Undying Love by Brian Hesse (read the beginning after the end novel TXT) 📕

Revenge

  The opportunity for revenge presented itself much sooner than expected. By 1942, Jews in ghettos across occupied territories found themselves participants in the worst mass slaughter known to human history. The sick and elderly were the first to be forcibly removed from the ghetto and transported to various death camps throughout Poland. Camps such as Auschwitz, Chelmno, Treblinka, and Sobibor began filling to capacity due to the efficient use of the railroad system by men such as Adolf Eichmann. Despite years of living in the ghetto system, most Jewish inhabitants still did not know of the fate that awaited them in the extermination camps. Under the guise of promised relocation to a camp with better living conditions, few ghetto inhabitants resisted the forced evacuations.

    “Did you hear that the Jews are being transported to a better camp?” asked Anna Ciesla, looking at Anastazja with large hopeful eyes.

     “What about Poles?”

      “I think they are taking some Poles to work, but mainly Jews is my understanding.”

     “Where are they going?” asked Anastazja, in a low whisper. Talking in the work line could be dangerous. Polish police and Nazi guards where always on the lookout to thin the population. Anastazja overheard an SS guard discussing the situation a few weeks ago. She gathered that the typhus and dysentery situation was a constant fear of the SS guards. The young officer was heard stating that emptying the ghetto was a primary concern.

     “I’m not sure,” replied Anna, but I am told that food is plentiful if you pull your weight and work very hard. I also hear that there are more opportunities to find a good man.” Anne covered her mouth with her hand and giggled. To Anastazja, she looked like a young virgin schoolgirl at her first school dance.

 Her lightened mood quickly turned to horror as she watched Hans Gruber walk quickly toward them with dark eyes fixed on Anna. Before she could warn her friend, Hans grabbed Anna by the hair and dragged her to the middle of the street. This was the same bloodstained spot where Sara was brutally shot down by this same monster.

   Hans yelled at the top of his lungs, “No talking in line you Pole bitch!” He looked up briefly at Anastazja with a thin-lipped grin spreading across his face, as if letting her know that he remembered Sara and, even worse, he remembered her. Aanstazja thought with a renewed sense of horror that this monster is toying with her like a sadistic cat playing with a terrified mouse. I must kill him, she thought, as she watched Hans kick and punch Anne until she no longer screamed in fear and agony. When the beating was finished, Hans Gruber was breathing heavy with sweat saturating his otherwise pristine black SS uniform. Blood covered his mirror shined leather boots and his soft underworked hands. Anastazja watched in a state of numbing depression as Anne gave two last deep breaths before falling silent. A fine mist of ghetto dirt dissipated into the air with each exhale of her fragile breath, as if her soul departed into the crisp morning air. As if by instinct, Anastazja raised her lowered head in his direction and forced the most seductive smile she could muster. She highlighted her seductive grin with a quick wink of her left eye. Hans Gruber’s expression turned to utter surprise, forcing Anastazja to suppress a haughty laugh. As if on auto pilot. Anastazja’s brain provided the only opportunity she would have to kill the beast of the Lodz ghetto. All the women workers of the ghetto knew of his weakness for raping young ghetto inhabitants. Such practices were ironically frowned upon by the higher SS elite. Heinrich Himmler, head of the SS, Police, Gestapo, and chief architect of the exterminations, condemned such acts of what he considered degenerate sexual behavior. However, this did not stop a handful of SS guards and ghetto police from taking sexual advantage of women and, rumored, sometimes men. As if playing a part in a play, Hans returned Anastazja’s wink, and quickly lowered his head so as not to get caught. Fraternization, consensual or not, meant possible court martial and prison for members of the SS. Anastazja boarded the work truck knowing that the time of waiting was short. She would kill Hans Gruber, sew a Jewish yellow star to her filthy grey coat, and be transported to, what she believed, better conditions at Auschwitz.

Escape from the Warsaw Ghetto

  Aleksander walked clumsily to the city center, dubbed the café, by local inhabitants of the Warsaw ghetto. Despite three years of hunger pains, lice infestation, bouts of vomiting, diarrhea, and the constant smell of decaying bodies permeating his nostrils, the café offered a tiny slice of heaven. It was here that he conversed with other intellectually minded residents of the ghetto. Men and women who, before the invasion, were artists, musicians, and professors. Not that he didn’t enjoy the bantering with the common uneducated resident. He thought with some measure of humility how just a few years ago, he never would have conversed with someone without a college degree. How pompous I once was, he considered, as he made his way to the city center. Here he would find large gatherings of people huddled together before hastily made fires, talking about the good days before the war, before the enslavement. The children would never stand huddled together like the adults. Children have a natural resistance to the cold that generates from the joy and wonder of their pure hearts. Oh, there I go again, he laughed to himself. Always trying to be the eternal poet. Aleksander gave up on poetry after spending his first year in the ghetto. He realized that teaching poetry does not make one a poet. The true poet finds the greatest inspiration in the fires of hell and not in the contentment of heaven. Here in hell he lost his inspiration, confirming his suspicion that he could not write verse. Aleksander’s days were spent standing in endless lines in the hopes of finding work for the day, or week. Thousands of half-starved inhabitants would gather in front of the Jewish Council headquarters on the East side of the city, hoping to be assigned to the few Nazi work details outside the city. Workers would receive two meals of soup, with actual meat, and bread that still maintained some hint of freshness. But most days were spent talking with others. Endless conversations spoken for no other reason than to forget the misery that enveloped every living soul of the place, like a poison’s gas creeping low to the ground, offering no chance of escape for the helpless victims. It was on such a cold starless night, gathered around the bonfire, that he hatched a plan of escape.

            “Hello, my good friend Aleksander.” Said a deep guttural voice, vibrating from the bitter cold. Aleksander raised his head and saw his friend Abraham standing close to the fire rubbing his hands vigorously just inches from the yellow flame. Abraham was a former violinist for a local, yet popular, orchestra before the war. He couldn’t remember the name of the orchestra and was afraid to ask for fear of sounding rude.

            “How goes it Abraham,” replied Aleksander, standing as close to his friend to steal some extra warmth.

            “I did not eat today, I have a terrible rash on my back from lice bites, and one of my flat mates died right next to me in the middle of the night.” Abraham raised a shaking right hand in the air and laughed, “so I guess all is normal.” He lowered his hand and stared intensely into the fire. The smile faded from his face as quickly as it appeared. To Aleksander, the fire reflected off his pale face, making Aleksander think of impending death. He closed his eyes and willed away the morbid thought. He has witnessed so much death in the ghetto. He could not bare to think about his friend dying in such a filthy place. Any man who can have such a passion for music should die in the comfort of a bed surrounded by family and friends, he considered.

            “Well Aleksander I have more rumors for you tonight, and I am afraid they are not my usual fairy tale type.” Abraham was notorious for spreading rumors of hope throughout the ghetto. He would tell tales of the Allies winning the war and coming to liberate the enslaved people. He would go on for hours about the secret commando missions to parachute in behind the German lines with guns blazing, all to liberate the Poles and Jews. Nobody would dare mention the absurdity that a violinist would be privy to such daring military plans. Nobody would mention that civilian deaths were irrelevant to the goal of destroying the feared German war machine.

            “So, tell me all about it my friend,” said Aleksander, excited to hear another strange tale.

            “The Nazi’s are killing Jews in Russia,” he stated, with a grave look that made Aleksander pause in his assumption that the next tale was a complete fantasy.

            “I’m sure they are,” stated Aleksander. There are Jews who fight as soldiers for the Russians.”

            “No, my friend. These Jews are civilians. Civilians are being rounded up and shot by the thousands in secret locations throughout Russia. Has been going on for about a year now.”

            “Abraham my friend. You know I never doubted your stories before, but how could you possibly know this.” Abraham stopped rubbing his hands together and turned to Aleksander with a seriousness that burned through him like white hot needles.

            “A Russian prisoner of war was sent here by mistake last week. I talked to him just before a Gestapo agent seized him from my flat after he was found out. The Gestapo does not want anyone from the Russian campaign here at the ghetto. Too much knowledge of what is happening.” Abraham returned his hands to their original position in front of the fire and continued, “This young Russian soldier fought the Germans just outside of Kovno. He was separated from his unit and hid from the German Army. For days, he watched as countless infantry and armor rolled past his position. Then came the SS Commando squads. He witnessed the entire village rounded up and marched two miles to a large pit about twenty feet deep and the same across. He slowly crawled on his belly through thicket and dense forest until he was close enough to witness what happened next.”

            Abraham paused for a few moments as if trying to come to grips with, what he thought were, the facts of the story. Aleksander remembered that Abraham told him that he had family in Russia.

            Abraham continued, “they call themselves the Einsatzgruppen. Squads of SS officers and Order Police, recruited from local populations. Their job apparently is to round up Jews for immediate extermination. First it was just men and boys of a military age targeted for execution. Now, men, women, and children are shot. Anyway, my Russian friend watched as women and children were forced to strip naked. Then they were forced in groups of twenty to run to the edge of the ditch. Ready, aim, fire, and everyone in line is shot in the chest or head to just slide down the inside edge to the bottom below. After several dozen are killed in this way, an SS officer climbs below and walks on top of the pale bleeding corpses. He fires a single hand gun round into the head of each corpse, to make sure the person is dead.”

            “Even the babies,” replied Aleksander.

            “Even the babies, my friend. The Mothers