Having a consciousness

Marx Schmitt’s silhouette is projected against the wall of a small isolated room as candle flames dances in the calm night air. A few strands of gray hair cascades over his face as he grips the old open book tightly in his hands. A single tear escapes his eyes and rolls down the aged man’s wrinkled face. Marx brushes the drop of coldness from his thick moustache, which crashes down onto the dusty page, smudging the handwritten ink. A dormant morbid feeling finally consumes his soul entirely.

* * *

Abidan Mokotoff was a modest and honest man, unlike many of the other Jews who thrived from fraud and extended their personal wealth during the hard times. He had short straight hair that glistened in the summer sun. His deep chocolate brown eyes were as gentle as his personality was. His skin was darkly tanned from working long days in the blazing heat of the sun. Isabel and Abidan had been happily married for fifteen wondrous years of their short lifetimes. You could not imagine one without the other; they completed each other’s lives. They had met during spring in Berlin, at a popular park, where Isabel had taken her fluffy Siberian husky hound for a walk. Abidan looked back at the intoxicatingly gorgeous woman who passed him and walked face first into a lamp pole, where he laid out cold in a mesmerising state. He awoke again, darkness turning to glistening brilliance, to the face of a dazzling angel above him sprinkling cold water over him. She had fair blond hair and deep intriguing sapphire eyes that warmed him from the inside. He gladly accepted Isabel’s soft silky hands as she helped him to get haphazardly on his feet again. They lived blissfully together in a decent suburb where all was peaceful. After trying a few times, Abidan and Isabel were still not parents, until the doctor informed them that Isabel was born barren. Isabel became depressingly sad for a short time because of the tragic news, but it was thanks to Abidan that she got her will to live back and remained hopeful. Knowing that Isabel was infertile, they still prayed each night for a miracle to happen. Almost a year passed, and the Nazi party had grown a lot in the short period, producing fear along with their propaganda on a massive scale. Abidan and his wife remained comfortably away from the war and Hitler’s lies in the safety of their cozy home. One morning, Isabel felt nauseas, and kept feeling unwell for some time, until Abidan took her to the local doctor. They couldn’t believe it, nor could the doctor. A phenomenon had occurred as the doctor announced gleefully that Isabel was pregnant. Those, they thought, were the best days of their lives.

It had grown extremely difficult for Jews to live in the Nazi occupied Germany. Abidan was issued a small card, containing his name and religion, which the Germans called “border passes”. Abidan also had to wear a special armband with the Star of David on it, which was the symbol indicating his religion. These permits restricted him to only certain parts of the town, cutting him and everyone else off from the main markets. Had you forgotten your pass at home or forgot to wear your armband, you would see your life flash through the barrel of a guard’s gun as you got mercilessly murdered. Jewish-owned businesses had exploited this situation by making their prices substantially higher than the other inaccessible stores. Abidan however, was a simple carpenter. He, unlike the others who were corrupted by greed, was a modest man who thought it wrong to indulge in huge profits while his friends, family and other people he knew, were struggling to survive. With their baby on the way, Abidan and Isabel became wary about saving money for when the baby arrived. Isabel took up a job in house cleaning and Abidan tried to double his workload to gather up their income. Abidan struggled to keep up with his work, but managed to deliver his goods on time. He worked countless hours till the radiant sun shoved the darkness of the night aside. While he was sanding a table in his workshop for the mayor, two Unteroffiezers came bursting through the door with a powerful kick. The two officers, dressed in black uniform with silver cross’s dangling from their chests, beat Abidan with the butt of a gun until he fell to his knees. Two other officers had cuffed Isabel and brought her outside with them. The Unteroffiezers kept mutilating Abidan, kicking him violently in his ribs while he lay in tremendous pain. He knew that if he even clenched his fist he would surely be killed. After they almost beat him into a pulp of gushing blood and open wounds, they spit in his face and dragged him to a lorry where they heaved him into the back. Isabel followed hastily, getting a shove from an officer’s gun in her backside. Several other people, ranging from ages of 3 to 78, were seated among them; all of them had the Star of David on the hem of their shirts. A blurring sound of a large stuttering engine painfully filled Abidan’s ear as the lorry drove off.

The sky was beautifully painted with splattered hues of gold, red and pink as the sun slowly edged behind the mountain. Abidan admired the unstirred scenery until his daze was broken by a guard’s gun, nudging him to join in the line of prisoners passing through the iron gates. The man-made fences stood sturdy at three metres tall, with giant watchtowers giving them back up. The first impression of the horrid scene drove fear deep into the hearts of Abidan and his wife. They had remained hopeful and tried to stay positive, until their eyes had laid sight on the dreadful camp. A sign with the words “Konserationslager”, along with the powerful German Swastika symbol, was being constructed over the gate.

The air was anything but friendly in the camp. The air was as dry as Abidan’s very bones, and burned his throat every time he took a breath. Their quarters were very small and could only accompany five people, but they had to be satisfactory sleeping uncomfortably in only three bunk beds with eight people, seeing that a bunk bed was a luxury in the camp. Abidan swore that the guards were sent from the devil’s himself legion, having no mercy and absolutely no compassion. Disobeying, staring, talking, or even mentioning something about a guard would cost you your life. If you were not shot or beaten to death, you were sent to a research lab, where they cut you into pieces with medical instruments while you lay un-sedated screaming with pain. Their research covered the human threshold of pain; they experimented on you until you died. If you were lucky, they injected you with big needles and unknown liquids, until bubbles appeared on your skin, sending you to your death, or your organs seized functioning, which also meant imminent death. Abidan learned very quickly how to keep his thoughts to himself. Every night there was inspection. The officer entered the quarters and examined every inch of the room. If he found even the slightest speck of dust, under the bed, under the foot of the table, or under your feet, you’d earn yourself thirty lashes of a fine quality German whip. The guards cursed and swear at the prisoners until they thought that the guards had a very small vocabulary, consisting mostly of swearing. The prisoners were constantly reminded that they were dirt, the scum of the earth, “swine”, and didn’t deserve to be alive. The continuous mental abuse severed the prisoners’ morale badly, until their nerves were so damaged that they became mindless drones, ready to obey every order given to them. Abidan saw people disappear on an hourly basis, which became somewhat ordinary in the camp. How he and his wife would survive this, he did not know. Every morning and every night, Abidan snuck out along with Isabel to the toilet, which was the only place you could be left alone in private, to say their prayers. With their baby due in a couple of months, they prayed that the war would end shortly and that the inconsiderable greedy Hitler would fall from his filthy blood-covered throne.

As the countless days passed, Abidan, along with the others, formed a strong bond. They regarded themselves as a close-knit family and treated each other as such. The guards could see that Abidan had a strong character and was a natural leader. The guards kept a close eye on him, fearing that he might start an uprising or rebellion. They were given hardly edible food, most of the time it was beet soup with a foul stench, and it was hardly enough to carry them through each tormenting day. One of Abidan’s closest friends during that time, Ahuva, was a skinny young man, hardly in his twenties and already undernourished. Ahuva’s malnourishment had been the price to pay for having too much pride and for standing up for his religion. Abidan had on many occasions gone to sleep with a rumbling empty stomach when he gave his meal to a very grateful expression on Ahuva’s face; he that hadn’t seen any food in days. Abidan could not remember the day, as time had no relevance in the camp, but could recall the exact hateful expression of the guard as he approached. The guard cursed angrily at Abidan as he hit the plate of steaming food into Ahuva’s face. The guard kept on cussing violently, asking Abidan if he was ungrateful for receiving the Fatherland’s finest cuisine by giving it away. He grabbed Abidan by his collar and summoned the other guards. Abidan’s vision darkened as a powerful fist came crashing into his face, hurling him over the table with blood streaking from his now crooked nose. Three guards joined in and viciously attacked Abidan. Abidan feared that this will be the end for him as he heard a cracking sound when one of the guards hit him with an iron staff on his ribs. Punch after punch landed on Abidan’s soft flesh, sending him into a world of pain he did not think existed. Abidan gave up hope as he lay there on the ground while the guards kept punching him and kicking him with steel-tipped boots. Abidan coughed blood onto the floor and all the screams of Isabel and cussing of the guards slowly became faint. His eyes and the sight of the guards above him begun to shake uncontrollably until everything faded to blackness.

Abidan awoke four days later in the camp’s hospital with a broken nose and severed muscles. The nurses who attended to him smelled of sweet spring flowers and were kind to him, something he had grown unaccustomed to. The kind-heartedness and scent of them was short lived though. A nurse had come and informed him that the Fürher himself arrived yesterday to inspect the camp. The nurse told him that late last night a prisoner had tried to escape the camp, but only came as far as a few feet past the sturdy fences before a snipers bullet send him to his afterlife. The prisoner’s name was Ahuva. She said that she had never thought that the Fürher could become so enraged. She had overheard the Fürher and a guard talking about “sending a message to all the prisoners” and that the guard was to inform all the prisoners that they had to be assembled tomorrow, including those in the hospital wards. An icy gust swept through the window, sending chills over Abidan’s body.

* * *

The pale faces of innocent Jewish people were lined up against a building. Here and there, there was a person trying to keep a straight face, even though their hearts pumped chaos and terror through their veins, creating a sort of paralysing toxin. This forbidden area had become known as the execution grounds for the local inhabitants. Almost everyone was quivering fearfully, wondering with panic spread throughout their minds what would happen to them. Marx could see the fear in their faces as he loaded his rifle. He walked down the line and did what he was ordered: he raised his gun to the woman’s head and executed her at point blank range; blood splattered against the building behind her as her body plummeted onto the dry earth. Blood oozed out onto the ground from under her cold corpse, dyeing her blond hair a crimson colour. A furious scream filled with rage erupted from a man as he sprinted towards Marx. As the man neared him, he saw that the man was driven by hatred, which fuelled his body painfully forward with clenched fists. The man’s contours revealed that he was in excruciating pain. The man’s efforts were futile as Marx pulled the trigger again. The man’s body skid over the dry terrain, dragging with it a trail of murky blood, until coming to a halt before Marx’s feet. The scene looked annihilated, as if there had been a horrid massacre. Blood gushed from his mouth as he uttered his last words, “My… wife!” Marx face remained indifferent as he bent down to pick up a small journal, covered and smeared with blood, which had fallen out of the man’s shirt pocket.

* * *

Marx silhouette jumps violently as the candle flames flicker from the intruding breeze penetrating the room. A low, soft sound fills the room as he tries to stop the tears that run constantly down his old face. His hands now shake uncontrollably as he closes the journal and puts it on the dusty wooden table in front of him. Gripping his chest, he rips the Nazi insignia from his dreary uniform, sending the metal badge ricocheting against the wall. Marx reaches down beside him and unclips the small leather strap restraining him from his freedom and salvation at the end of his long hardened road. He removes his welcoming Walther pistol from the russet holster and takes his evident future into his own hands. The hard black metal cylinder graces his mouth as he finally sets himself free of this malevolence burdened world and his own tormenting mind with a thunderous echo. The room turns completely dark as small clouds of smoke looms in the night air from the extinguished candles. The cold wind remains restless; the window slams shut from the breeze…