Undying Love Books 1 and 2 by Brian Hesse (best romance books of all time .txt) 📕

characteristic ear to ear smile. He reminded Aleksander of the fabled Paul Bunyan, with his broad shoulders, dusty overalls, and scruffy beard and mustache.

  “Hello, Fabian. As you can see it is time for us to part.” Stated Aleksander, holding out his hand.

    Fabian shook his hand and hugged Anastazja, whispering in her ear, “take care of him my good lady. He has a sickness in his soul.”

   Anastazja was comforted by these words. Fabian, a perceptive and intelligent man, validated what she already knew. Her Aleksander was dying inside, and he needed her more than ever.

   “I came by to give you some more food and clothing.” Fabian handed, Aleksander a straw sack filled with dried beef, potatoes, carrots, and stale bread. Before Anastazja could thank him, and before Aleksander refused, Fabian held up a large calloused hand and interrupted, “you must follow a certain route my friends”

    “If you two go West, you are surely entering the tiger’s den. If you go directly East, you will run into more SS swine than you can shake an ax at. To the East is death I hear. Death camps named Belzec, Treblinka, and Sobibor.

   Anastazja and Aleksander listened in silence, both feeling sadness in their hearts knowing that this was the last day they would ever see Fabian, or his family again.

    Fabian continued, “I have two Russian infantry uniforms in the bag. Two privates who found themselves just a bit too close to the German advance. But look for yourself, they were shot clean with a single round each. I suspect executed when captured.”

    Both lovers were not shocked to hear of such atrocities. After seeing the systematic starvation and torture of the ghetto and Auschwitz, both wondered if they had any more tears left to shed for another human being.

   “Now listen you two. I am part of a network of friends. Do not ask question, I have young children, and I cannot jeopardize them. I have arranged three separate safe houses until you reach your goal of Targale, Latvia. The Russians annexed this area in 1940, when Hitler and Stalin were chummy, but are long gone now. You will find some German troops and SS there, but not so many. Live your lives together there until it is safe to come home, back home to Mother Poland.”

   Aleksander and Anastazja, and Fabian embraced one last time. To both lover’s surprise, and relief, tears flowed freely from the three lost souls trying to survive just one more oncoming winter storm.

The Hound and the Foxes

  SS Sturmbannfuhrer Eldric Richter, entered Auschwitz in an unusually jovial mood. It began precisely the moment he entered the front gates of the camp, and he was struck by the efficiency of the operation. This camp was nothing like the death camp at Chelmno. He recalled his visit to Chelmno at the behest of his superior, Reinhard Hydreich, Chief of SD security forces. The camp was in such disarray with gas vans being used instead of the more efficient gas shower facilities of Auschwitz. He recalled seeing piles of bloated corpses just lying about under the hot July sun in plain view of the arriving Jews, causing much panic, like turkeys on their way to the slaughter house, he thought with some amusement. The turkey is serene and, even docile, until catching the scent of blood from fallen comrades. This is how Eldric thought of the transported Jews, like animals calmly going to the slaughter. Auschwitz, unlike Chelmno, separated the killing centers from the train arrival station. Most Jews did not know of their fate until the Zyklon B gas, instead of water, misted from the shower heads above.

  He already knew his plan in detail concerning the information gathering at Auschwitz. Eldric never completed any action without first living the future events inside his own mind. His experience screamed out to him, like blaring sirens and flashing lights inside his mind, that Aleksander, and Anastazja must have had help. He knew that male and female workers were separated within the camp. He considered how Anastazja worked several clicks from the “red house” gas chamber construction project, the place where Aleksander labored each day. With some simple logical deduction, he placed his money on outside help from a Jew in charge of the work roster.

   Eldric approached the duty roster sergeant at the guard house located just inside the main gate, just to the right of the large cast iron gate with the motto emblazoned on the top, “Arbeit macht frei (work sets you free).

 “Sergeant, I am SS Sturmbannfuhrer, Eldric Richter. Here are my orders.” He handed the wide eyed, nervous boy his orders from Himmler. The orders gave instruction to all officers and noncommissioned officers to give him anything he may need to complete investigations.

  “Heil Hitler, responded the boy, with a shaky hand salute. What do you need Major?”

  “I need the name of the Jew in charge of the women’s sewing detail for the night of the escape. If he is alive, I will see him in the cellar of building number eleven.”

  Without another word, he turned away and hurried to the block eleven barracks. He smiled when out the young sergeants line of site. He smiled because he watched as the young sergeants face turned a chalky white at the mention of building eleven. All SS, camp guards, and prisoners knew about building number eleven. The basements of this building contain the around the clock screams of tortured men and women at the hands of ruthless sadist, like Eldric Richter.

   He did not have to wait long for Aaron Cohen. Aaron was a survivor and, as Eldric surmised, could have survived the conclusion of the war. Intelligent men like Eldric could already see the signs of German defeat as early as October 1942. With the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, and Hitler’s insistence on declaring war with America, Germany’s fate was sealed. Eldric combined these events with news from the Russian front. The real news, he considered, and not the propagandized garbage flowing from the mind of Minister of Propaganda, Joseph Goebbels. The real news was that German forces, although still killing Russians by the hundreds of thousands, were losing momentum. Russian suicidal counter attacks and overextended supply lines were wearing Germany thin. Just a matter of time, he thought, before we are all on the run as war criminals.

    “Hello, Aaron. Please have a seat.”

On to Klaipeda

   The road to Klaipeda, from Auschwitz is four hundred and ninety-seven miles. Anastazja and Aleksander, only two days into the journey, traveled a mere fifty miles. Traveling by night was much safer on foot than during the day. Both lovers walked all night under the dim light of the moon and stars, using those same twinkling lights and terrain features to stay in a North, slightly Western direction. The terrain quickly shifted from open rolling fields, pockmarked by the bomb craters of 1939, to deep forest areas, still littered with the corpses of soldiers and civilians alike. Both knew in their hearts, although not spoken aloud, that their luck was sure to run out. Aleksander considered that at their current pace, it would take another forty-two days to reach the city of Targale, and even then, he was unsure of their safety. The Russians, as well as the Germans, were known for their lack of love for Poles and Jews. Stalin, like Hitler, viewed the Polish people as inferior cattle, and not the cultured hard-working stock, that was the reality. Stalin viewed the Poles with suspicion, as he did any people not yet indoctrinated with Communist ideology. But as far as he and Anastazja were concerned, it was better to live disliked, than hated. Hitler hated the Poles, and was on a mission of complete annihilation of anything not German. So, both lovers continued wearily through the darkness until necessity forced them to stop.

    “Halt, you two, stay where you are,” came a voice, from what seemed to Anastazja as a long distance off.

    Aleksander grabbed her by the hand and ran at full sprint into the woods. They were walking along the edge line of a wooded area in a town whose was beyond their guess. Bordering the edge of the woods is a wheat field, now long made barren by the pillaging of infantry and the deep gorges made by German Panzer tank tracks. Just beyond the field, about three hundred yards, by Aleksander’s guess, is a small village, eerily silent during nighttime hours. He wondered, with a shiver, if the houses of the village only contained the rotting corpses of the people that once called them home.

   “You, I said halt,” came the voice again. This time, the commanding voice sounded closer. Aleksander did not panic. He realized that sound is amplified by night.

   “Don’t worry dear,” he stated to Anastazja, as he knelt in the grass, pulling her down by her side. “During day, sound waves travel away from the ground, but at night, they travel toward the ground. This person is not as close as they sound.”

   “Will you shut up with the elementary science lesson, and let’s get the hell out of here,” she stated, as she stood up and dragged an off-balance Aleksander into the woods.

    Both lovers ran through the woods tripping and moving branches aside with their windburned face. The air was crisp with frost, making breathing difficult as they ran towards an unknown destination. In the distance they heard the faint sound of barking dogs. Aleksander knew that these were German Shepherds, popular with Wehrmacht and, SS troops. He ran through the darkness with visions of Auschwitz playing through his mind, like an old movie playing on a projector, he hoped, would one day, die. He saw the terrified faces of the camp prisoners upon arrival at the platform of the camp. Here the German Shepherds, handled by ruthless SS guards, bared their dripping ivory teeth and barked ferociously at arriving Jews.

   “I see a light ahead my dear. We need to find shelter. We cannot go on like this,” stated Anastazja, still dragging Aleksander toward the faint glow of a farmhouse.

   Just a few meters away from the house, they heard a sharp crackle of breaking frozen twigs behind them.

    “Hold it there you two. Are you Jews?” came a masculine voice directly from behind.

   “Yes, please help us sir. We are escapees of Auschwitz. We need your help,” replied Anastazja. She said this before Aleksander could reply to the man’s question. He knew that she was the more diplomatic of the couple. She was also sure that a man would respond much more favorably to the pleas of a woman. She was correct in her assumption.

     “Come with me into the barn. I have a secret space beneath the floor of the barn. It is just big enough for two, so you can’t stay long, but I will do what I can to keep them from discovering you.”

     The man led the couple into the darkness of the barn. After signaling Aleksander to help, all three pulled back five heavy bales of hay as fast as they could. The man pulled on a chain hidden behind a shovel, leaning against the nearby splintered wooden post. A trap door opened and both lovers quickly jumped in and laid on the cold dirt floor embracing each other with eyes tightly shut. The man closed the trap door, and labored to drag the bales over the trap door.

    “I love you,’ whispered Aleksander, as he kissed Anastazja on her cold shaking lips. He prayed this was not to be their last kiss.

Tell Me Where They Are

  Eldric Richter normally liked to work alone, but some jobs required a little muscle. Like most self-absorbed individuals he, readily admitted, was not enthusiastic about-facing danger. He told himself countless times, that his mission