. He’s been sending the children left. This is good. This is - he’ll be able to take care of them. Ludwig will let him do that, at least. He follows the line and the instructions of another officer into a vast room lined with showerheads, fumbling and tripping over his feat as more and more people, many of them young or else very old, a few swaying women with bulging bellies, are pushed in behind him.
And then his ears are filled with hissing, like the buzz of a thousand locusts, and cries of worry that snap and break off in coughing, and the locusts are swarming his vision and it is all hissing, hissing, hissing.
He is loaded on the frames with the others and slid unceremoniously into the ovens. If the Sonderkommandos wonder at the selektion of what appears to be a strong young man (albeit faintly ill-looking) well within working age being reduced to ashes along with the usual bodies, they know better than to comment.
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“Ludwig, what are you doing to me?” Daniel exclaimed as Ludwig dragged him by a painful grip on his elbow, the hastily prepared bag Ludwig had insisted he bring banging against his leg.
“Damnit, Daniel, don’t ask me that,” Ludwig snarled, tugging Daniel swiftly through alleyways in the middle of the night. “You won’t like the answer,” he muttered, half to himself.
“It’s past the curfew you said I had to -”
“Fuck the curfew,” Ludwig snapped, “And also, shut up unless you want to get caught.”
Daniel closed his mouth, grimacing in annoyance.
“Okay, here,” Ludwig said at last, when they reached a factory, locked up for the night. He pulled a key out his pocket and opened the heavy padlock, beckoning Daniel to follow him as he slipped through the gate.
“What is this place?” Daniel asked as Ludwig clicked the padlock shut behind them.
“It’s a munitions factory. Or, well, it used to manufacture buttons, but it’s going to make bullets soon. So it shouldn’t be raided.”
“Raided?”
“The lists are going up tomorrow. And your name will be on them, even if it wasn’t on the census.”
“What list? And how do you know?”
Ludwig glared at him, as they walked along empty assembly lines to a supply closet, where Ludwig opened a panel of the wall to reveal an extra space. “Okay, stupid question,” Daniel admitted. “What the hell is this?”
“It was a smuggler’s hoard for cocaine. Now it’s your new home.”
“Are you fucking serious? Your bosses are planning something so fucking horrible you have to hide me in a drug den smaller than a fucking prison cell?”
Ludwig’s lips twitched down in the way that Daniel knew, from long experience, meant that Ludwig wanted to tell him to stop kvetching, but for whatever reason, couldn’t bring himself to actually say so. Ludwig grabbed Daniel’s face in one gloved hand, forcing Daniel to meet his eyes, only inches away.
“Yes,” he answered flatly, low horror rolling in his voice. “They are. So be quiet, and stay put. I’ll find someone to feed you when I - when have to be away. I’m going to try and get you to Vash, but if I can’t -” he broke off, let go of Daniel’s cheek, and looked jerkily away.
“You’ll be. You be safe here. Until. Until I can find a way to get you somewhere else.”
Daniel swallowed, hard.
“Ludwig, if my people are suffering, I’ll suffer.”
“Stay put,” Ludwig repeated. “Just. Just survive. Even if it feels like you’re dying. Please. Please let me. I have to hide you.” Daniel reached out and traced a finger over the lines of anguish in Ludwig’s face. He felt, for a brief, mad moment, that if he applied just a little pressure, Ludwig would tear into pieces.
“Okay,” he promised. “I’ll. I won’t do anything. Reckless. I. Thank you for the place to hide.”
He brushed a kiss over Ludwig’s forehead, murmuring a Talmudic prayer.
Why are you so afraid for me? he didn’t ask, nor How can you live with all that loathing in your eyes?
Ludwig nodded, once, in acceptance, then closed the invisible door, sealing Daniel inside.
*
Notes: Krystallnacht, or the Night of Broken Glass, was one of the largest anti-Jewish pogroms that took place during the reich. Shops were broken into and destroyed, and synagogues were set on fire. Thousands of Jews were arrested. One of the explicit aims of the pogrom was the disarmament of German Jews. Guns were confiscated and Jews who fought back wer killed.
About a quarter of the Jews killed by the Nazis never saw a concentration camp; they were shot by mobile death squads, usually after being forced to dig their own mass graves.
Many Jews in the camps died of starvation, dehydration, disease, or freezing. They were deliberately given insufficient rations to live on. Sonderkommandos were prisoners whose work detail was operating the cremation furnaces. Kapos were prisoners, usually ethnic Germans sent to the camps for criminal offenses (green triangle), whom guards chose as work captains and had authority over the other prisoners.
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I thought about have a Jewish-diaspora-tan seperate from a young Israel-tan (especially since Israel today is multi-religious), like, with JDT handing off the baby/child to Ludwig to hide before going off to suffer in the camps, but that's another story. I really like having the continuous Israel from the first temple kingdom era all the way to the present, just to spite everyone and everything that's tried to break him, from Babylon and Rome right on down the line.
Four thousand? Woah. I thought it was more in the ballpark of 3000-2600, the point stands, I suppose.
Reply
I always though Israel-tan would have grown separate from the others, "discovered" by Ashkenazim-tan during the first push of Zionism in the 1890s.
But, writer!anon, I am really glad you wrote this -- your other story with Daniel is the only Israel I've ever liked, and I was worried that this story would turn into revisionist history stuff.
Reply
Unless I've been sleep-posting, this is the first thing I've done with Daniel.
Did you mean this one?
*is confused and needs coffee*
I loved zed-azrael's fic with Israel as a changed Ashkenazim.
I like exploring different ways -tans can be overlaid on the history/people, you know?
(Although I will never stop loving the image of Daniel slouching around Europe with a backpack, sleeping on different people's couches/attics/basements until they kick him out because he doesn't have a house. It's funny because it's tragic true.)
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*fangirls zed-azrael SO HARD*
That is a compliment, thank you for your suspicions. ^_^
But no, I'm not her. Her fic was totally inspirational to me, though, so I'm delighted the style seems similar.
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Anyway- I really like this idea! I myself have been playing around with the idea of an Ancient Israel, sorta a father to Israel-tan the way there is an Ancient Greece to modern Greece, or a Mother Egypt to the modern one? Ah, but yes, the Jewish population has become multi-religious only after Israel's independence, or at least openly, so the JDT could have died during WWII, and the new Israel-tan would have replaced her/him. Also- I really like having the continuous Israel from the first temple kingdom era all the way to the present, just to spite everyone and everything that's tried to break him, from Babylon and Rome right on down the line.- I really like this idea too. Wow, so many possibilities!
Hmm, my history class didn't go too much in depth when it comes to Jewish history, so we were only told a little bit, and I don't exactly remember it detailed, and what I know of Jewish history is from around the 15th century to present time, so I'm not too good with that.
(wow, I never talk this much. At all, in fact. Sorry for anyone whose internets I killed D:)
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