'The Killing of Gentle People' by Michel Henri (book club books .txt) 📕

‘The Killing of Gentle People’

Edited by Alan Hughes

Written by Michel Henri.


All articles by Michel Henri are copyright ©Michel Henri and should not be reproduced without the author's prior written consent.
 
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Telephone: 01384 372233. Mobile: 07952 219018


Michel Henri


Short Stories:

The Penny Whistle. 2.857.
Who Dares Wins. 794.
The Devils Advocate. 10.290.
Abducted by Fairies. 10.789.

Novels:

The Killing of Gentle People. 25.000
The Killing of Gentle People: Film Script.
The Chronicles are Lies. 16.266.
Across the Line to Atlantis. 23.355.
The Bird with no Wings. 23.230.
The Story and the Secret. 94.391.

Musical Play:

Our Wicked Art Club. 10.300.

Comedy Play:

The Death of the Duchess of Grassmere 19.500.

Free Verse Poems


All articles by Michel Henri are copyright ©Michel Henri and should not be reproduced without the author's prior written consent.


To

Bluntly


Follow


Orders


Without


Due


Diligence


Makes


Monsters


Quote:


I came into this world as a child.

I live as a child.

l have the thoughts of a child.

l will die as a child.

WHY?

Because the examples living grownups set for me as a child,

With the exception of my dearest uncle!

Were just too horrendous for me to learn anything good from.

Uncle and l were happy playing as children.

Then my Son arrived and the three of us

were happy to play as children.


Michel Henri
 


‘The Killing of Gentle People’

“Must not become a Distant Memory”


CAST


Abraham Golden


Chief Inspector Victor Mercedes


Sergeant Becky Gold


Constable Maria Reagan

Gustav Droysen

Heinz Stein
Petra Schilling
Café Waitress
Helga Krolle

Assorted German Soldiers and SS Guards


Locations

Auschwitz-Birkenau Death Camp

Berlin Police Headquarters

The Dumb Cow Wine Bar

Greasy Spoon Cafe

The Central Library


The Killing of Gentle People


All articles by Michel Henri are copyright ©Michel Henri and should not be reproduced without the author's prior written consent.


Forward:


Abraham Golden attempts to come to terms with his experiences of the Holocaust.


This is neither a Holocaust chronicle nor a motion picture.

This is a narrative of one man’s personal struggle within himself, a fight for moral ethics, a battle of

the virtuous over the sinful.

But Abraham Golden has to ask himself: does he get it right?


This emotional journey attempts to explain the bitter-sweet voyage Abraham Golden takes,

and the conclusion of his life which mysterious circumstances have chosen for him.


The narrative begins within an old train carriage, from which his dear mother, father and little sister,

are brutally thrown and gassed to death before his eyes in a space full of naked strangers.


Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp was liberated by the allied troops in 1944.

At that moment in time everything Abraham Golden was planning for retribution got underway,

and the ‘The Killing of Gentle People’ started its distressing journey.


Only after reading this story does the author allow the readers their own personal moral evaluation.


Please take Abraham Golden’s journey yourself….


Introduction: May 1940.


Our stinking contaminated and over-crowded train carriage at last arrived at its destination, the

monster podium ‘The Ramp’


I have to ask you a question or two:

“Have you ever heard of ‘The Ramp’?
“Do you know what ‘The Ramp’ is, or where it is”?
Have you any idea why people of a certain age and piety have arctic shivers
just at the thought of it?
And why it conjures up such drastically negative emotions for the people
who were touched by its very existence?

Our journey was full of people, silence, and the stink of death; of hushed whispered words uttered

by children to their parents, and of the last breath and sighs echoing from the throats of the old

struggling to survive but failing and slowly sinking to their knees, finally to collapse face down

into the human faeces which covered the floor of the carriage.


We could not and would not want to imagine a journey of such degradation and hopelessness.

However, some persons without choice had to endure this and much more: good, gentle people.


Some did survive to reach their destination, a destination which offered for the fortunate a quick

death and a cremation.


For the others there was a short tortured future, and an insight into the Devil’s design for a

living hell on earth.


The Ramp
Concentration camp prisoners built ‘The Ramp’, for the Nazis. It was a special welcoming place to unload the death trains, giving the travellers a false sense of security.

These trains were overflowing with gentle people; mothers and fathers with their children, who knew not what was to befall them after they fell or were physically thrown from the carriages and onto the ground; the ground under their feet was the dreaded ‘Ramp.’

The children of the camp chosen by hard-case guards to die of hard labour and not to be gassed with their parents had built the wicked archway the train rumbled under in order to arrive at
‘The Ramp’.
Most children who died building the archway were left to rot where they fell. Others had their tender young bodies dug into the brick work of ‘The Ramp’ itself; so becoming a monument not just to their fortitude, but at the same time becoming part of an iconic picture of depravity and evil.

The living dead on the trains would not be aware of what has now become one of the most photographed of all Nazi memorabilia. But the moment the trains stopped at ‘The Ramp’ now that was different, as their cargo of human cattle was about to learn.

Should you know nothing of ‘The Ramp’ l feel sorry for you! Please look into your history books or your computer search engines, then inwardly digest what you find to read.
If you do know about it and you experienced it, my humble verbal skills will not be able to express my personal grief and outrage at the most malicious of the Devil’s work.

The world and its entire populace should hang their heads in shame at the very thought that a catastrophe like the Holocaust could ever have been contemplated.
The world said: “Never Again” Six Million Times too Late.

Death Train to Auschwitz
The old wooden railway carriages used for taking cattle to the slaughterhouses were now taking different forms of cattle to a different kind of slaughterhouse.
My mother, father, little sister, and I, along with many other families travelled like sardines stuffed into the carriage, with no room to move, no food to eat and no water to drink. We travelled hour after hour, day after day, to our unknown destination.
Sometimes sympathizers would whisper our destination to us as the train stopped briefly at railway crossings. At this moment, they would throw bits of bread into the carriages and try to pass water to us, but some were shot dead for their kindness by the SS guards at the crossings.
Other people were not so kind. They must have been anti-Semitic, as these people were happy to shout out:
“You are going to ‘The Ramp’ at the Auschwitz death camp! You will never return! It’s a one way trip to die, you dirty Jewish bastards!”
They would urinate and spit through the small gaps in the wooden carriage.
For the entire journey of five days and five nights my father, with new-found strength, carried me high above the bodies of our friends who had died. In order to get air to breath we had to stand on each other, so dear father held me high in order that l could breathe what air there was. They were crushed to death by the rest of us because the carriage was over-flowing.
Mother did the same for my little sister in order to keep her away from the dead bodies and the human faeces, which was thick on the floor.
My little sister died in my mother’s arms, the good Lord taking her his own way without my mother knowing she had flown away to Heaven.
At last the train stopped sharply with its banging and hissing, as though announcing its arrival for
all to hear. The suddenness with which it came to a halt sent us all falling and clutching at the
wooden carriage walls with our blooded fingers.
We had arrived at the menacing Auschwitz-Birkenau ‘Ramp.’


The carriage doors were immediately unlocked and most of the travellers fell
out onto the ground, along with the dead and dying.
I can still see my dear father catching my lovely mother in his arms in order to break her fall, so she would not get hurt any more. But her weight, with my little sister’s dead body in her arms, sent father falling to the ground.
An evil guard in black leather thrusted his rifle barrel between them, breaking their bodies apart.
Then he kicked, punched and pushed my mother and father into the moving lines of gentle Jewish
families, leaving my little sister’s lifeless body lying on the cold hard ground where she fell.
The victorious ‘Ramp’ had taken yet another innocent soul. A compassionate guard picked
up my little sister’s body by one arm and pushed her into my mother’s chest without thought or
concern, shouting out loud: “Life is a bonus.”
A youngish SS Nazi officer, again dressed in black leather and wielding a leather bullwhip, shouted
and pointed at the families. Then, without hesitation and with a smirk on his face, he shouted hard
and loud, laying his leather bullwhip on the heads, necks and shoulders of the elderly who were
confused as he directed them:
“Left, left, left; right; left, left, left; right, right.”
Everyone in the line of death walked submissively in the direction the guard ordered them, without question or thought as to what would be the outcome of this gruesome walk.
This was the line of death, and my mother, father, and l were getting nearing to the front of the line where we would take our turn in the gamble of life.
One of the guards punched me with great force to my head; this punch sent me crashing into the muddy ground. I landed at the feet of the guard in black leather, who was the main dealer in this life-or-death sport.
“You little Jewish bastard!” he shouted:
“Stay down there in the filthy mud where you belong and don’t move! That’s where all you Jewish bastards should be!”


The big guard laughed, then stomped his