Group 4′s blog

Time slowly passed. I knelt there, still at the door of the kitchen, still staring at the fresh corpses in front of me, for what must have been an eon. At one point, I suddenly got up and rushed to my mother, not paying attention to anything or anyone around me. The camp, the other Jews, the sky, even my father and that wretch Aldo became insubstantial blurs.

I held my mother in my arms and wept hysterically. The other corpses were being moved by unseen hands. Aldo slowly picked me up from the ground. I pushed him away screaming at him, “Why? WHY, did you have to kill my mother? You said you would protect her!”

As he attempted to comfort me, I slapped him across his face, not wanting him to get close to me. Another Jew approached to move my mother’s body as Aldo stumbled a step back. His Nazi hat fell onto the ground, but he ignored it and reached for me again.

“Emily, please listen. It was not my intent to do this; I didn’t know your mother was in the line,” he said.

“I don’t want to hear it, there is nothing you can say or do that will ever allow me to forgive you. The mere idea of looking at you repulses me now. You are dead to me,” I coldly finished.

“Emily!” he pleaded. “You don’t even know why that fat officer was rounding up people to be shot in the first place!”

I turned and ran to my room, not looking back. I remained inside for at least two hours, but no Nazi came to harass me. Caught up in memories about the past, thinking about the rest of my life without my mother, I was absorbed in my own world. But eventually, I noticed an eerie calm settling over the camp. There was still the normal sound of shovels and pickaxes hitting dirt, indicating that the Jews were still at work. But the sporadic shouts, shots, and harsh footsteps that were always in the background noise of the camp was absent. For some reason, the Nazis were not up to their usual persecution of us.

Now I remembered Aldo saying something about why my mother and the other Jews were lined up in the first place. Had something truly happened on the fronts? As if in answer to my question, Aldo burst into the room. I still lay on my bunk.

“Emily, Emily where are you? For the love of god, please answer me! If you don’t answer me, please just listen. Germany has been losing ground for the past few weeks, and earlier, the Allies crushed our last army. Your mother and the other Jews were lined up because one of the officers, the fat one, was venting his rage. He’s been preparing his belongings and getting ready to flee since then. Half of the Nazis are also trying to run away before the Allies get here.”

Here, I felt the strangest dismay I had felt in a long while. The Germans lost the war? I didn’t believe it. Then, why couldn’t they have lost sooner? Anger rose within me again as I saw Aldo shoot my mother in my mind. He wasn’t done yet and I was interrupted in my thoughts.

“But the other Nazis have decided to kill as many Jews as they can by the end of today. I don’t know what’s in their heads, but they’re beginning to round up all of the Jews here.”

I didn’t say anything in indecision. If it was really over for the Nazis, then maybe I should help them die a little bit faster. My eyes looked for a gun, but of course, there weren’t any in our room.

“Emily, please hurry and answer me—will you let me help you?” By now, he had moved from the doorway where he had begun telling me the news. His arm was extended to me and his face was wrought with anxiety.

As I heard footsteps and shouts confirming what Aldo had just said, I figured there was nothing else to live for. If I went with Aldo and he betrayed me, the worst thing that could happen to me would be death, which didn’t seem too bad. I might even be close enough to do something before I went down.

I got out of my bunk and approached Aldo stoically. He reached for my hand and I hesitantly gave it to him. He told me that he was going to pretend to be gathering Jews like the other Nazis, but he would bluff his way past them, pretending to use this part of the camp or that warehouse.

We stepped outside and encountered a lone Nazi prodding fifteen Jews with his rifle. Aldo strode up to him and told him to get more Jews while he guided these to the chambers. Along with the fifteen others, we walked in an opposite direction from the Nazi. We didn’t go far before encountering another group of Jews being herded by several Nazis. With these, Aldo threatened and inveigled them to split the large group in half since it would take up too much space here, letting him lead them elsewhere.

This farce continued for the next forty minutes. We must have gone through every part of the camp, but we didn’t see the same Nazis twice—or if we did, Aldo might have said he was dealing with a fresh group.

“Whatever you do, don’t leave my sight,” he said. “I know you hate me right now. There is nothing I can say to undo what I did. I feel horrible for it; I know I won’t be able to sleep at night if we make it past this. Emily, I love and I have always loved you; I know deep inside you love me too. I know you cannot even stand me right now, but please trust me when I say that I will keep you safe.”

We finished another tour of Auschwitz before a mass of foreigners entered. They rode in armored vehicles and were accompanied by several tanks. Before the last vehicles arrived, the soldiers in the first ones jumped out and spread across the camp.

“Emily, it’s finally over! The Allies are here, you’re safe now! Come on let’s go meet them,” Aldo said excitedly. He took my hand and urged our group forward. I was weak and limp. I could not believe what Aldo was telling me, was this bad nightmare finally over?

But I noticed that the soldiers weren’t just running around. There were gunshots: they had been knocking Nazis down. Aldo didn’t seem to let it affect him, even though he was in uniform like the other Nazis. He was at the front of our group as he led us towards the soldiers and the tanks.

A soldier saw him and the swastika armband on his right elbow. He shouted something in a language I didn’t understand.

“Aldo, I think—“

But before I could finish, the soldier had already shot Aldo three times.

“Emily,” he gurgled as he fell down. “I love you. I promised you I—“

He coughed blood but struggled on. “I wanted to spend—“

Aldo’s mouth still moved, but nothing intelligible came out. I had fallen to the ground with him and held him as he died.

There was so much that I needed to say to him. I wanted to thank him for keeping me safe throughout this whole time. Tears filled my eyes as I clung to him. I knew he didn’t mean to kill my mother, I knew it was an awful mistake, and I forgave him.

Aldo died as the caring individual who I fell in love with, who I recognized. I cried while holding him as the other Jews moved past us, getting into the transports. Their eyes were wet too, I saw. Those who were family were arm in arm. No one bothered the Nazis that lying scattered across the ground while soldiers continued to litter the ground with more Nazis.