Ted Getzel Works

Louie #8 Part ll

(I am 26)

The scene within Buchenwald’s gate

Tore up his soul and sealed his fate.

The smells the sights of shrunken dead,

Walking skeletons in his head.

Since so many Jews had been killed,

There was revenge to be fulfilled.

It was August. Carolina’s vicious southern sun beat down on the black roof of the behemoth Super Sport, an artifact of American industrial chutzpah, a symbol of hardened, like the pistons of its huge engine, American manhood. Within the muscle car sweat mixed with our tears.

Louie: There were bodies piled up like pieces of wood; a lot of them were naked you could see every bone through their skin; their eyes were sunk in, empty, empty. There were wagons piled high with them too. There were half burned bodies in the ovens. And the smell, the burnt body smell, the shit the piss the fear…..”

As my father spoke the old pictures I had seen in the books and newsreels I had watched ran together in a movie in my head. Louie’s face was folded in agony.

Louie: Some guards were captured and brought back; the prisoners who had the strength beat them to death –tore them from limb to limb we shot some too.

He paused to gasp for air.

Louie: I know Yiddish so I talked to some of the Jewish prisoner. . At first we gave them as much food as they wanted and some of them died. They died from eating. Can you imagine that? They died from eating their systems were so fouled up food killed them……..”

I had been really hungry just once in my life; I could not imagine that.

Louie: They were walking skeletons.

My father looked so small as I listened. His once huge blue collar muscles had shrunken away from years of heart disease.

Louie: They told about the killing room and the meat hooks – those sons of bitches hung live people from hooks and then they strangled them. Can you imagine that?

I nodded yes.

Louie: then they burnt the bodies in their fucking ovens. Those sons of bitches, those sons of bitches. Your mother had family in Munich that never came over. They were bakers, owned a bakery. For all I knew they might have died there- those sons of bitches, those Nazi scum.

His fists clenched.

Louie: We were ordered to move. We were supposed to meet up with the Russians, the war was almost over. We met the Russians. A lot of them were from Siberia they looked liked Chinese, I guess they were Mongolians. They has never seen a toilet before, they thought it was something to drink from.

He almost smiled at that memory.

Louie: They always wanted us to drink vodka. I tried it once – I didn’t like.

There was a long pause. He pressed his lips tightly together, then his lips quivered and he spoke.

Louie: Then the war was over, it was over. The war was……. they sent us to occupy Vienna. The war was over.

He started sobbing hard again and looked at me with pleading eyes.

Louie: Yeah the war was over and we were in Vienna. All the Jewish soldiers had letters in their back pockets asking them to look for a grandmother, grandfather. aunt, uncle, cousin, nephew, niece – relatives –friends at this or that address. Letters from people back home. We went looking and every time ……every time there were…. we went to one of those houses…. there were SS, Nazi families living in those Jewish houses. The homes of the dead. The people piled up. We knew then it had happened there in Vienna, in Poland where our family had relatives, it happened everywhere those Nazi bastards had gone.

His voice grew louder.

Louie: They killed the Jews and then they took over their houses, sat on their chairs, lounged on their, couches, Walked on their rugs, ate at their tables, with their silver, looked at their pictures hanging from the walls, at the same time the people who once lived there were hanging from meat hooks---the sons of bitches. SS Nazi Sons…….

He gulped I like a fish out of water. He was shaking.

Louie: The war was over. The war was over. I, I……..

His face was soaked with tear and sweat.

Louie: All the Jewish soldiers who had those letters, we got together and decided what we were going to do. I made the silencers.

The war was over I shouldn’t we, I….

Shouldn’t have…… the war was over………………..

We went back to those houses at night took those people into the back and we shot we killed them all every last one of them and buried them in the yards

The war was over, the war was over, it was wrong I shouldn’t have done it, I shouldn’t have done, I shouldn’t………

Dad, Dad, after what you saw; after what you went through there was nothing wrong with what you did! If I were back then, if I saw what you saw, went through what you went through, I WOULD HAVE DONE EXACTLY THE SAME THING.

They say you can never be sure what you would do in someone else’s place. They are sometimes full of shit.

Slowly his breathing came easier and the sobs disappeared. He touched my left shoulder and turned to grasp the steering wheel.

You want me to drive? I asked.

No I’ll drive, I want to drive. He turned the key and the air conditioner came on. We rolled up the windows. Gravel flew from the big rear wheels as we roared back onto the interstate. We rode in silence for many miles. I thought about the time he had told the story of Samson at bedtime.

“If they take the new Samson’s eyes,

When the columns fall

The whole world dies.

YIT’GADAL V’ITKADASH SH’ME RABA.