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

muddy leather jackboot onto my neck, holding my face down into the mud while he continued his work. He shouted and hit out with his riding stick, hitting everyone, especially the old and infirm.
At the same time, the monster continued his commands:
“Right; left, left, left; right; left, left; right.”
I didn’t know at that point what going ‘left’ meant. It was something I soon heard more frequently, and quickly grew to understand it meant immediate death in the gas chambers. To go ‘right’ also meant death, but these gentle souls would die of hard labour, starvation and disease. Or maybe just by being kicked to death, as this was one of the guard’s favourite games, especially when boredom of the death camp routine set in and they wanted some fun.
Looking up for my parents amongst the rows of the walking dead, l could see no sight of them. They had gone, disappeared. Which way, l did not know. I was not terrified. My young senses had gone past that point. But my body was shaking and the mud and stinking water in my mouth was making me vomit. No, l was not terrified. But l wanted my mother and father so badly that tears would not stop falling from my eyes. But l was not crying; l just would not cry.
“So, little Jewish bastard! What shall l do with you then? Maybe l will give you to the dogs to play with! But with your pretty Jewish face some of the guards would like you as their play thing. That would make them happy!”
Then the guard took his big jackboot from my neck and kicked me in the chest with the intention of injuring me. Bending down, he shouted out:
“Get up, scabby Jew-boy, and follow me! Get up now!”
I reluctantly did as he ordered me and followed the dealer in the death game. As l stumbled forward in his long black shadow, l shouted:
“My name is Abraham Golden and l want my mother and father! I want them! What have you done to them? I want to see them, now!”
I punched him repeatedly in his back with my little fists, still shouting, and then kicking out with my legs and feet.

“Where are they, my mother and father? I want to see them now!”
The monster in black leather suddenly stopped in his tracks and turned to face me, his eyes and his mouth twisted with pure evil.
“You little parasite! You really want to see your dirty Jewish mommy and daddy, do you? You really want to see them now?”
“Yes!” l shouted, still hitting out and kicking.
“Then you shall, little Jew boy! You most certainly shall!”
He laughed aloud as he picked me up and carried me under his big arm as if l was a rag doll, and took me to a nearby building.
There he lifted me up high and shouted:
“Take a look, Jew-boy! Look through the window!”
The small dirty window had bars and electric wire around it.
“Look then, you Jew-boy! Look closely and you will see your filthy parents being gassed. Then they will be off to hell fire!”
I held onto the window ledge with my blooded fingers, my eyes searching for my mother and father. I scanned the white tiled room full of naked men women and children. At last l saw her. “Mother! Mother!” l shouted. I banged on the small barred window, cutting my hands further on the wicked wire. Mother was naked and standing close to my naked father, who was holding her tightly to his body and stroking her hair. Mother was still holding my already dead little sister, stroking her cold white face.
They were both crying and swaying from side to side as the gas took hold of them.
Other people around mother and father were screaming and slowly falling onto the filthy floor. Some lay still. Others were twitching, and moving until the good Lord took them to his heart. Mother and father, still holding each other close and with my sister held between them, finally fell down and lay still in the pile of dead bodies and human excretion.
At that moment the monster pulled my hands from the window and dropped me onto the stinking muddy ground.

The monster leaned down, covering me in his black shadow and shouted loud into my ear:
“Happy now, you little Jewish bastard?”
I covered my head for fear of his jackboot. Then l vowed, even as a twelve year old child, that one day retribution would be mine.
These animals would pay dearly for what they had done to my family and the actions they had taken against these gentle people!.
What my future was to be l had no idea as l was only twelve years old. Would l live or would l die? I had no idea. But l knew in my heart that this would be the commencement of my existence.

“Retribution” was the last word l heard daddy cry out to the Rabbi, before
the Nazi guards dragged us away from our home and threw us onto the train.
The horrendous train, which was to transport us to “The Ramp” at the Auschwitz-Birkenau
death camp in Poland.
But at that time, as a child of twelve, brought up in a loving and happy family, l had no idea
what retribution really meant, or what it was related to.
The SS guard threw me into a small room near to the gas chamber.
I heard the turning of the lock after the door was slammed shut.
It was black. It was dark. And the smell of the stale air that filled the room made me heave and gag. The sound of lamentation and sobbing from the gas chamber seeped through the walls into this place l was thrown into.
I sat in the room exactly where the guard had thrown me for fear of the
dark and for what else might be in the room. I heard someone cry.
“Hello!” l whispered softly. “Is someone there?” No one answered, but l knew somebody was there.
I whispered softly once more:
“My name is Abraham Golden. I’m new here”
Still there was no answer, but l heard a yet another whimper. So I tried once more.


“Hello! Is someone there? Please answer me! I’m so frightened!”
“Yes, I’m here. My name is Heinz Stein. I’m new here as well, and I’m scared! Can you come
towards me? Follow my voice?”
Doing as I was asked, I moved towards the voice. This was my first meeting with Heinz Stein.
Heinz was also twelve years old, and, like me had just been parted from his family
at the monstrous “Ramp”.
We did not talk to each other. We just knew that we were the same. So we sat holding each other for comfort in the dark, and cried.
The door was kicked open and a blinding light was switched on. This was the first time l saw the
face of the boy who, putting his own life at risk, would save my life many times over.
For the next three years Heinz and l became saviours of each other in this Auschwitz-Birkenau
dead end death camp.
The room we had been deposited in meant nothing to either of us. How long it was to be our
Punishment room l cannot remember. But the punishment lasted longer than grown up people could
have withstood. It would be impossible for me to detail all the happenings. Suffice to say they were
horrible, painful and included castration; terrors l dare not think about now.
Later we found out that this place was the storeroom for the camp doctor known as Dr. Death,
Dr. Jose Mengele.

Police Headquarters. Berlin, Germany. 1980.
Both the German Police and Interpol had been working on a series of bizarre
crimes which seemed at the time to be unsolvable.
Over a period of fifteen years a serial killer or killers had taken out a large
number of people. Both male and females had been shot, and then left on
the ground where they fell.
So far, the Police or Interpol had not found any linking evidence other than that
they were all one-shot killings. More important, no motive for the killings

had yet to show its evil face.
None of the victims, male or female, had been subject to sexual attacks. All had been killed by just
one clean small-calibre bullet hole to the heart area or to the head. The possible weapon was
thought to be a German Luger with a potable silencer.
This case was going nowhere. The killings had take place in Strasburg, Bremen, Danzig, Dresden,
and Berlin. In fact all over Germany. And then there had also been number in Austria,
Switzerland, and Poland.
The judiciary had assigned several top class police inspectors to the job of investigation principal,
but no one was able to break into the case.
Chief Inspector Victor Mercedes, who was now in charge of the clean-up operation, decided to code
the problematical massacre as ‘The Killing of Gentle People.’
The Inspector named it such because there was no evidence other than that all the victims had been
ordinary gentle German residents who had been going about their every-day business when their
lives were swiftly taken away.
Chief Inspector Mercedes had been transferred five years earlier to his beloved Criminal Police
Department. This department was responsible for the country’s more serious criminal cases, and as
such this case, ‘The Killing of Gentle People’, was the most serious one ever to take place in
Germany since the Second World War.
The Government of the day recommended Inspector Mercedes to head the extensive investigation team. The Inspector not only had the experience and the reputation of being a great criminologist. During the war he had top secret clearances, and friends who had not since been arrested for crimes against humanity. He still had the ears of people in the highest places.
Unfortunately his team of two hundred inspectors and extra constables was getting a negative response to all the investigations they had undertaken.
The costs of the investigations were now sky-high and way over budget.
The authorities were getting irritated, and losing patience with Inspector Mercedes, and were now demanding his resignation.

The SS Commandant
It was a little known fact that Inspector Mercedes was indeed an SS Commandant during the Holocaust. He lived and worked at the dreaded Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp.
Mercedes was never charged with anything as his documents and orders mysteriously disappeared before the camp was liberated in1945.
When the Allied Forces entered the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp Mercedes was nowhere to be found. Then, in all the confusion, he was conveniently forgotten about. This happened to quite a number of SS monsters from the death camps, but not all of them got away with their carnage.
SS Commander Mercedes was very careful not to be photographed or witnessed getting involved in his pleasure activities, which were the most heinous of crimes against the most fragile and innocent of peoples.
The SS Commander had a job in the death camp: he was responsible for organizing the collections of all Jewish gold, silver, art, and, best of all, hard cash.
All Jewish families were forced into the de-clothing rooms before entering the showering (gas) chambers, and it was at this point that all their cash, jewellery and gold,