The Jew and the German
We rounded up one hundred and sixty Jews today. The rifle shots that ended their lives had stopped less than an hour ago. I had witnessed it all, standing among my German comrades, not twenty meters from the edge of the trench that served as a mass grave.
Men, women, children; it didn’t matter as long as they were Jews, or gypsies, or suspected Bolshevik sympathizers. I had seen the increasingly higher pile of naked bodies at the bottom of the trench, watched the officer go down among them and blow out the brains of those still moving. I had listened to them moan and beg and pray, and watched as they somberly removed their clothes, then stood shivering at the edge of the trench, not allowing their eyes to fall below the eastern horizon. I had felt my stomach roil with bitter acid, felt my teeth hurt from clenching them so tightly. I had been part of it, me, a draftsman just out of college. I had been conscripted into the SS, assigned to the ranks of Sonderkommando 4a, one of the outfits designated to address the Jewish question, currently operating in Ukraine. My group had been ordered to clean out the surrounding villages around Kiev. The day would come I would be chosen to man one of the rifles. I still could not comprehend why we were doing this. I had not figured out what had happened to my homeland. My breathing had been labored since my first day in Ukraine. I could not imagine pulling the trigger.
Now, as the gloom of night cast the first shadows over the long weary day, I stood a few yards outside of camp, leaning against a tree, taking long draws off my third consecutive cigarette, staring absently across the vast steppe. Sonderkommando 4a was following the wehrmacht as it plowed through Russia. Setting up command centers in the cities and villages behind the front line, our objective was to round up and eliminate German enemies. Of course this included the Jews. My small group, part of the central group in Kiev, had been sent southeast to clean out the small villages. It was horrifying, merciless, carried out with ruthless detachment. I would never adjust to this manner of thinking. I had known many Jews in my hometown in Germany, neighbors, chums I had gone to school with. Why were we killing them?
From the corner of my eye, I saw an approaching prisoner, a young man in tattered peasant clothes assigned the chore of picking up the trash and cigarette butts littering our camp. I watched him, his cautiousness as he got down on his knees to scour the ground, glancing at me, most likely fretting over every tiny scrap and every last cigarette butt, trying to avoid a beating. I felt ashamed of my uniform.
Eventually he stared at me, the look in his eye chilling; more than hostility, analytical perhaps, a look that almost seemed to suggest pity, though not quite masking his hatred and contempt. Moving forward on his knees, likely resigned to his fate, his courage seemed to gather, reflected in the expression of defiance on his face. When he got to his feet, he glanced behind and saw we were alone, then fixed his arrogant, scornful eyes on me. “You think you’ll get away with this, with what’s going on here,” he said bitterly, staring fearlessly like a man with nothing to lose.
