Sing of the Brotherhood of Man.
Exalt the truth that all are equal,
Children of the All Mighty One.”
(Segment Schiller’s Ode to Joy, Beethoven’s 9th fourth movement as taught to me at JHS 82 –the Bronx 1962)
Louie #8 (1st draft)
(1973- I am 26)
The sights within Buchenwald’s gate
Tore up his soul and sealed his fate.
In 1937, the Nazis built, just five miles from the city of Weimar, in the woods on Etter’s Mountain, the Buchenwald Concentration Camp. Weimar was a symbol of the highest German culture; its former residents included J.S. Bach, Hector Berlioz, Marlene Dietrich, Goethe, Johann Herder, Martin Luther, Friederich Schiller, Friederich Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, and Franz Liszt. Weimar was also the Capital of the Republic Hitler dismantled, and the birthplace of the Bauhaus Movement the core seed of modernism nurtured by Walter Gropius, Kandinsky, Klee and Schlemmer – some of my favorite artists. Within the confines of the camp was the famous Goethe Oak where the, where the poet was to sit under to meet his muse.
Since he dropped out of elementary school to go to work, the irony of the camp’s location, was, I am sure, invisible to Louie. I’m sure that if he had known of the German’s past great achievements they would been crowded out of his head by what he’d, done, seen and still had to do. He was with the Third Army and their job was to destroy the Third Reich. On April 11th, 1945, the day before President Roosevelt’s death the American Third Army liberated the Buchenwald Concentration Camp, where over 56,000 prisoners died from overwork, starvation, execution, deadly medical experiments, or to provide skin for lampshades.
Louie was fluent in Yiddish and knew enough German to be used to help interrogate prisoners. When he arrived at the gate he saw the iron welded words above it, “"Jedem das Seine" (literally "to each his own", but figuratively "everyone gets what he deserves"). The words, hotter than the crematoria within were burned into his brain. This had an irony that he could understand and teach the Nazis one by one.
We were tooling up I-95 from Walton Beach in Louie’s 427 Chevy Impala SS. Not realizing what I was driving the first time I took the wheel I tromped on the gas and left about a block of rubber.
Me: Why the hell did you buy that monster? That thing for kid who drag races.
Louie: Yeah, exactly – some kid ordered it all tricked out; had it for a few months and then couldn’t make the payments. The dealer was stuck with it so I got really good deal.
It didn’t seem like the right car for a man with a very, very bad heart with severe angina that forced him to pop Demerol and an assortment other tranquilizers and medications like they were candy. He had about a thousand pain killers in his condo sitting on a card table full of pill bottles. I said nothing further about the Super Sport: he seemed happy with the toy. He was at death’s door, so if something made him happy that was good. The stress of seeing my father who was so physically strong when I was younger freaked me out. I kept thinking he might drop dead in the middle of a sentence. The anxiety was overwhelming, so despite never being a fan of opiates I started helping myself to hid Demerol to keep my nerves from exploding. The drug gave a bad case of the hiccups. It was the second day of hiccups.
Back then I 95 ended south of Fayetteville and Fort Bragg and you had to get on route 301 and drive through town. The main drag through town through town catered to the soldiers from fort Bragg and had the feel of carnival midway, Tattoo parlors (rare in those days) after tattoo parlors, nudie bars, liquor store, gun shops, hookers one after the other and uniforms everywhere. Traffic was bumper to bumper and my hiccups were coming faster and faster.
Louie: You’re driving me crazy with your hiccups! You gotta stop them! You’ll hiccup into an accident!
He seemed sincerely upset by my affliction. Upsetting him immediately flooded me with guilt. At a traffic light I held my breath for as long as I could with my fingers pressing my closed and my mouth clamped shut. With all my might I tried to exhale against the shut orifices. I hiccupped as soon as I actually finished exhaling.
Louie: I’m telling you it’s driving me nuts! You’ll get sick; you gotta do something!
That was him. There I was driving him to New York to have a triple bypass operation, which was back in 1973 a near experimental procedure that he had less than a 50--50 chance of surviving and he was worrying about my health.
We were finally clear of the surreal center of Fayetteville. Just before the return to I-95 was a rest stop, a low long building with a tin roof and cinder block walls painted a green that matched the loblolly pines it was set in. I pulled off the road and parked at the stop.
Me: Hiccup-I’m going to try the water cure. Hiccup.
Louie: That’s a good one- yeah drink as much as you can.
Me: You coming in?
Louie: No I don’t need to go I’ll wait here.
The restroom was gross; it smelled of stale piss and sheets of toilet paper danced across the red tile floor in the breeze that entered through the propped open door. I decided to piss first to make way for the water to come. I went over to a sink and rinsed my hands then cupped my right hand under the the quick running cold tap. I drank and drank without pause, without taking a breath until the water felt like it reached my Adam’s apple. I lifted my head and fought back a gag. I waited. I waited some more. They were gone. I walked out to the car slowly. I was weighed down by the water. Louie had moved over to the driver’s seat. I opened the passenger door of the behemoth; Louie had his head turned and was looking his side window. I slid into the black leather seat and pulled the huge door shut. It gave a resounding big Chevy car thwunk .
Me: I’m cured, the water worked, I had to drink at least a gallon, but there gone.
Louie’s head was still turned away.
Louie: That’s good, that’s good.
His voice was subdued, quavering the way it did when he stared in the mirror and talked to my dead mother years ago.
He turned his head toward me. His tears wear magnified by the thick lenses of his tortoise shell glasses. His Florida tan was gone-his face was deathly white; tears rolled down the grey stubble on his cheeks.
Louie: I gotta tell you some things, I gotta get them off my chest, I haven’t told anyone else except a Rabbi.
Instantly my throat tightened, my heart started pounding and I felt tears in my eyes. My mother was dying again screaming for morphine.
Me: Tell me; I’m here, tell me.
His chest was heaving, he was sobbing. He brought his right hand up to his chest. This terrified me.
Louie: I was over there in the war. The war was almost over. We were in Germany headed for Austria, to meet up with Russians. There were, he looked up – fuckin’ fat farmers and fuckin’ fat cows. And we came to, he stopped to sob, we came to---we liberated a concentration camp.
His shoulders were heaving, he looked at me and the tears were flowing in a steady stream. He seemed to be gasping for breath. I was crying also.
Me: Dad you liberated it that was a good thing. You should be proud.
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