Dachau Sunset

It is hard to conceive of today, so very many years after the events, that the horror we endured at the hands of the Nazis could, in any way, be elevated. And yet, even now, I remember the final lesson that my years in the camp at Dachau taught me: not all evil in that place wore jackboots and a uniform.1

My name is Anyanka Pewshkin and I was thirteen years old at the time that the Warsaw Ghetto fell. My papa was a doctor, he was a fine man, well respected within our community; a man of honor and integrity. He was killed during the purging of the Ghetto, shot by a German soldier while he was delivering the baby of a neighbor.2

My mama and I were driven from our home with the remnants of our city and herded to the train station, from there we were pushed into cattle trucks with no more than the clothes we were wearing.3

For four days we traveled across country, packed like animals with no food, little water and no toilet facilities. By journeys end we were starved, the stench was horrible, and several of the older and more fragile amongst us had died from the strain of our forced expulsion and the bitter cold. Their bodies had been passed over our heads by the men and placed in one corner where they now lay, in a crumpled, stiff, swelling heap of naked limbs. Some of the more aware of my traveling comrades had quickly stripped their bodies of clothing in anticipation of what they believed was to come.4

The shouting of the soldiers and the crashing of the heavy wooden doors of the cattle trucks woke me from a fitful sleep and I cried out for my Mama. She grasped my hand in the cold darkness. 5

"Hush Anyanka, my sweet, I am here," she whispered. 6

From outside I could hear the voices of the soldiers ordering people to exit. Their yelling mixed with the confused cries and shouts of a thousand frightened souls.7

We heard the sound of the iron bolt being drawn back from our own compartment and I squeezed my mama's hand even more tightly. The wooden door slid open with the grinding of rusted metal against metal revealing the silhouette of a German soldier against the floodlit blackness of the night. 8

"Get out. Get out now," he yelled, motioning for us to make our way down the wooden gangplank being lifted into place by two gaunt looking men. Not once did they look at us or lift their head in acknowledgment of our presence.9

Some fell as they exited the cart; they were viciously beaten by the guard. I could hear the thud of the butt of his weapon striking bone. When it became our turn to leave, my mother picked me up and clutched me closely to her breast, covering me with her arms and placing her head over mine to remove any chance of me being struck by the guards if she should stumble.10

Outside, we found ourselves in a floodlit debarkation area. Cold, high concrete walls surrounded us on all sides; the only exit, through a massive double gate of wooden struts and beams, chain link fencing and barbed-wire. It led off into another area that I could not see. Two sentry boxes stood on either side of it, each with a bored looking soldier.11

My eyes hurt from the intensity of the floodlights that played over us from high up on the concrete walls. Their harsh light peeling back the darkness until nothing within what was undoubtedly our prison was left unexposed.
My mothers face looked down at me, it was gaunt and pale, and her eyes seemed too big for her head. The brown smudges of dirt that covered her cheeks were interlaced here-and-there with trails of tears that revealed the paler flesh beneath. Her beautiful black hair was no longer lustrous and clean, instead it was now matted and soiled and hung limply from her. But even so she smiled, and in that moment I truly believed that everything would be all right. 12

It was the last time I would ever be graced by my mama's smile.13

Here and there were wooden sentry towers, standing over us like giants. Machine guns swung back and forth, sweeping over the masses of displaced as we were goaded forward. 14

There seemed to be no order to any of what was happening but we were being methodically pushed in some direction by the soldiers. We were ordered to stop and the press of bodies gathered around me and I was afraid that I would be swept away in this heaving mass of humanity, caught by a riptide of limbs and strangers.15

It was then that the sound of crying truly began. It was interlaced with men's shouts of outrage, the sound of women pleading and the wailing cries of children. I could not see past the crush of people surrounding me but a wave of panic seemed to wash through us as mama clutched at me and I heard her mumble 'No.' plaintively under her breath. 16

The wall of people in front of us began to thin but the sounds of protest and pleading and the wailing of fear grew louder until finally there was but a single line of people before us. As I watched, the men were separated from their wives, women were dragged from their screaming children who in turn were pulled away into a separate group. I looked up at my mother in horror but it was already too late. I felt rough hands grasping me and I was pulled kicking and screaming away as my mother desperately tried to fight her way to me only to be pushed back by the row of soldiers. Her eyes never left my own until, finally she was lost in the seething throng of the damned.17

What came after this is mostly lost to me now; I remember only vague images like faded photographs in some hellish photo-album. The sound of electric clippers as our hair was cut from us, the feeling of nakedness and the smell of the de-lousing agent in the showers, the breath rising from the hundreds of other children as we were pushed naked and crying from the showers into the freezing night. Over all of this I remember the laughter of the soldiers as they joked and talked amongst themselves, indifferent to us and our pain as if we were but shadows cast on a wall. 18

I awoke to the sound of crying. It took me several moments to realize that it was my own soft whimpering. My arm hurt and as I opened my eyes I noticed that there was something on the underside of my forearm above my left wrist. Ten numbers tattooed in blue ink and surrounded by a red corona of inflamed skin. I have no memory whatsoever of receiving the mark or do I ever wish to remember.19

Only as I began to become fully aware of my surroundings did I realize that my head was resting on somebody's lap and my consciousness struggled to the surface. I sat up, the room was dark but sufficient light was entering through four windows that I could take stock of my surroundings. I lay on the floor of a wooden building not that different from the cattle truck that I had been transported here in. The room was filled with children, all of them girls, crammed into every inch and corner. Their pale, frightened faces stared back at me from the gloom. They appeared to range in age from four or five up to teens but no one, I would find out later, was over the age of sixteen.20

I looked up into the face of the girl whose lap my head now lay in, straight into the face of an angel. Although her head was shaven and her face was surely as pale as my own, a kindness seemed to pour from her. She smiled down at me as she became aware that I was awake. She could not have been more than two years older but when she spoke it was with the assuredness and confidence of a woman. 21

"Hello Anyanka," she said. Her voice was soft and gentle like the murmuring of a gentle brook.22

"How do you know my name?" I asked through lips that were cracked and dry.23

"You told me when we arrived here last night, don't you remember?"
And with those words memories of the previous night came flooding back and I began to weep and cry out for mama but I already knew that she would never come. I placed my head back in the lap of the angel and fell into a merciful sleep.24

I do not know for how long I slept but I was awakened by the shrill cry of a German soldier as he threw open the door to our hut and stomped across the wooden floorboards. "Outside, outside," he repeated and we all quickly did as we were told, running out into the assembly area. It must have rained during the night because the ground was a muddy quagmire that sucked at our bare feet like quicksand. The younger children (and there were many), clung to the older ones, whimpering and crying.25

As we stood there shivering and huddled together, a young woman began yelling at us to form a line. Her face was hard and rough, as gray as if it had been cut from a tombstone. She was dressed as we were in the ubiquitous striped pajamas but, as I learned later, she wore a black armband that singled her out as an overseer. Her name was Miriam, she yelled as we quickly tried to form ourselves into some kind of a line and she was to be our hut supervisor. She was the boss, she told us in a voice as coarse as her features. If we wanted to survive, we must obey her. She carried a short staff of wood and used it to strike any child too slow to respond to her orders. She did this liberally. 26

We were, she continued, guests of the Third Reich, and as we were all Jews we would now be put to work in furthering its glory. I believe that none of us actually understood what she was saying but we all realized that our lives had just changed for the worse.27

And so it was for the next six months and more. We were fed sparingly; cabbage soup that was just rotted leaves dropped in boiling water, and worked to within an inch of our young lives. The realities of the camp became known to us quickly: the showers from which nobody returned, the furnaces that burned both day and night, the random beatings and the knowledge that at any moment we could become one of the victims of this pogrom against us. Many of the children were sick, dysentery was rife and malnutrition was rampant but we did the best we could to ease the suffering and pain of those we now called our family. By the end of that first six months twenty of the children I had shared the hut with on my first night were dead. The only thing that we had left to believe in was that no matter how hard they worked us or how much they tortured us, however miserable our existence became we still had our soul, that if we died we would be free. Nothing could take that from us. 28

We were wrong.29

Martha, who had cradled me so lovingly that first morning, proved to be more than just angelic in her appearance. She became the keystone against which all of us rested. At sixteen she was the oldest of us all and took on the responsibility of mother, nurse, sister and, when it was needed, confessor of sins. She would spin tales that would take us far away from the horror that we lived in. She brought hope where there was none and would brook no depression from anyone. I never saw her cry, I never heard her complain. She was my greatest friend. 30

But not even Martha's stoicism and fortitude could protect us from the true nightmare that was approaching like a storm on a moonless night.
The night of the first occurrence was unremarkable. The moon was covered by cloud and a light mist leached from the earth. We had finished our day as always, exhausted and half starved collapsing into heaps in our usual spots scattered throughout the hut, huddling closely together for warmth and comfort. A light rain storm had passed overhead during the night and the constant pitter patter on the corrugated iron roof had awakened me from sleep. I lay there on the cold wooden floor listening to the sound of the last of the water running off the gutters and the slow, rhythmic breathing of the other children around me.31

I sensed rather than heard movement and my eyes opened. The hut was pitch-black but periodically the beam of a searchlight, located high up on one of the many sentry towers that kept watch over us, would sweep over the building and illuminate the room and its sleeping occupants for a few seconds in its eerie orange glow. 32

There it was again; something was moving across the roof of our hut, I was sure of it, but it was so quiet that I could not discern where. It sounded like leaves rustling against the roof, but there were no trees within the encampment of Dachau.33

I stared at the ceiling; it was probably a crow, one of the many carrion eaters that called this place home, I reassured myself. Just then the sweep of the searchlight once more lit up the interior and all breath left my lungs as I stared in disbelief towards the far end of hut.34

It was perched birdlike on one of the sparse wooden cots that lined the two longest walls of the hut. Legs bent at the knees, its naked buttocks almost touching its heels, feet clutching the wooden foot of the bed with talons three inches in length, its gray and green mottled torso leaning forward. There was something pale and limp held in its spindly arms and with a heart stopping realization I recognized that it was one of the younger children; clutched within its spider like grasp. It seemed to be holding the little girl, who I recognized as Silka, to it as a lover would clutch their mate. Her body lay limply in this creatures embrace, her back was arched and her head lolled to one side, facing me, her jaw drooping as if caught by surprise. The creature's enlarged head was bald except for small clumps of black hair that hung in limp matted clumps down to its shoulders. I could make out brown mottled spots on its pate but its face was buried deep against Silka's neck obscured from my view. I heard a strange gurgling sound and a smell I had come to know filled the room. It was the stench of the grave, of the dead.35

And then the searchlight passed by and the hut was plunged into darkness again. My heart pounded and thudded in my chest, so loud I knew that the nightmare I had just seen would surely hear it and be on me in a second. I lay stock still, thinking of my bedroom back in Warsaw, my Mama and Papa asleep in their room next door. All was well, I told myself. It was just a nightmare but then the beam of the searchlight passed by again and the creature was still there. It had dropped the child who now hung half on and half off the bed. The thing was staring directly at me. Its bloodless face was expressionless, its green wolf eyes stared directly at me and I knew instantly that the darkness could hide nothing from those eyes. Blood was smeared across its mouth and chin and as I lay there trembling it wiped the stain away with the back of one of its clawed hands. And then it smiled at me. A wide open mouthed grin that showed a mouth empty of teeth except for two long canines that protruded from its upper jaw. A green snake of a tongue writhed and squirmed, flicked out from within its mouth and licked away the remaining blood from its upper lip, before darting back into its black cavern.36

I screamed. A shrill, terrified, scream that was barely above a whisper, hardly more than the sound of a leaf on a breeze, such was my terror but it was enough to stir some of the girls that lay close by.37

The thing leapt silently from its perch and landed against one of the walls, sticking there like a fly, it paused for a second to regard me once more with those terrible eyes before it scuttled along the wall and disappeared back through one of the glassless windows. 38

The light from the stub of a candle illuminated Martha's face as she knelt over me, shielding the glow from it with one hand so that it would not show outside of our prison and alert the Germans.39

"Anyanka," she whispered. "What is the matter?"40

I tried to answer her, tell her what I had seen, but it only came out as a whimper such was my terror. Mustering as much strength as I could, I managed to whisper "Silka!"41

"Silka?"42

I pointed off into the darkness. "Silka," I repeated. 43

She grasped the situation immediately and began crawling off towards the cots, carefully avoiding the clutter of sleeping bodies on the floor. I am ashamed to say that I could not even warn her of the thing that I had seen let alone go with her to help. I was struck dumb with the terror of what I had just witnessed.44

It felt like hours but I knew that it could only have been minutes before I saw the glow of Martha's little candle returning. As she drew closer I could see the sadness in her eyes and I knew the final hope, that it had been just a child's nightmare, was gone.45

"She is gone," said Martha as she drew near, her voice grim and heavy with sorrow. "What did you see, Anyanka? Tell me quickly". 46

I whispered in her ear so that any of the others who had woken would be unable to hear, telling her all that I had seen. She listened patiently and not once did she interrupt me, just nodded her head as though we were discussing some childish fancy. When I finished she told me to sleep, that there was little we could do until daybreak. 47

I don't remember falling asleep, I knew that I wouldn't be able too but at some point I must have because light was suddenly beginning to push back the darkness and I saw that Martha sat quietly next to me, waiting patiently. The rest of the girls were still fast asleep, getting as much rest as they could before the demands of the day were placed squarely on their tiny shoulders.48

Silka lay as I had last seen her hours earlier. Half-on, half-off the cot, her sightless eyes staring off into the corner of the room, her left arm limp at her side but her right arm bent upwards at the elbow at ninety-degrees its hand parallel with the floor. 49

I had seen much death in the camps; I was almost fourteen by that time and I had become inured to death, can you imagine that? But there was something different about Silka and it took me only moments to realize what it was. The corpses that had become so routine in my life lying in piles like dry autumn leaves around the camp waiting to be shoveled into the incinerator, or the suddenly deceased, shot by a guard because they failed to obey quickly enough, or even those who had died through sickness, all of them had one thing in common: terror. Their faces were always contorted with fear … always. Silka was different, she had a peaceful laxity to her features. If it had not been for the two bloodily puckered punctures in her neck she would seem to merely be resting. It was the first time I had ever seen peace in the face of the dead and that made everything so much worse because I knew that if she had seen the thing that was to take her life she would have screamed and screamed and screamed.50

"I know what did this," said Martha.51

"My nightmare," I replied never taking my eyes from Silka.52

"We need to take her out before the others wake. There's no need to frighten them."53

I took her by her shoulders, Martha her ankles, and we carried this poor, delicate girl out into the frigid morning. At the side of each building is a wooden hand cart, it is the nearest thing that any inmate of the camps would ever come to a hearse. We placed her body gently on the cold wooden boards.54

"Goodbye, Silka." I whispered under my breath. 55

Martha took my hand and looked at me. "It will come back, Anyanka. It will." I already knew that. This creature had found the perfect hunting ground. Its prey captured and hemmed in by barb-wire and machine guns. It was the fox and we were the chickens. 56

"What are we to do?" I asked. 57

"Kill it," was her reply.58

The thing had looked into my face, seen that I had seen it, and taken some wicked glee at the fear in my eyes. It would come for me next, I knew that. When the others found my pale body there would be no peaceful appearance to my face, I would die screaming. 59

I returned Martha's gaze with as much resoluteness as I could muster and nodded. “Come on," she said taking my hand and leading me back to the hut. "We must be ready for it when it comes."60

And so it was that for the next two nights Martha watched over me like the angel Gabriel watching over his souls. It did not come back but I expected that, the longer it left me the worse my fear would be and the more its satisfaction.61

On the third night it came back. 62

I awoke from a shallow sleep to Martha's insistent squeeze of my arm. Immediately I began to tremble because there was that same click-clack of nail against our iron roof. We listened in rapt terror as the thing made its way over our heads and headed towards the window and then … there it was, caught in the umbra of the passing searchlight. 63

Its head and shoulders appeared above the lintel of the window, hanging there spider-like, its vulpine eyes searching the room. I heard Martha's sudden intake of breath at the sight of the monster and instantly its eyes flicked directly towards us trapping us with its gaze. As we watched, the head of the creature cocked to one side, an inquisitive childlike action that was so incongruous I almost laughed out loud. 64

And then the light was gone again and the room was plunged into darkness and we waited breathlessly for the horror to come for us. Instead, when the searchlight once more made its pass, we saw in the orange bathed room, nothing. For whatever reason its alien mind had assessed it had decided not to come for us. We heard it as it made its way back over the roof. 65

Martha, clutching my hand tightly in her own, whispered "Come on." and she pulled me towards the open window through which the creature had appeared. She squeezed through first and I quickly followed her, staying low to the ground and heading for the deepest shadows before the searchlight found us and brought certain death. We made our way along the outside of the hut and headed in the direction we had heard the creature take.66

It seems wholly absurd to me now that without a moments thought I would rush after the very thing that would assure my death, and yet, I found myself splashing through the mud between the countless gray huts that held all the damned souls of that place, following a creature that had itself been rejected even by the blackest demons of Hell.67

Martha stopped suddenly. The space in front of us was completely dark. If we stepped into it we would be blind. She turned towards me and looked as though to speak when something struck her and she dropped to her knees, a muted cry escaping her. I was sure that the creature had been waiting for us and that it had now grasped the opportunity to fall on us. Instead, a human form stepped out from the darkness: Miriam! 68

"Bitches," she hissed. "What are you two doing out here? Tell me now." Her wooden truncheon fell once again and I heard it connect with Martha's flesh and she crumpled to the ground.69

I was frozen to the spot. From behind Miriam a second figure stepped into view, it was a German guard. He was buttoning up the fly of his trousers and it was obvious even to my young mind that we had stumbled across him and our overseer in flagrante delicto. 70

The guard said something to Miriam and she turned, and answered him in German. He laughed and Miriam turned back to me, her face broken by an evil grin. I knew both Martha and I were now dead but instead of raising his rifle and shooting us on the spot as I had seen other guards do so very often, he seemed distracted by something in the shadows and stepped back into the darkness. He spoke something to Miriam who said "More of you, eh?"71

I seized the pause to help Martha back to her feet. Blood was dripping from a gash on her forehead and she had a dazed, distant, look in her eyes. I asked her if she was alright. "I am," she replied and after a pause, "alright." 72

A strange gurgling sound wafted from the shadows. The guard staggered from the darkness, his hands clutching his throat, trying to stem the river of blood that had already soaked the front of his tunic and now bubbled through his fingers in a torrent. He staggered forward and then collapsed to his knees in front of Miriam, his hands clutching at her arm, before collapsing slowly down into the mud.73

Miriam, her face a mask of fear turned and looked at us. “What have you done,” she said. “How …”74

It was then that the creature leapt from the blackness and landed squarely on Miriam's back sinking its talons deeply into her throat, stifling any chance of a scream, and throwing her to the ground. Her make-shift baton went flying and landed at my feet. I picked it up and grabbed Martha by the hand. "Run," I hissed and we stumbled off along the edge of the other huts in the direction of the furnaces but not before I stole one final look behind us.
It had her pinned to the ground, using its body weight to hold her in place. The monster's left hand had sunk long talons into her skull and was pulling her head backwards until with a sickening crack and gush of blood the head tore loose from her body. 75

And then it was after us, running with a half scuttle half lope. It was as though it was toying with us; feeding off of our terror. I knew that just as we thought safety was within our reach it would pounce and drag us both off screaming into the shadows where it could take its time silencing us as it liked. 76

We tripped and stumbled our way along, all the while trying to ensure that we went unseen by the guards and keep sufficient swiftness to keep the thing away from us. Then, there ahead of us, was the building we were trying to reach. The only building in the camp built of brick and mortar, one that ran twenty-four hours a day. Black soot covered the walls and a flickering glow emanated from the windows and eight stone chimneys struck towards the sky like the ribcage of some long dead devil. The smell of burning meat, that so long ago we had become accustomed too, now rose into our nostrils as though smelt for the first time, such was the intensity of it. I chanced a glance behind me. The creature was no longer there but then, as for a moment I thought we were free, I saw it again. Scuttling along the side of the nearest hut like some pallid spider, keeping itself in the shadow.77

We ran for the nearest door and flung it open, slamming it hard behind us as we fell inside. Rows of stone ovens, much as you would find in a bakery, ran wall to wall and behind each black iron door gas flames waited hungrily to consume anything that might come its way.78

"Quickly, this way," said Martha her voice barely a whisper as she pulled me down one of the walkways that ran between each of the ovens. We ran at a crouch, keeping as low as we could so that those that operated and fed these infernal iron-demons would not see us, all the while casting frantic glances behind us.79

A blur exploded from the shadows and I found myself crashing to the ground, dazed and confused. A fetid stench filled my nostrils and I realized that it had me. Its claws dug deeply into my shoulders and it pinned me there on the floor. Its face no more than an inch from my face, its stench filled my lungs and I could not breath, no more than I could move caught in the trap of those eyes as they fixed me in place. Its pallid lips drew back to reveal its fangs, glistening and deadly. I shut my eyes and surrendered myself to the horror.80

CRACK! 81

The sound reverberated down my arms and through my body. 82

CRACK! 83

That oppressive weight lifted from me and I opened my eyes. Standiong over me was Martha, feet set firmly, her eyes blazing. Miriam's baton raised high above her head. She landed a flurry of blows on the creatures skull, one after the other: CRACK! CRACK! CRACK! Driving the thing back, forcing it towards the open mouth of a blazing oven. It was as though she had finally found a way to express her fear and horror at the injustices and indignity the universe had placed on her small shoulders.84

Those final few seconds still do not sit well in my memory. They come to me as a montage: the creature cowed and confused backing away from this child, Martha's arm rising and falling, rising and falling as strike after strike lands across the beasts head and shoulders. Then finally, I see her face, a snapshot in time as she glanced one last time back at me, a smile so full of love that even now, so very many years later, it makes my heart bleed with longing.85

She turned back to face the monster and ran headlong at it, catching it unaware and smashing it backwards, her momentum carrying both her and it into the flames of the oven.86

I screamed in horror as they both turned to flame. Like tinder, its gray flesh caught and flared. Limbs flailed and thrashed, hands searched for some handhold, and all the while, it screamed and wailed, and then its hands found a grip and began to drag itself out of the furnace. Even through the flames, its gaze fixed on me and such hate was in those bitter eyes as it pulled itself towards the oven opening, its flesh crackling and spitting like smoldering wet wood. It was on the verge of pulling itself into this world but a pair of blackened and blistered hands reached out and pulled the squealing fiend back into the fire, locking it in a final, deadly, embrace. 87

I rushed forward and slammed the door closed on the furnace, entombing them both.88

To survive such an encounter takes either luck or divine intervention. To survive both that and to live through the rest of the horrors that were perpertrated at that camp to tell the tale? Well, that removes all possibility of luck, don’t you think?89

Years later, when Dachau was limited only to memory and nightmares, I named my child after my friend. I do not know if God punishes sinners and rewards those he cherishes, but I do know that surely, as He has placed evil on this world to test us, so too has he placed angels to protect us, and in Dachau my angel was named Martha.90

THE END91