by Pliss, Todd
“Yeah, I understand,” he muttered out.
Samuel lit up a cigarette and said, “Listen, me and a couple of the boys are getting a game up. You in?”
“A game of what?” he asked.
“Poker.”
Wayne had often witnessed other men in his barracks playing cards, but it was always card games that never involved any wagers. He knew the SS had a policy that outlawed gambling by inmates. He questioned, “Isn’t gambling forbidden?”
“Yeah, but that ain’t never stopped us. We gotta have some fun. Besides, tonight there’s a big party being held for Himmelmann on account of his birthday. All the SS will be over at his place. We go nothing to worry ‘bout,” Samuel reassured Wayne.
“Okay, count me in.”
SS Captain Himmelmann’s luxuriant house sat atop a hill half a kilometer outside the gates of the camp he oversaw. It was his castle and he was the king overlooking his subjects. The gardens were lavish and were attended to by three full time gardeners. The grounds also included a swimming pool, which was rarely used. The inside of the beautiful residence was decorated with plenty of antiques and relics of Germany’s glorious past. There were lush hand carved furniture from the nineteenth century and exquisite military swords. On the walls, hung large oil paintings, including one of Adolf Hitler.
Commandant Himmelmann, his wife (a pretty woman twenty years his junior), Officer Stepp, Medical Officer Kunz, and many top SS Sergeants, SS Captains, and SS Lieutenant-Generals were present. Caviar and alcohol were abundant, as was intoxicated laughter.
Medical Officer Kunz, the man in charge of the camp infirmary and with the control of disease inside the camp, offered his close friend, the commandant, a toast. He raised his glass of brandy and said, “Happy birthday, Wilhelm. Fifty-two and yet, you do not look a day over forty. What is the secret to your youth?”
Captain Himmelmann threw his arm around his wife’s waist and told the crowd, “This lovely lady keeps me feeling like a youngster. I do not know what I would do without her.”
“What keeps you so physically fit?” an SS Sergeant yelled out.
“I do my regular exercises,” Himmelmann responded. “One must stay in fine shape to be a commandant. One day, I beat prisoners, the next day, I beat more prisoners, the following day, and more prisoners must be disciplined. It is a tough exercise.” Himmelmann performed a mock beating, complete with hits and kicks, on one of the party guests.
The crowd roared with laughter at the comical site of the staged beating.
In the washroom of barrack 19, sitting on the dusty floor, Samuel, Wayne, and Walter, Adam, Richard, and George played poker, using cigarettes, bread rations, and socks as ante.
“Okay, what’ya guys got?” Samuel asked with a grin on his face. “I doubt any of ya could beat what I got.”
“Nothing. I’m out,” Walter said as he put down his cards.
“Pair of nines,” Adam said.
“Two pair,” Richard stated.
George threw down his hand and said, “I’m out too.”
“Ha, ha, ha, I’m lovin’ it,” Samuel twitted the other players. He said to Wayne, “The only thing that’s going to save ya is a four of a kind or a royal flush. What’ya got, Wayne?”
“Royal flush,” Wayne answered and showed the men his hand.
“Shit!” Samuel exclaimed.
Walter, Adam, Richard, and George laughed as Wayne took the winning pot of four cigarettes, two small pieces of bread, and a sock without holes. Samuel, without a word, dealt out another hand.
For the first time since that day when Dr. Hoffmann had innocently asked to see him after school and for the first time since the whole damn ordeal began which led him to where he currently was, Wayne laughed. It felt fantastic to him. He had instantly sensed a relief of tension inside of his stressed body. Wayne had not realized how much a person could miss something until that person did not have it for a while - even a thing as simple as laughter.
Adam, one of the fortunate men who worked in the mess hall, and who also happened to be black, smuggled out some sausage that night and shared it with the rest of the poker players. The cold, soggy meat tasted wonderful.
Wayne thought back to the time when he had dined with Dr. Hoffmann and the Rausching family and how when the main course of smoked eel was passed around he had been disgusted by it. He now thought it ironic that if the same plate of food had been put before his eyes, he would have gobbled it up without hesitation.
Since entering Hollenburg, Wayne had tried to talk to as few people as possible and mind his own business. That night of the card game, though, it was a good feeling to Wayne to finally be able to have conversations, and share a couple of laughs, with the guys.
Wayne had learned that they all had similar tales to tell about how they had ended up as prisoners in a concentration camp. Samuel, Adam, George, Walter, and Richard had all been born and raised in filthy ghettos where the inhabitants were considered inferior by the Nazi government for being of an inferior bloodline to that of the German people. At the average age of thirteen they were picked up by SS Work Labor Units and brought to Hollenburg, one of a network of concentration camps, to work as slave labor, as long as they were fit to. They had been told that they would one day be returned to their ghettos, but none of the men, including Samuel – who had been in Hollenburg the longest amount of time – had ever seen an inmate leave the camp, unless as a corpse.
Richard won a hand and collected his winnings – four small rations of stale bread, which, when put together, would have equaled the size of no more than a slice of bread.
“Don’t bite down too hard on that bread,” George joked. “You might break a tooth.”
“I think I already have,” Richard retorted.
Richard turned to Wayne and asked him, “How’s life in the quarry treating you?”
“Like shit,” Wayne said.
“I’ve done worse,” Richard said. “When I first got here, they had a squad of us busting our asses building these free standing walls, only to have us later tear them down. Pointless shit, man!”
George added, “You think that’s bad? When I was working on transportation detail, a bunch of us would be harnessed, as if we were fucking mules or something, to a heavy wagon piled up with stones. We’d then be forced to pull it while singing at the same time. The guards would laugh and call us their singing horses.”
Wayne said to his new friends, “You guys all seem to work on real smooth, cushy details – mess hall, print shop, carpentry. How’d you guys hook up?”
“Time,” Richard responded. “We’ve all been here a long time. You make connections after a while.”
“C’mon, cut the talk.” Samuel said sharply. “Let’s concentrate on the cards.” He was down on cigarette rations, and, being a heavy smoker, the thought of losing his precious fixes of nicotine was too much for him to handle. The reason Samuel enjoyed playing cards at all was that he was usually good enough to win a few extra cigarette rations.
Wayne did think about telling the men about what he had done to change the course of world history and about how he was responsible, at least indirectly, for them living their lives as slave laborers in Hollenburg. The notion of doing so quickly left his mind. He realized that what he said would have sounded crazy to them. Wayne had heard about how the prisoners whom had cracked under the work strain, or simply from living the strained life of a slave laborer, had “disappeared” never to be seen again. He had a good idea of what had happened to them and he decided against taking any chances on having rumors of nuttiness concerning him spread around camp.
Wayne, holding three aces and two kings, won his fifth hand in a row.
Samuel asked, “Where’d you learn to play cards like that?”
“Atlantic City.”
“Atlantic City?” Samuel thought for a moment and said, “Ain’t never heard of it.”
All of the guests at Captain Himmelmann’s birthday party had brought with them g
ifts for the guest of honor. These were not average birthday presents, such as a silk tie or a pair of gloves would have been, but more like major offerings. At the Captain’s previous birthday party, an SS-Scharfuehrer (staff sergeant) with the last name of Neumann presented the Commandant with a painting by one of his favorite nineteenth century artists. Two weeks later, Staff Sergeant Neumann was promoted up to that of Sergeant Major Neumann - a significant promotion. Himmelmann had used his numerous connections in Berlin to have the man moved up in rank. With the memory of that incident still fresh in their minds, every party guest wanted to make certain that their particular gift to the Captain would be one that made a deep, lasting impression.
Captain Himmelmann opened his presents with the enthusiasm of a child on Christmas morning. He unwrapped a gift, which turned out to be an expensive bottle of a fine red wine and read the attached card.
“Ah, one of my favorite wines, vintage 1896,” the birthday boy stated, clearly pleased with the gift. “Thank you, Herr Rueger,” he said in gratitude to the SS Lieutenant, also an old friend, who had given him the gift.
Captain Himmelmann grabbed a small wrapped box out of the large pile of presents and tore off the covering. He opened the box up too reveal the shrunken head of a woman, complete with miniature locks of brunette hair covering the tiny skull. The party guests let out an admiring gasp.
“I had that one made especially for you, Herr Commandant,” Medial Officer Kunz proudly said. “It should make a fine addition to your fabulous collection. It is of Bolshevist origin.”
“It’s splendid. Thank you, Herr Kunz,” Captain Himmelmann said and took a swig from his glass of brandy. He snatched another present from the pile of gifts and, with excitement, begun to unwrap it.
Wayne continued with his winning streak at poker, accumulating a stockpile of cigarettes, bread rations, as well as several socks and a shirt, which Samuel had bet and lost. Wayne did not plan on keeping any of his winnings and was going to return them to the other men when they were done playing. He did not want any hard feelings felt towards him by his fellow inmates for taking their few measly belongings. The laughs he had and the diversion from the regular camp routine made the game worthwhile to Wayne.
“Are you sure Jack is keeping an eye out?” Adam asked Samuel.
Samuel replied, “He better be – I gave him a cigarette.”
It was Richard’s turn to deal the cards. As he dealt a hand out, he said, “You guys ever wonder what would happened had Adolf Hitler lived and not died so early on? I mean, would the course of history have been the same? Would we be sitting here right now?”
“Not the what if Hitler lived discussion again. Spare me, Richie,” Samuel said. He viewed his cards and clearly did not like his hand. “Damn it!”
“I think, that had Hitler lived,” stated Walter, who was of a Hungarian bloodline, “and hadn’t kicked the bucket so early on, he would have made war against his neighbors and with America. In Mein Kampf that’s what he said he would do once he had full control of Germany. He wanted to fight so the Germans would have more breathing space.”
“I don’t know about that,” George said. “Who knows if he would really have done what he said he would in his book or instead just gone and lived happily like a fat cat as head of Germany?”
Samuel won his first hand in fifteen minutes. He collected seven cigarettes and pocketed them, making sure he would walk away with at least some smokes for the next day.
“What do you think, Wayne – what would’ve happened if Hitler lived?” Richard asked.
A chill shot through Wayne when he heard the question posed to him. Did anyone suspect the truth about him? How could they possibly? No, the conversation, he decided, was a strange coincidence.
He fumbled for words, not really sure of what to say, though he knew he would have been able to tell them in great detail what he knew would have been, and should have been, the course of human history. “Well, I’ve never given it any thought.”
The loud thump of three knocks against the washroom wall was heard. Samuel, Walter, Adam, Richard, and George instantly threw down their cards and made a big rush to exit the washroom. Wayne was left sitting alone.
“What the hell?” Wayne said and wondered what was going on. He picked up the cards and the rations of bread and cigarettes that had been left behind and stuffed them into his shirt and pants pockets. Wayne stood up and went to exit the room, walking dead smack into SS Block leader Kammler.
Kammler shoved Wayne with so much force that Wayne thought, when his body made contact with the aged wooden wall behind him, that he might have actually gone through it, and fallen into the right wing of the barracks. Kammler frisked Wayne, finding the cards and his winnings.
Wayne, for the first time since he had been at Hollenberg, had been caught doing something that was against camp policy. He thought maybe he would be able to hastily make something up about why he had the cards and a stash of extra bread and cigarette rations on his person, though he knew that the punishment for being caught lying to an SS official could be just as severe as for being caught gambling. Before he was able to speak any words, Kammler silently exited the barracks, taking the cards and the rations that he found on Wayne with him.
Wayne was aware that he had some form of discipline coming his way the next day. He was not sure what the punishment de jour would be. Would he be whipped? Would he be forced to do a hundred knee bends while a guard, with his burly fists, administered kidney blows to him? Would he be locked inside a wooden box, barely large enough for an average-sized man to squeeze into in a squatting position, while nails were driven through it? Or would the punishment be any one of the other many various forms of torture that the SS had up their sleeves? Worst of all, Wayne shook with anticipation, would he be hanged as an example for the other inmates? He cursed the men who had left him alone in the washroom to be caught red-handed. He cursed Dr. Hoffmann and her time machine. He cursed the quarry. Wayne did not sleep a wink that night.
Morning roll call came and went as usual. Wayne spent his day working in the quarry. Nothing was said to him by any of the prisoners or guards about what had happened the previous evening. Wayne was beginning to feel optimistic that he would receive no punishment at all for his gambling offense. Maybe, Wayne had hoped, Kammler got plastered during the night and totally forgot about entering barrack 19 and finding cards and rations on him. The prisoner with the number 31740 inked on his forearm would not be so lucky.
Roll call officer Stepp, immediately upon the completion of the evening’s roll call, said “Prisoner number 31740, step forward.”
During roll call, the whipping rack had been wheeled in to the center of the roll call area by an SS guard, tenderly as if it was a delicate statue or a fine piece of art. To the SS, the whipping rack was considered as indispensable object whereas a prisoner could be replaced with much more ease than building a new instrument of terror.
Once he saw the whipping rack arrive, Wayne’s instinct told him that it was there solely for him. He knew that the SS would not bother to bring in the rack if they planned on instead using the gallows, which eased his fear that he would be hung.
Wayne had witnessed four hangings since he had been at Hollenburg. None of the offenses seemed to him to be anything that should warrant the death penalty. One man had been accused of sabotage when he accidentally broke a drilling machine in the tool plant he had been laboring in for the previous six years. During his second week as a prisoner, Wayne had viewed a hanging. After that, he’d become pretty numb. A man had been murdered right before his eyes. The sight of the hanging, though, did not vex him as much as the fact that he felt insensitive to the crime. As he had watched the bucket get kicked out from underneath the man’s bare, dirty feet, Wayne only thought about and cared about how soon it would be until he ate dinner. Later that night, after having witnessed his first hanging, as he lay awake in the dark of the barracks, Wayne questioned what was happening to him.
“Have I become so cold and unfeeling that the sight of an innocent man being strung up in front of me annoys me because of the fact that it delays my dinner?” he asked himself. Wayne came to the conclusion that if he had not become emotionally detached from such occurrences in camp, he would surely lose his mind.
Wayne, upon hearing his number called out, swallowed hard. As he nervously walked to the head of the roll call area, he felt the gaze of all of the other inmates on him. His turn to feel the whip had finally come.
“Number 31740,” Roll call officer Stepp announced, “you are hereby charged with gambling in camp. The punishment for a first gambling offense is twenty-five lashes.”
Two SS guards secured Wayne to the whipping rack, pulling the leather straps that held his body in place as tight as they could. Wayne could do nothing but endure the punishment that would soon be inflicted up on him.
Stepp signaled the always-present camp band to start playing their well-rehearsed upbeat marching tunes as SS Captain Himmelmann looked on. Block leader Kammler, possessing a whip in his hand and a gleam in his eye, commenced the lashing.
The whip striking against his naked back hurt as much as the first time he had been whipped, back at Gestapo headquarters. Each new snap of the whip hurt ten times more than the prior lash. Men like Kammler were experts in brutality. They were men no longer capable of human stirrings but rather fanatics blindly marching behind their Fuehrer’s flag while all around them their victims fell by the tens of thousands. Wayne, strangely, no longer feared death. He almost welcomed it. He thought, as he was being lashed in front of the whole camp, why not sleep the eternal, peaceful sleep instead of dealing with the misery that his life had become? Deep down in his psyche, however, Wayne was conscious of the reasons why he had to continue living. As the whip made contact with his body on the eighteenth lash of his punishment, the world appeared to start spinning as Wayne’s eyesight blurred. He soon passed out.
