Chapter 16: Only Human

After talking to my father, I realized that I would do anything to keep John safe. I didn't want to tell John about what my father was having me do because I didn't want John to try to stop me and get himself killed by doing something foolish. Besides, I had to believe that as long as I did my work and did it well, my father wouldn't hurt John. I had to believe he would keep his promise to me, but I was ready to follow through on my threat if he didn't. I had nothing more than my own life to bargain with.

Following my initial meeting with my father, every other week, a guard would come and take me from the barracks to the house that sat directly behind the men's side of Aussichtslos. Every time I was taken, I was afraid John would see me and do something to try and protect me and get himself shot. There was only so much I could do to keep him safe, the rest was up to him. All I could do was hope and pray that if he did see me being marched through the camp, he would stay put and pretend everything was normal.

In the months that I worked in my father's house, I rarely saw him. I occasionally heard him, but as I moved through the house, he usually removed himself to places where I wasn't. We were like two magnets that could do nothing but repel each other. One day, I was told to go into his office and clean up after a party that had been thrown the night before. As I opened the huge wooden double doors, I hesitated when I saw a figure sitting there in the dark. I walked slowly in, I was sure whoever it was would probably ignore me. I began to dust off some of the furniture, and I heard the figure clear their throat, and a lamp was turned on. I turned suddenly and saw my father sitting there, his eyes were red, and an empty bottle of whiskey sat on the desk next to him. He was holding a picture of my mother, it was their wedding photo. He was staring as if he stared at it long enough, he could make the picture come alive.

He looked at me with a tired and worn expression on his face that I had never seen on him before. I held my breath in suspense, unsure what he would do next, and then he asked in a broken voice, "Did she die peacefully?"

I was surprised by the sudden question. I hadn't realized my father had found out my mother had died or that he even cared.

"No," I said coldly, "She got sick on the train getting here and then slowly got sicker. She tried to work through her illness, but one morning she couldn't fight it anymore. She died slowly and painfully." I saw my father's shoulders tense, but I couldn't stop myself from giving him the whole picture. Tears came slowly to my eyes as I pushed my father further toward the truth.

"Her body was thrown into a cart with several other dead bodies and dumped in a hole in the middle of a field." I spat, "Don't worry, they got her clothes before they disposed of her. So if she had any belongings still with her at the time, I am sure it's somewhere in the piles of other people's belongings you have me sorting through." Tears fell silently, and I stood above my father with a feeling of cruel satisfaction that he heard it from me.

"She was a strong woman," My father said, never taking his eyes off the picture. He seemed to be in a daze, almost as though he hadn't heard a word I had said.

"Not strong enough to protect herself from you," I said.

My father looked up at me with a defeated expression, "Get out," He said in a weak voice.

"What?" I said, a bit bewildered by his reaction.

"GET OUT!" He yelled, slamming his fists down on the table, shattering the glass of the picture frame he held.

A guard came in and pulled me out of the room, taking me back to the yard of the camp.

At that point, my mother had been dead for months. I wasn't aware that he had even been notified that she had passed away. Death was a far too frequent occurrence for him to have a complete record of every death.

Had he still loved my mother? What was in his mind? Although my anger towards him still raged on, that small moment forced me to humanize him. I saw the loss in his eyes, I saw a small glimmer of guilt, and just a glimpse of weakness. I didn't want to see him as anything but a cold-hearted monster. I didn't want to feel anything but anger towards him, but I couldn't help but notice a weak, tired, broken man that simply missed his wife and the life he had once lived. Even if that weakness only lasted a moment, I couldn't help but remember what Mr. Becker had said about the Nazis. He once said they were simply lost men and women who thought they were being told the truth. He said they were blindly led into the darkness without being aware of the consequences. Humanizing, my father caused me to humanize the rest of the SS guards and soldiers. I may have hated them with every ounce of my being, but I couldn't help wondering if I wasn't the only child who was forced to suffer because of the mistakes of her family. The SS guards must have had families who waited for them to come home, waited for a letter or a phone call telling them they were safe. They must have had children, parents, siblings, someone who loved and worried about them. But did they know? Did they see the pain their loved ones were inflicting? Did they know of the pain, torture, death? And if they did, did it kill them as much as it killed me every day? Every day, knowing exactly what my father was doing, being aware of the hundreds of innocent lives he was stealing. It hurt me more than anything. Even as I grew older in age, and wiser with time, I still felt the sting of what my father did. I still had those haunting questions that I felt would never be answered.