Other prisoners dressed in striped uniforms came forward and collected the clothing leaving the women and children to stand in the below freezing cold awaiting their verdicts. Several of the women were chosen from the prisoners by guards who would grope and brutally squeeze their breasts and talk in disgusting detail what they would do to this Jew bitch or this gypsy whore these were led off to an unknown part of the camp.
Anna being a beautiful woman knew deep inside she would be chosen to as a whore for the Germans and she vowed in her heart to die first. She was scared, terrified, but she knew these others would all be dead soon and that she would rather fight and die than go like a sheep to the slaughter.
A guard stopped in front of her. Anna trembled. He ran cold hands on her skin, stroked her hair. She refused to look at him. He motioned to another guard and spoke in rapid German. Anna decided that it was now or never and attacked the guard clawing at his eyes and face. She bit his hand taking a finger. The soldier howled in pain unable to defend himself from the rabid gypsy girl who refused to be taken. The next thing Anna knew was she was laying on the ground stunned. Another soldier had slammed the butt of his rifle into her head knocking her senseless she lay on the cold ground trying to regain her composure when a burly Nazi sergeant pulled his pistol from his holster and took aim at her head.
“Stop!”
All eyes turned toward the voice. A thin man of medium height walked up to the sergeant.
“I like her, she’s a fighter, she’s mine.”
The sergeant snapped a salute, and then Anna was drug away to another line where she was examined and sent to another section of the intake platform of the small train station to wait with a handful of other girls. Anna did not understand that the man who had saved her was none other than Joseph Mengele the Nazi doctor who would go down in history as being one of the most sadistic men of all time whose medical experiments would be the stuff of horror movies for decades to come.
All the while Anna tried to keep track of Margi and Mari but they were lost in the sea of naked bodies. Many of the women and children were turning blue and collapsing in the brutal cold but nothing was done to help them. They were left to freeze to death, the other women had no choice but to look straight ahead and pretend that they weren’t there. Other women carried blue dead children in their arms when their little bodies succumbed to the freezing temperatures they either could not bear the thought of letting them go or were so great were their shock they didn’t even realize that the end had come for their babies. In this moment survival was all that was on their minds. Right now, they couldn’t help themselves the weak ones could be damned. What they didn’t know yet was that many of them would be dead before the day was done.
Anna was jerked out of her frozen state when the first volley of shots were fired. She had been standing there with her eyes closed, teeth chattering doing her best to not collapse onto the dirty wooden floor of the platform where she and around twenty other women had been chosen for the medical camp stood waiting to be taken to their barracks. They had been given thin sack dresses that itched against their skin but was better than nothing at least they were no longer naked and on display even though they were all bright reds or blue from the cold as their bodies struggled to stay alive.
Out in a field, a line of male prisoners who had been designated as too weak and feeble to work had were marched out to a large pit and shot. A few had fallen on the way to their deaths and were dragged by the kapo’s; fellow Jews who were forced into servitude of the Germans for their own survival to the ditch and thrown in; most of them still alive. Soon groups of women and children were sent to their doom at the hand of the Nazi’s.
Anna watched for her sister and baby hoping that they would be spared. She like all the others stood weeping as group after group went to their deaths their tears frozen to their cheeks. After hours of torment and insanity of watching human beings get executed, the shots stopped. She let out a sigh of relief believing for now, at least Margi and Mari were both safe and maybe somehow, they would all escape and together be able to look back on these events and weep for those who did not survive. But it would not be as she watched in horror as her sister and baby were forced marched out to the mass grave. What she didn’t know was that while the others were being executed Mari was brutally raped by the Germans and now they were finished with her; they were sending her to her death.
She was shoved down into the ditch. The frozen earth tore at her feet and skin as she slid down the embankment toward the valley of death that waited for her. Mari was forced to walk on bodies not completely frozen. They were slick and squishy as muscle and skin rolled and gave way beneath her bare feet until she stood in the middle of the sea of corpses. She collapsed on top of the corpses holding baby Mari in her arms sobbing as a young German took aim. He trembled having not shot anyone before as he was newly enlisted and had just turned seventeen. The goading, threats and lewd remarks from his older comrades urged him on to show that he too was a man. His aim was completely off the mark. Mari screamed in agony as the rounds took her in the belly forcing the young Nazi to take to take aim once more. The other soldiers renewed their taunts embarrassing the young soldier. He pulled the trigger once more. This time his bullet found its mark and mercifully freed Mari from the horror of watching one of the other soldiers shoot the baby who had fallen from her mother’s dead arms landing on the semi-frozen corpse of an old woman. Anna watched from the other side of the fence with the rest those who were chosen for medical testing and were still waiting for their barracks assignment. Those last images of her sister and baby would haunt her till the day she died. She couldn’t explain it but Anna knew something inside her died that day, she was changed forever.
She was placed in the medical complex and given a very thorough and perverted physical. It was then that the rapes and experiments began. One by one the girls in the barracks died or disappeared when they became too sick from the experiments they would be taken and autopsied. Anna often wondered if the Nazi’s even put them to sleep to do the autopsies. Either way, they were dead and now months later she was the only one left from the group she arrived with.
In barracks 19 of the medical camp, Anna sat away from the mass of huddling girls who were struggling to keep from freezing in the brutal winter that seemed as if it would never loosen its grip on Poland. The icy temperatures matched the coldness and the ferocity of the Germans who conquered them. They would do more than conquer they would leave in their wake a path of death and destruction that would soon shake the world as it learned of the millions who would go by way of the Nazi gas chambers.
She held them in contempt, they were weak and they would die. She would continue to live long after they were burnt in the crematoriums which ran with typical German efficiency night and day. Most of the girls were Jews new to the medical camp; they regarded the lone survivor in a mixture of awe and contempt. Barely talking to her and giving her a wide berth even though she herself was half Jewish on her mother’s side and Gypsy on her father’s she still was not one of them in their eyes. It was insane to her that the full-blooded Jews looked down their noses at the gypsies who shared the same fate.
Anna didn’t care though. Both the Gypsies and the Jews were being exterminated and yet these Jews wanted to fight their fellow prisoners instead of the Nazi’s; they spent their days quarreling among themselves and went like lambs to the slaughter every time the doctors called.
Being prisoners seemed to be the only common ground they shared. Anna had spent long months in the medical ward being raped, abused, and experimented on just like the others but she had survived while they had all died from abuse and these new specimens would too. She had fought with a ferocity that had almost gotten her killed on several occasions. She was as beautiful as she was tough; her father’s Roma and Gypsy genes coming through strongly in her; the Nazi soldiers all wanted her; they took her by force but she never was taken without a fight.
They nearly beat he
r to death every time because she fought so hard. She bore the marks of her rebellion proudly, the bruises and the lashes of the belt and the riding crop left scars that would never go away on her back, breasts, thighs, and buttocks. But she didn’t care anymore, the hatred that festered inside her for not only what they had done to her but to her family and to her people. Life’s refusal to allow her the peace of dying like the other girls drove her onward toward the edge of madness, and there she found comfort in a world that held no comfort for the living.
The doctors were amazed at her ability to stay alive which caused her to become their favorite test subject, plus there was the act of revenge upon her for standing up to them and fighting them. In their eyes, they were the master race and this gypsy half-breed had no right to deny them of their pleasure. But they admired her spirit and her recuperative power so they fed her a little more than the other girls as a reward. This did not win her any brownie points with her fellow prisoners but she didn’t care it was all about survival. She had seen thousands of people marched to the gas chamber and the crematorium from the fence that surrounded small courtyard around the barracks. She had made a promise to herself that she would survive, and she had by pure determination.
Anna would never forget the day she met Doctor Josef Mengele he would be the man that would do the experiments on her or order his doctors to and change not only her life but her forever. They would inject the girls with all kinds of chemicals and diseases and always the girls would die, the few who didn’t die immediately eventually died of something else or they would be killed so the doctors could do an autopsy. But Anna never died, she grew immune and grew stronger. The doctors marveled at her ability to heal herself almost by sheer will.
The experiments, rapes continued daily, still, Anna was determined to live and the chemicals that had killed the other girls were changing her, she was growing more powerful along with her eyesight and other senses, but what had the attention of the doctors was her healing ability.
As the doctors learned of her new abilities, they would do various surgeries to see how her body would respond. She astounded them with her ability to heal herself overnight. But then everything changed, she had become pregnant by one of her rapist. The doctors took the baby a few weeks early so they could do an autopsy on the infant to see if it was any different from a normal baby. They figured that she could have more children so there was no point in waiting to study it until after it had been born.
Anna was taken to the operating room; the baby was taken from her, she had fought like the devil but it had done no good. Several Nazi guards were seriously wounded by her which gave her some comfort.
Once again, the doctors were astounded over her recovery abilities. Within a week, she was healed from her C-section without even a visible scar. But the changes continued she grew stronger, smarter, bloodthirsty, and emotionally cold after the death of her child. Anna learned to hide most of the changes from the doctors and the guards as she waited. For what she wasn’t sure, but an instinct had taken over and she only let them see what she wanted them to see.
She became reckless in other ways though; she was now sneaking out of the barracks. With her new abilities, she could see at night almost as well as others see in daylight. She crept out silently another skill she had gained with the changes in her body. She would creep around to the back side of the barracks where the lighting was not as good. With her improved eyesight, she could see where every guard was.
Anna could now leap the seven-foot tall fence that surrounded the medical barracks with little effort and then run so fast that the guard could not see her even if they heard her which they couldn’t since she could move about silently like a big cat creeping up on its prey. She could have escaped from the camp at this point but she stayed and endured the rapes, experiments, and the constant slaughter around her. Anna stayed for those girls that were held in the barracks. If she escaped they would all be executed as a punishment, die they might but it wouldn’t be because of her sh. Besides, where would she go? Her sister was all that she had left and her sister and baby were buried here.
She would sneak to the camp kitchen bringing back food for the others, they were all skin and bones while she looked healthy the changes allowing her to get by with less nourishment and truth of the matter was she wasn’t as hungry as she used to be. Again, she chalked it up to the changes from all the experiments that had been perpetrated on her.
She would sneak back into the barracks with loaves of bread, fruit, and once even cake. It wasn’t enough but when the girls would wake up to it they were as excited as children on Christmas morning. She secretly enjoyed watching them, also there was the act of defying the Nazi’s that she cherished.
Then one day in January of 1945, it all came crashing down. Anna became too confident, she wasn’t paying attention as she should. She was so confident in her newfound abilities she wasn’t prepared when luck ran out on her. She was in the officer's’ kitchen stuffing cheese, bread, and other treats into a small sack she had made of a shirt oblivious to the sounds of approaching footsteps.
An officer awoke hungry and had made his way to the kitchen for a snack, he walked into the kitchen seeing Anna he screamed. Anna leapt on him riding him to the ground.
Things seemed to go in slow motion for Anna, it was like she could see sounds and smell colors. She could hear the man’s heart beating in his chest, feel the fangs descend from her mouth, she could see those fangs sink into his neck, she could feel his life flow into her veins and she knew nothing would ever be the same.
Guards came running freezing at the scene that lay before them, one of their own with his throat ripped out and a female prisoner covered in his blood her mouth showing fangs. One guard sprang into action pulling his gun and firing.
Anna felt the bullets hit her, she felt the pain, but that was all. She turned and ran bullets slamming into her back as she dove through a window. She ran, but the shouts and the gunshots had alerted the camp. Flood lights turned the night into day trapping her in their beams. A group of guards came running for her, their breath steaming in the frigid air, more shouts, more shots but now Anna was running and able to dodge most of the bullets as she made her way to the fence. Another group of guards made the mistake of getting too close to her and she lashed out at them leaving several dead in her wake. She wanted to feed on them but new that she needed to resist the urge and flee. As she jumped the fence in a hail of bullets and was gone.
Anna was free, and she was immortal it all made sense to her now. She could feel the bullet holes healing she didn’t understand all of what was going on but she instinctively knew what was going on with her body. She was free there was no turning back she would never be their prisoner again.
They chased her, they wanted blood for their loss. The Nazi’s were not accustomed to being made to look foolish and Anna had made them look foolish, one of their prisoners had escaped and had drawn blood they would punish the others in her stead.
She stopped running. She could hear the dogs barking behind her, she wasn’t afraid she knew she could handle the dogs and any Nazi’s out there in the dark. None of them had her ability to see, her strength, her stamina, nor her thirst.
She stood in the frozen field. The wind whipping. Anna knew she should be freezing, but she wasn’t, she hadn’t been cold for weeks. She knew she should be scared but felt a coldness inside. She knew she should keep running, but she wasn’t ready. Anna had to save the rest of the prisoners; and knew the allies were advancing but it could take weeks or maybe months.
She had to act now and turned toward the advancing Nazi army coming from the camp. Anna could not see them yet but she could sense them in ways she had never had imagined from inside the camp. Now that she was free of the confines of the fence her senses were nearly overwhelming yet it all amazed her to hear things far off and to smell what the wind brought to her.
She ran back toward the prison camp, back toward the guards searching the cou
ntryside for her, back toward her destiny.
The guards in the first group she came upon could not hear her coming, nor could they see her in the dark and if they had, they would only have seen a blur as she sped toward them. The dogs could sense much like Anna that something was coming for them and they growled and snapped at their handlers in their attempt to escape the danger coming for them.
Anna slaughtered the men feeding on them in the darkness. Their blood staining the snow, the dogs sat watching her as she fed. She could feel and hear their heart beats but these did not interest her. Anna and dogs moved on toward the next group of guards. It would be a long bloody deadly night for the Nazi’s of Auschwitz.
The next morning before sunrise commandant Rudolf Hess had the prisoners out in the freezing cold, their threadbare rags doing little to fight off the cold as they hung from their skeletal forms. He was determined to kill the lot of them except the ones whose job it was to dump the bodies into the crematorium those poor wretches he would leave alive as a witness to the prisoners who would take their place.
The prisoners were all shivering and sobbing in fear. The Nazi’s were going to shoot them or gas them but would not tell them how they would die only torture them with threats of what was in store for them.
Hess looked upon the cowering prisoners with no compassion in his heart only contempt. These people were inferiors who did not deserve to breathe the same air as him or his children, and now they had spilled the blood of his guards. He would have his pound of flesh today from each of these vermin he thought to himself as he continued his verbal abuse of the prisoners.
Primrose and Brimstone Page 5
