American Reich

by Pliss, Todd

  Ari signed the prisoners out for the day. They were then handcuffed and loaded onto busses to be shipped back to their respective holding areas from which they had been shipped in earlier that morning.

  As he sat on his uncomfortable vinyl seat, Wayne’s mood swung from joyful to downcast. He was happy that he didn’t have to work in the quarry, but he was still no closer to achieving his goal of getting a hold of the gadolinium crystals that he so desperately needed. Plus, he still had no idea as to how he was going to go about it. Wayne attempted to fight his feelings of depression as the bus pulled through the big iron gates of Hollenburg, but it was all too overwhelming.

  Rain and hail poured down relentlessly. To the men in Barracks 19, as they readied themselves for bed, it sounded like a barrage of marbles were landing on the roof. Hailstones, some the size of golf balls, frequently made contact with the antiquated wooden structure. Leaks from the shabby ceiling dripped down throughout the barracks.

  George Van Leuven, at the age of sixty-two, was one of the oldest men interned in the camp. He had been a slave laborer for the Reich since he was a young man of twenty-eight. Once living the life of a model German citizen with a promising career as a secondary school teacher, he was shattered when, late one warm summer night, the Gestapo arrived at his apartment to arrest him. While his father met the Reich Office of Citizenship criterion for being considered one of a pure German bloodline, it had been discovered that his maternal grandmother had been a Negro. Hence, his family tree, bloodline, and genes were officially, by Reich standards, “tainted with non-Aryan traits” and “an inferiority to the ideal make-up of a true German”.

  George lay on his bunk, sick and trembling with a fever. He thought that maybe he had come down with a cold, as had often happened to him before, only to have it go away after a brief spell. But in the last twelve hours, whatever he had that was causing him to feel ill had taken a major turn for the worse.

  Samuel sat at George’s side and placed a cold washcloth on his sweaty forehead. “C’mon George,” he said, “you’re gonna be fine. All you got is a little sickness. You gotta lower your temperature and then you’ll be just fine. Be feeling like new again.”

  Wayne approached quietly, “Hey, Sammy, I really have to thank you. You weren’t kidding. What I’m doing now is a piece of cake.,” he paused. “Is everything all right there, George?”

  Samuel answered, “Old George isn’t doing so well.” Dabbed a cold washcloth over the sick man’s sweaty forehead.

  “What do you think it is?” Wayne asked.

  “I’m not sure. Could be typhus.”

  “How come he hasn’t gone to the hospital?”

  Samuel looked up at Wayne. “Do you know what happens when a prisoner reaches an advanced age and goes to the hospital sick?”

  “No, What?”

  “Kunz, the chief medical officer, declares the guy obsolete and he gets a nice injection of 10cc of carbolic acid directly into the heart.”

  “Carbolic acid?” Wayne was not familiar with it.

  “Carbolic acid,” Samuel said solemnly, “as in the shit that will stop your heart from beating.”

  George started to shake violently. “Is that you, daddy?” he asked deliriously.

  Samuel took the elder’s hand in his own hand. “Yes George, it’s me – your father,” he said in a comforting manner. “Get your ass better so we can go out fishing again together. Like we used to.”

  George muttered, “We ain’t never been fishing before.”

  “Well, then we’ll start to,” Samuel countered. “Now get yourself some sleep, George. It’ll help break your fever.” Samuel let go of his hand and stood up. “George has been like a father to me,” he told Wayne. “When I first got here, he showed me the ropes. Made my life a lot easier those first few years. I owe him a lot. I hope he pulls through.”

  “Me too,” Wayne said.

  That night, Wayne realized what a big blunder he had made on his first day in camp. The middle-aged long time prisoner he had been assigned to share his bunk bed with, a man by the name of Mitch, asked Wayne, the new prisoner, to switch sleeping places with him on their bunk bed. Wayne was originally assigned the bottom bunk. Mitch claimed that he would only be able to sleep well and not toss and turn all night by occupying the lower bunk. Something to do with his childhood, he said. Wayne did not see that it made any difference and gave it no thought when he agreed to switch places with Mitch and take the upper bunk himself. With a steady trickle of rain falling on his blanket from above, Wayne cursed himself for getting duped so easily.

  The freezing rain and hail metamorphosed into a moderate snowfall as the night faded into dawn. A fresh coat of two inches of pure white snow blanketed Hollenburg Concentration Camp by the time horn blew.

  As the prisoners moved out to morning roll call, Samuel, standing beside George’s bunk, called to Wayne, “Wayne, come here.”

  Wayne joined Samuel beside George’s bunk and asked, “How’s George doing?”

  “George didn’t make it,” Samuel said rather nonchalantly. “Help me grab his body.”

  “I’m really sorry,” Wayne said and reached to pat his friend on the back. Samuel backed out of his reach.

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah, now grab the body.”

  The prisoners formed fresh tracks in the snow as they marched to the roll call area. Wayne and Samuel moved forward with the procession, each helping to move George along with them by having the limp cadaver propped up between their bodies and pushing it onward.

  Wayne had no idea of what they were doing. Finally, he felt compelled to ask, “Uh, Sam, buddy, I have a question for you. Now I don’t mean to prod, but I am slightly curious as to why we are carrying this corpse to morning roll call with us.”

  Samuel breathed heavily as he said, “As far as the SS knows, George is alive. It’s Saturday, ration day. Therefore, when ol’ George shows up at roll call, he gets his Sunday rations, which will, naturally, go to us. You can have the bread, the cigarettes are mine.”

  “I thought George was like a father to you.”

  “Same thing happens to him whether we do this or leave him in the barracks. Besides,” Samuel reasoned, “a ration is a ration.”

  Wayne thought about what he was doing as they arrived at the quickly moving, long ration line. Due to the fact that there was no morning roll call on Sundays, the inmates were given rations for Sunday on Saturday. Wayne had to agree with Samuel’s reasoning – why waste a ration? Wayne never did get enough to eat. He salivated at the idea of an extra bread ration coming his way but he also was not keen on the idea of his body being on the receiving end of a whip again.

  “You get in front,” Samuel instructed Wayne as they closed in on the tables from where the SS Noncoms were giving out the rations. “I’ll hold him up from behind. Right when we get the shit, help me carry him away like we’ve doing.”

  Wayne began to assert his concerns about getting in trouble for what they were doing, “Yeah, but...but...”

  “DO IT!” Samuel shot back, already anxiously anticipating the added nicotine fixes awaiting his lungs.

  Wayne did as Samuel said and stood in front of the cadaver. When his turn came up, Wayne was handed his ration of seven cigarettes, two slices of bread, and a small strip of dried beef. Next in line was George, who, with Samuel thrusting up his right arm from behind, had his small ration bag shoved in his open hand by an SS Noncom. Samuel received his rations immediately after. The line kept moving rapidly. Wayne and Samuel walked, with the recently deceased body propped up snuggly between them, another five hundred feet when Samuel said, “Okay, we can drop him.”

  “Right here, in the snow?” Wayne asked.

  Samuel let go of George’s body and walked away. Wayne nervously looked around to see if any of the guards were watching. Seeing that the coast was clear, he also let go of the corpse, and then ran to catch up with Samuel.

  Wayne settled into the routine of loading onto the bus each day, di
rectly after morning roll call, and traveling the relatively short thirty-two kilometer distance to the munitions plant. Besides laboring on detonators, he also worked on a variety of other warfare related items, such as radar tracking devices and various explosives, always doing the same menial low skilled tasks of screwing, gluing, sealing, or some other method of assemblage. Little Bear would yell at him at least once per day for not doing whatever job it was that he was doing at the given time fast enough. Wayne knew it was her way of asserting her authority over him and over all of the other members of her workstation. Wayne learned that the Germans were stepping up their arms production since relations were becoming ever more strained between Germany and Japan. With the vast amount of land and resources that those two world superpowers controlled, both still had a greed for more.

  Linda and Wayne would spend their lunchtimes consuming their lunch rations together. The small meal area, outside of the factory, was the one place where they could communicate with one another. Wayne found out that she was a tough woman whose family members had all been taken away from their ghetto to work in the camps by the time she was eleven. She had avoided being sent to work camps, up until the time Wayne had met her, by hiding out successfully each time the SS men would come to the ghetto to round up more slave laborers. Talking to her only made Wayne miss Lauren that much more. Wayne, one cloudy, unusually warm day, told Linda about the time machine and what he had done. He felt he had to unload his guilt to someone and, sensing that Linda was beginning to like him as more than just a co-worker with whom to share a couple of words with at lunch, knew that he would be able to trust her not to repeat his story to anyone.

  Wayne was surprised when, after telling Linda this tale of Dr. Hoffmann, her invention, and his involvement with Hitler, she said to him, “I believe what you have told me. I have known that there was something different about you all along, Wayne.”

  Prisoners at Hollenburg were permitted to mail one letter per month to a family member or friend on the outside world. Those letters could not be any longer than forty lines in length and were scanned by the SS before being mailed out. Inmates were limited in what they could write and could not complain about the awful conditions in camp or about the way they were being treated. Prisoners were, however, permitted to have gifts and money sent to them in camp. Some of the classes of prisoners, like the political prisoners or “shiftless elements”, came from well-to-do families and were sent rather big packages containing food, clothes, medicines, and occasionally alcoholic beverages. The SS would regularly help themselves to a package’s contents for their own personal use or to sell on the prisoner black market, in exchange for cash from the well-moneyed political prisoners in camp.

  Wayne wrote Dr. Hoffmann a short letter one day informing her that he was all right. He had to be very cautious with what he wrote and could not mention or inquire about the specific thing that he had desired to, specifically whether or not she had been able to get a hold of any gadolinium crystals to get the time machine up and running. Wayne had recalled, always having had a great memory for such details, the name of the street Dr. Hoffmann’s residence had been on when she had brought him back there. Wayne had remembered her house number, seventeen, because it was the same day that his birthday fell on in the month of September. Wayne knew that if his letter arrived at her house written in English, it would appear suspicious. He had Linda, who knew a little German, translate his brief letter into “Nazi language” (as she referred to it) as best she could. Wayne then mailed it.

  Four weeks after starting his job at the armaments plant, an announcement was broadcast over the public address system during lunch one afternoon that made Wayne’s ears perk up. The harsh voice, belonging to a German officer, said through the loudspeaker, “Achtung. Twelve volunteers from the prisoner work force are required who will take short leave of absence to be a part of research being conducted at the Oberkoblenz Military Installation. The research is harmless and you will be rewarded for your participation. See the prisoner detail leader to sign up. If enough of you filthy, lazy bastards don't volunteer, I will personally do the picking. That is all.”

  Wayne was astounded by what he had heard. The word “Oberkoblenz” had been foremost on his mind since he had arrived at Hollenburg. Oberkoblenz - the place that Dr. Hoffmann had stated was the site where the precious Gadolinium crystals needed to run her time machine were stored. Oberkoblenz Military Installation – a place Wayne would think about and dream about going to almost every second of every miserable day. Now, he would have an opportunity to get there. Surely, Wayne figured, this had to be more than a mere coincidence. Was it a priceless hand dealt by fate in the game of life? Wayne never had been one to warm up to religion, but maybe at that instant there had been a divine intervention in his life. Wayne turned to Linda and, with excitement, stated, “I’m there. I am fuckin’ there.”

  Wayne was hoping to see Ari at some point during the afternoon work shift, but never did. He would have to wait until he was signed out for the day before he could make it known to the prisoner detail leader that he wanted to be a part of the research group. The idea of getting a hold of the all-important crystals that he so desperately wanted to made Wayne’s pulse race and his palms sweaty throughout the remainder of his work shift.

  Wayne, immediately upon seeing Ari at the end of the workday, notified him, “Ari, I want to sign up for that research trip.”

  “Do you know exactly what you are getting yourself into?” Ari asked.

  “I don’t care. I want to go,” Wayne said adamantly.

  “Well, if you don’t care, I don’t care,” Ari said. “I’ll put you down on the list.”

  That evening, Wayne began to tell Samuel what he had volunteered for. “Samuel, I...”

  “Hey, Wayneboy, good to see ya,” he interrupted, talking swiftly, as was his habit, “Me and some of the boys are gonna get a little game going, if you know what I mean. Don’t worry; we won’t let what happened to you last time happen again. You got my word on that.”

  “Samuel, I want to tell you something,” Wayne said.

  “What – you don’t want to play? That’s cool.” He removed a smoke from his shirt pocket and, with a match, lit it up.

  “No, it’s not that,” Wayne said. “I...well, over at the plant, they were looking for some volunteers for a research group. And I volunteered.”

  “You what?” Samuel practically screamed. “What kind of research you talking ‘bout, not that it makes a damn bit of difference?”

  “I don’t know. But it’s over at Oberkoblenz.”

  “Are you fuckin’ whacked out of your mind or just plain crazy?” Samuel said agitated. “Want to know something? In all the years I’ve been in this fuckin’ sewer, I ain’t seen one person who left for research ever come back.”

  “Maybe they were transferred somewhere else after it was over,” Wayne offered.

  “Yeah, like the crematory,” Samuel shot back. “Are you suicidal? They’ll do some sick shit to you over there. Do you think they care if you survive or not? They don’t give two shits as long as they get their results. They might freeze you or dissect you or shoot you up with typhus – all while you’re nice and awake. Sounds like fun, huh?

  “I’m going, Samuel,” Wayne stated flatly.

  “Why’s it so important that you go and be part of a research thing?”

  Wayne had a yearning to share his secret with Samuel and tell him the truth about what he planned on doing. He knew, however, that it would be best not to. Somebody might overhear what he said. There were people he still could not trust in Barracks 19. Prisoners, whom he suspected, would instantly turn on him and rat him out to Kammler as a “nutcase” or “mentally incompetent” for an extra meager cigarette ration. He sometimes wondered how much he should trust Samuel. “It just is. Please understand, Samuel.”

  “Well, it’s been nice knowin’ ya.”

  Wayne tossed and turned in his sleep. He was desperately trying to
run. His feet were planted firmly on the ground. He fought to lift them, to raise them high and run. His leaden limbs became heavier the more he struggled. The need to run was overwhelming in its power.

  Pliss / Reich

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The morning brought with it the rays of a strong sun beating down on the parched ground. For the first time since he had been in camp, Wayne heard the chirping of birds. He thought they sounded like blue jays; he felt a renewed optimism awaken in him.

  Once at the plant, Wayne and the other research prisoners were loaded into a black transport vehicle, much like the vans shelters use to transport strays to the vet so they can be put down. It had steel bars that passed for windows on the two back doors and, since the vehicle was really just a tanked up trailer with no motor of its own, was hitched up to a military jeep.

  Two SS men handcuffed the prisoners together in a chain gang. Immediately after shoving them into the back of the cramped transport vehicle, one of the SS men with a capped gold tooth, said loudly enough that the prisoners could hear, “If I was in their shoes, I would have hung myself.”

  Another SS man snickered, “Same here. It would be quicker and less painful instead of what they’re about to go through.”

  “Thank the Fuehrer for animal research,” the man with the gold tooth added.

  The jeep abruptly shifted into gear and drove off.

  Linda had also volunteered to be part of the research group. At first Wayne considered that a bad sign. He did not need her getting in his way of him doing whatever it was that he had to do. But, as he mulled it over, he began to think that having an extra set of hands around might be useful. Wayne was on his way to Oberkoblenz and, he hoped, the gadolinium crystals. He knew that it wouldn’t be an easy road ahead, and that he would, in all likelihood, but putting himself in a do-or-die situation, but the important first step had been done.