“Gather round and join the chorus,
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 #9 Part l (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.
Louie: We were too late, it was no good we were too late.
Louie #9 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.
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