Free Cimmerian: A Novel of the Holocaust by Ronald Watkins Page A

beside him he could not understand his words. Perhaps he was incoherent; he was clearly out of his mind.
    There was so much screaming Peter could not hear Wolff speak, but there was no missing the horror that transpired. Wolff let him rant for a minute with a sneer on his lip. Then he shouted orders. The stunned trustees hesitated only a second then pounced on Karl and stripped him of his uniform. Naked, they tossed him into the shower with this load. He died with the others, no doubt screaming incoherently as he did.
    Peter was numb for a week afterward. It wasn’t just Karl. He had seen something like this coming for some time. He was sorry he had been there to witness it, but grateful Wolff had not turned on him as well. He was having serious doubts himself about what they were doing.
    Could there truly be so many enemies of the Reich? It seemed impossible. These mass killings had gone on for years. Surely, Peter thought, most of the Jews in Europe were dead by now. They were also killing Poles as well. They were Slovaks and were subhuman, he was told. But they were also Catholic, as Peter was. At the Judenrampe, along the lines, inside the shower, daily he heard Ave Maria as he had recited it a thousand times before.
    Could this be right?
    God With Us the buckle on their uniform said. Could He truly be? Peter’s growing affection for Eva only increased his doubts.
    When he was with her he could sense her compassion. She was a gentle soul in this hell. Though he was her oppressor and the murderer of her friends and family, she treated him with tenderness. Away from her Peter thought about Eva whenever his circumstances permitted. His fantasies were about her.
    She made a lovely Madonna of gold in secret and gave it to him before Christmas to send to his mother. It was exquisite. He nearly cried when he realized what she had slipped into his hand.
    Eva was a Reichsdeutscher, a Catholic, not a Jew: could she be staatsfeindlich? What crime had this seventeen-year-old girl committed?
    The conduct of the guards added to his doubts. Their incessant brutality, their corruption was in his eyes no better than the corruption, brutality and atheism of the resident prisoners. At least the prisoners were the victims of this terrible place. Wasn't it the guards who drove from them every vestige of decency, even in most cases their belief in God? What excuse was there for his strutting, laughing, arrogant comrades? They were the elite.
    It was apparent to Peter that the state of the war and the needs of the Reich required some such camps. But did they have to be so brutal? And was wholesale slaughter of families required for some greater good?
    Peter reminded himself of the atrocities the Germans were facing each day. In Russia no prisoners were taken. He had often come upon bodies of German soldiers, stripped of their weapons, clearly shot after surrender. The bombers were destroying the major cities of Germany. The allies knew they were killing helpless civilians, yet they did it nevertheless.
    How different were the deaths of those civilians from the people the guards killed here? These at least were selected and judged as enemies. The American and British bombers killed indiscriminately.
    Peter returned to these thoughts often each day, and for a time they persuaded him, as had his uncle’s admonition that others, not himself, were responsible. But the horror of each day, of what he saw and did, what haunted him in his sleep, was inescapable.
    There was no turning back, and this reality kept him going despite his doubts. He had seen what happened to Karl. His death had spared no one. No matter what Peter did he knew it would change nothing. The people he killed only died an hour or two before their ordained death anyway. He had no alternative now, and every day reminded himself of that. Had he reported to the Wehrmacht as originally ordered he would have been dead by now. Of that he was certain.
    Peter went to see Eva as often as