Just Kiss Me One Last Time by Brian Hesse (best ebook reader android .TXT) 📕

another word, and with tears in both of our eyes, he walked out my door forever. I would never see him again. It was not until later that I would discover that my brother Hans was killed during the 1940 invasion of France. I am relieved that he did not have the opportunity to take part in the most horrifying mass murder of the twentieth century.

 

XIII Arrest

 

   Once again, the years go by and things do change like the seasons. It was two years since the last time I saw my brother Hans. Alberich never did come home. I received word just two days after that 1934 meeting with Hans, that Alberich’s body was found next to his wrecked car just a few miles from his parents’ home. Normally, in a world with an erased history, the only stories highlighted in the Nazi controlled press were ones of Hitler’s grand revival of the Germany economy, military, and revival of German art. However, Alberichs death made front page headlines. According to reports, he was on the Nazi watchlist of subversive peoples since 1933. Again, according to reports, he was the secretive leader of a local communist terrorist organization, responsible for various acts of violence against Nazi party officials. This I knew to be a lie. He was an activist since the early 1920’s, but an activist for gay rights. He also happened to be Jewish and an outspoken opponent of escalating anti-Jewish acts across Germany. There is no proof, but I know he was assassinated, as well as hundreds of others who have made the list of “enemies of the state.”

 

 I stayed on at the El Dorado until its official closing in 1936. The club stayed open illegally after Hitler came to power, but the doors were officially closed in 1933. I continued to live above the empty bar until 1936, the year of my arrest. After losing Alberich I was determined to live the lonely yet peaceful life of the hermit. The world under the swastika was not one that allowed an individual personal freedom to be themselves. My brother was right when he said that he arrived to save me. I was naïve enough to believe that no matter how dictatorial a regime in power, individuality could never be eradicated. I always assumed that not even the Nazi state could invade the privacy of the bedroom, of the mind. I was wrong. Everywhere you would go, someone was listening and watching someone. Spies permeated every fabric of society. A son informed on his Mother’s words of mercy for the persecution of the Jew. A student informed on a teacher whom mentioned Einstein as brilliant scientist, and not as a miscreant Jew. In my case, a nosy old hag from a shabby first floor flat mentioned to the authorities that I was spotted coming out the back-alley door of the vacant El Dorado. My questioning was anything but brief. In my usual naivete, I was resigned to be charged with trespass, given a fine, and told to vacate the premises, but this is not the case. I spoke to an SS detective, Albert Brecht.

 

  Inspector Richter: “So why were you living atop the El Dorado/”

   Me: “I worked there three years ago as a bartender.”

   Inspector: “Do you not know that the El Dorado was closed by the state?”

   Me: “Yes sir. I had nowhere else to go.”

   Inspector: “Do you know why this place was closed?”

   Me: “Yes sir. Too many homosexuals frequented the place.”

   Inspector: “Are you a homosexual?”

   Me: “You should know inspector.”

    Inspector: “And why is that?”

   Me: “I used to serve you drinks every Saturday night.”

 

   Can you believe I said that? I honestly was that stupid. I was honest, which makes me stupid. The fact I served this man drinks every weekend for a year was true. I honestly believed that he would protect me, like we all belonged to some gay fellowship, but this is not the case. Truth of the matter is that if he could have killed me right there in his office, he would have. If he was sure that I did not have some little black book of names hidden somewhere in Berlin, he would have shot me dead either there or in some covert fashion. Maybe another traffic accident like Alberichs. So, he did the next best thing. He threw me in a cell in the basement of the Berlin police station and left me in the hands of the prison system. Although I was already disturbed by the sudden change of events, I was particularly disturbed by what he said as I was escorted from his smoke-filled office.

 

He said, “We have a place for you in the basement, but don’t get too comfortable. You will soon live out your life in the open air.”

 

At the time, I had no idea what he meant by such strange words. In 1938, I would feel the full effect of this man’s strange words.

 

XIII Uncertaintity

 

My two years boarding at the Berlin police station (city hall) was one of, only what I can describe as, enlightening. I learned for the first time in my life the natural defense mechanism of indifference, as I believe, built into every thinking being. I started from day one for about six months in fear. Each morning I would wait for my breakfast, consisting of a bowl of cold potage, to be slipped carelessly from underneath my cell door. My cell is nothing more than a six-foot square concrete box with walls ten feet high, with a splintered nightstand next to my steel framed cot topped by a thin dirty mattress. I can feel the springs jab sharply into my ribs if I attempt to continue with my habit of sleeping on my sides. The door is made of at least seven inches of steal with two small openings, normally closed with a hinged iron door. The one on the top is just big enough for a guard to peer inside or, on some occasions, hurl insults into the lightless confines of my cell. The bottom hinged door is just big enough to have two daily meals flung across the cold concrete floor.

 

So, my first six months was not in anger over loss of such subjective concepts as personal freedom. I was in fear of an assassin faking my suicide. Even if I would have had a rope or, able to fashion one out of my torn and stained striped prison clothes, there would be nowhere to fasten the rope. I suppose I could have sharpened a bed spring to cut my wrist, and this thought did not fail to grasp my imagination but hanging was the most common form of “suicide” in the prison system. But as stated before, the possibility of hanging oneself was next to impossible. The fact is, I called out a Berlin police detective for associating with my gay male friends at an outlawed gay nightclub. Fear of death was not irrational in such circumstances.

 

As the six months stretched to twelve, I rationalized that something, or someone, was preventing my untimely murder. The problem with life in a windowless concrete box, is the amount of time a person must think. I thought of so many scenarios of why I was kept alive. Most are too irrational and embarrassing to mention. The truth was much simpler than I could have ever imagined.

On the one-year anniversary of my arrest, I received a visit from my brother Hans.

 

“Look at you Karl, he stated, with eyes lowered to the floor in shame and disappointment. “You were supposed to be the smart one. The sensitive one. I guess you are proof of what          of the price of sensitivity in this new world.”

 

  I felt weak from lack of nutrition. Over the course of the last two months of the year, meals were reduced to one instead of two. The SA guards were replaced by SS men in black uniforms. They never opened the latch to hurl insults at the prisoners. You miss human contact even if that contact is degrading.

 

   I began, “Hans, my only crime was loitering in a vacant building. For this I have been reduced to hat you see.”

 

   “No Karl, this was not your only crime. You are an open homosexual, and worse, you accused my friend, inspector Richter, of the same subversive activities.”

 

    It was at that time all my questions were answered. I am alive only because my brother was now an SS Major, with some very high political contacts. Hope swelled inside me like a flowing river in a torrential downpour.

 

   As if reading my mind, he continued, “No Karl, I cannot get you out of this, but merely ensure that you do not meet with a tragic accident, or suicide.”

 

    “Hans, please help me.”

 

   For the first time I watched as his hard exterior cracked under the strain of sympathy. Not only sympathy for me, but I surmised, for many events witnessed since the end of the war. I knew deep down that he was not a Jew hater. He was raised by the same loving Mother and Father as me. I watched in hopeful anticipation for the tears of humanity to fall, but this was not to be. His expression quickly turned to granite once more and he said, “you will face reeducation in a new camp system devised by our leader, Heinrich Himmler.”   

 

  “Good bye Karl. I will wait for you to become well and join me in the world once more,”

 

 Without having a chance to speak, my brother was gone again from my life, and my depression set in.

 

  Depression was the next stage in my enlightenment. I no longer felt the fear of imminent death, but I mourned the loss of that subjective concept of freedom. Even worse than this, I kept hearing my brother’s words echo through my mind like sound traveling in a deep dark cavern. The words, “when you become well.” I am not sick. Since coming to this city, I have met hundreds, maybe thousands, like me. Is it so sick to fall in love with another man? Is it so sick that I should be left to rot in six by six mausoleum in the middle of the most civilized cities in the world? And so, this depression lasted for a few months, and was finally replaced with the gift of indifference. I no longer cared if I lived or died. I no longer cared if I was sick or well. If I could stand the deep stabbing pains of hunger in my stomach, starvation could be my salvation, but I am too much a coward to die that way. The will to live is the strongest instinct known to animal, and my next trial would prove this theory.

 

XIV The Death Camp

 

I arrived at Mauthausen concentration camp late in the year nineteen thirty-eight. The camp, as I later discovered was based on the set up of most Nazi camps, a large rectangle, surrounded by layers of fencing and barbed wire, containing hastily built wooden barracks for hapless victims of Hitler’s regime. During the time at the Berlin prison, I overheard a few conversations between SS guards. Statements such as, “the Jews really don’t know what’s coming,” and, “the camps are being hastily built now,” were common themes followed by laughter. I did not place any meaning on these fragmented conversations, until now. My sleeping assignment was in the far Eastern corner of the camp, barracks number five. Here, in barracks five, only prisoners wearing the pink triangle lived…and died. The Nazis had a color classification based on the category of prisoner in the camp. Convicted criminals wore a green triangle on their stripped prisoner uniform. Red triangles reserved for political prisoners, social democrats, communists, and trade unionists. The purple triangle belonged to the Jehovah witness. Black triangles were given primarily