The Story of My Invasion: Ozone Park (final chapter) (761 hits)
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Submitted by Axolotl (View user info) at 2007-08-20 09:12:25 EDT
(1) Flashes of Light on the Horizon http://www.ubersite.com/m/99905
(2) Verblodden http://www.ubersite.com/m/100007
(3) Jew http://www.ubersite.com/m/100064
(4) Summer http://www.ubersite.com/m/100166
(5) Passover Morning http://www.ubersite.com/m/100419
(6) Auschwitz-Monowitz http://www.ubersite.com/m/100658
(7) Treblinka http://www.ubersite.com/m/100712
(8) B Block http://www.ubersite.com/m/111039
(9) Unafraid http://www.ubersite.com/m/111064
(10) Ozone Park
Ozone Park
Dachau was a different sort of camp, Jan soon found out. There were political prisoners here, and Catholics, and communists. An entire block was dedicated to priests. There was no systematic killing, but still the crematoriums billowed smoke every day. Bodies were hung on the rafters of the buildings, waiting to be burned, a warning to all.
Jan and Henry were moved into a ground-floor bunk, where they slept on wooden slats with a hundred other men. They worked for the Nazis every day, same as in Auschwitz. As spring approached however, the workload was decreasing. Companies weren't delivering the parts, and the guards seemed apathetic, but worried at the same time.
It was then that they began to leave. The guards and soldiers deserted, filing away into the night while their superiors were busy. The white flag was raised above the seven guard towers.
It was morning. Henry was awake early, and was shocked by the silence. There was always noise at Dachau, but not today. He walked outside and stood in the empty courtyard. A large sandstone-colored clock tower stared down at him. The rumble of marching feel could be heard in the distance. Henry looked back at his dad, asleep on the slats, and he walked a little further onward down the path.
There were no Germans anywhere, at least in this section. Debris was scattered all over the courtyard. The smell of burning bodies and rubber was in the air, and there was a heat coming from some unknown fire. The sound of marching and tank treads was growing louder. Henry flattened himself against the wall, trying to inch back toward his father in the bunk.
The first tank appeared around the corner, followed by a platoon of soldiers with rifles. They took note of Henry and pointed at him. Henry screamed and cowered against the wall as the soldiers approached. They spoke to him in a strange language:
"Hey there, kid, you all right?"
Henry looked up. He was a young man, an American. He looked shocked by the camp, but apparently happy that Henry was alive. Henry nodded warily and shouted back toward the bunks, "The Americans are here! Everyone get up, the Americans are here!"
***
My memory is hazy on a lot of things in my early years. I remember my father as a kind-faced man, strong and tall. He worked at an office in the city. My grandfather lived a few blocks away from me, I remember him as well.
I remember burning my hand on my mother's stove when I was maybe two, I remember a dog chasing after me at the age of around three. I've always been afraid of dogs. I remember the flashes of explosions across the fields on the horizon when the war began, and I remember my family crowding together on a train to leave my boyhood home behind.
But I have to say, there is one of the earliest of my memories that I can see perfectly clear in my mind. I was just over eight years old, standing in an empty courtyard, looking up at the sky. There was a smell of burning flesh and plastic in the air, and small fires and debris littered the gravel around me. I was alone and nearly naked...and all of a sudden soldiers walked into my courtyard.
They saw me, and I was deathly afraid that they would shoot me. I wanted my brother and my father, and I huddled against the cold brick wall, hoping that they wouldn't torture me. One of the soldiers, reached out and grabbed me, and said something in a language I couldn't understand. He brought me back with him, and from those moments, it's as if there was a pillow in my head. Everything is numb after that.
One thing I know is that I'll always remember standing in the yard looking up past the evil brick and electrified fences at the cool blue sky.
The Americans were kind to us, the several hundred who survived, but they were cruel to the Germans. A group of Americans began shooting the Germans and wounding them in the legs while they were surrendering, and handing out guns and knives to the prisoners. The prisoners naturally tore the German guards apart. It was known as the massacre of Dachau. I majored in history when I went to the United States; it's always been a love of mine.
Only a few days before the Americans rescued us the Russians reached Berlin. One of my favorite wartime writing was this:
On the walls of the houses we saw Goebbel's appeals, hurriedly scrawled in white paint: 'Every German will defend his capital. We shall stop the Red hordes at the walls of our Berlin.' Just try and stop them!
Steel pillboxes, barricades, mines, traps, suicide squads with grenades clutched in their hands—all are swept aside before the tidal wave.
Drizzling rain began to fall. Near Bisdorf I saw batteries preparing to open fire.
"What are the targets?" I asked the battery commander.
"Centre of Berlin, Spree bridges, and the northern and Stettin railway stations," he answered.
Then came the tremendous words of command: "Open fire at the capital of Fascist Germany."
I noted the time. It was exactly 8:30 a.m. on 22 April. Ninety-six shells fell in the centre of Berlin in the course of a few minutes
Mussolini was executed on April 28th. The Americans rescued us on the twenty-ninth of April. Berlin fell April thirtieth, 1945. Seven hours before the Russians stormed the Fuhrer's bunker, Adolf Hitler shot himself in the head. They found his body sprawled on a sofa. The Russians desecrated the body and burned it. In the 1970s the Soviet Union ordered that his remains be thrown into a river secretly. His ashes, and those of Eva Braun, passed down the Elbe and out into the North Sea, where they will rest hidden until the end of the earth. Thus passed from this world Adolf Hitler, and the age of Nazism came to an end.
My father and I stayed with the American army for a while. Things were chaotic in Germany after the fall of the Nazis. Survivors of the Holocaust bounded together in communities; we settled for a while in Landsberg, Germany, where my father could communicate with the locals, as he spoke German. He worked as an interpreter for the Americans and the French, as well as doing his best to help his fellow men onto their feet.
In 1948, we had enough money to move to America. We settled in New York City, in a place called Ozone Park. I went to John Adams High School. I was growing up, and I was becoming a man. I didn't have a mother or a brother, but me and my father made do on our own. There was a lot of Italians in the neighborhood, including our neighbor, Mr. Siciliano. My dad didn't like the Italians, he said they were as bad as Germans. He didn't mind the blacks, however.
One day when I was seventeen I woke up early one morning. I don't know why. It was one of those things that I could never explain all my life. I walked down the stairs, and I found what looked like the remnants of a breakfast, as if my dad had tried to cook, but just gave up on it. Wondering where he could be, I opened the screen door and looked outside.
My dad was standing in the backyard. It took me a while to realize that he was holding Corporal Hauptmann's Luger to his head. My body froze, but I couldn't look away. Maybe if I had yelled out, he wouldn't have done it, since I was watching.
All I can remember is standing there looking, and then kneeling at his side, taking off my shirt and wrapping it around his head, crying my eyes out. Old Mr. Siciliano next door stepped outside, probably to tell me to keep it down, but when he saw my dad, and the blood creeping across the patio, he called the cops.
I kept trying to mop the blood up with my shirt, but Mr. Siciliano pulled me away, saying, "He's gone, it's over, I'm sorry. He's gone, I'm sorry." I hugged him, and he didn't mind that I was covered in blood. The ambulance came, and so did the police. Mr. Siciliano helped me write a statement up.
It's funny...I don't think I ever thanked him for helping me through that day. He died in a car accident on Queens Boulevard a few years ago. I went to his funeral. There was a lot of people from the community who knew him and loved him. Not like my dad's funeral.
My dad's funeral was very bare. I was there, and the rabbi, and a few neighbors and people from the Jewish community center who knew him. It was closed casket. As we said the prayer of the dead, I remembered saying the same prayer to myself as I stood in the center of the Dachau concentration camp, awaiting my death. We buried my dad in Green-Wood cemetery in Brooklyn. I couldn't even consider cremation.
That was over fifty years ago. I wish he had lived longer, at least to tell me how to deal with things. But he never dealt with his pain himself. That's probably why he killed himself. Thankfully, I made friends over my life—including you, Sandra—that I can confide in. It's hard for us old folk to talk about some things, but I knew I had to get this off my chest before I died.
The people who survived Hiroshima and Nagasaki probably never talked about it, same as the people on Omaha Beach, or in Stalingrad, or the Titanic. But this...it's too important to not talk about, to let history come to its own conclusions. Never forget that this is what educated people can do to others, and you're a fool if you think it can't happen again. Some days I wonder if I should leave the US, because I see the same things happening here that happened to Germany in the 1930s. But where to go? If this country isn't safe, nowhere is. They took us in after the Shoah, helped create Israel...but it's more important that you, my children, keep this story alive.
I don't think I'm any more long for this earth. My people are dying, those who went through the camps and came out alive on the other side. Only five hundred thousand left, out of millions? Every generation dies, but when this one dies, there will be nobody left to carry on the memory.
Remember this is what can happen, to any of you. Remember that my father was a good man, and that my brother was too.
But most of all, let the dead rest in peace; remember the living ones, it's they who need our understanding the most.
User Reviews
Submitted by apollo88 (user info) at 2007-08-21 18:02:03 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Submitted by Axolotl (user info) at 2007-08-17 13:53:41 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Does anyone else look at the comments by Insanethemind and think "Yup, this guy's going to die."
He was an asshole while he was alive, I see.
you watch your mouth you little prick
Submitted by fidelcity (user info) at 2007-08-21 16:13:26 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
sweet
Submitted by diavola (user info) at 2007-08-21 13:50:26 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by Director (user info) at 2007-08-21 13:48:13 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by beeltea (user info) at 2007-08-21 12:05:18 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by Brdn_Nkd (user info) at 2007-08-21 11:53:05 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by BLITZKREIG_BOB (user info) at 2007-08-21 10:24:29 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
You should have ended it:
"Remember that my father was a good man, and that I HAD REESES FOR BREAKFAST! (ad nauseum)"
Submitted by shinebox (user info) at 2007-08-21 09:38:23 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
SHINEFUCKINGBOXXXXXXXXX
SHINE FUCKING
BOXXXXXXXXXXX
Submitted by experima (user info) at 2007-08-21 01:17:41 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by St_Jimmy (user info) at 2007-08-20 20:01:58 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Very well done, excellent series.
Actually, this could make a decent book. Not just a cut/paste of what you have posted, but you could use these posts almost as an outline to flesh out a really good/deep story.
Submitted by TheUniter (user info) at 2007-08-20 20:01:14 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Submitted by TomAce (user info) at 2007-08-20 18:45:52 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
I read all of these... Are you Jewish?
Submitted by JonnyX (user info) at 2007-08-20 16:03:31 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by Axolotl (user info) at 2007-08-20 15:52:45 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
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Submitted by Axolotl (user info) at 2007-08-20 15:51:56 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
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Submitted by DirtyHarry (user info) at 2007-08-20 13:31:03 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Top notch
Submitted by lover101 (user info) at 2007-08-20 12:14:34 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
damn good series!!!!
Submitted by Stagger_Lee (user info) at 2007-08-20 12:14:07 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
I've been to Dachau. Heavy.
Submitted by BLITZKREIG_BOB (user info) at 2007-08-20 12:09:54 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by Axolotl (user info) at 2007-08-20 11:49:55 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Submitted by CaptainThorns (user info) at 2007-08-20 09:51:39 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Easily the best series ever posted on Uber, in my opinion. Have you considered contacting a publisher about making a book out of this?
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Thanks, CT. The problem is that publishers rarely accept already-published works, and posting on Ubersite could be considered publishing, as it's free to view already. Kaos-king has had the same problem. Also, I wouldn't really want my ubersite account connected all that much to my serious work.
I got the idea for this story after discussing WWI in history, and seeing an old picture of the flat battlefield with huge explosions far in the distance.
Submitted by experima (user info) at 2007-08-20 11:26:45 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
excellent, Ax.
Submitted by YELLOW-MAN (user info) at 2007-08-20 09:56:52 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Submitted by Axolotl (user info) at 2007-08-20 09:21:19 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
It looks like October 1942 was the height of Nazi power.
We haven't had someone who's seriously tried to take over the world in a huge empire for a long time now. Maybe in our generation.
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Maybe we have, but it's just one of those Frog in the Log analogy kind of things (for those who don't know, if you try to trap a frog in a box, it will jump and try to get out. But if you set fire to a log the frog is hiding in, it will stay in there none the wiser and burn to death.) I don't know, I have strange and crazy ideas every now and then.
Anyways, regarding this series, i've read a couple of them and was intrigued, i'll probably go back and reread them, but to be honest it was pretty good.
Submitted by CaptainThorns (user info) at 2007-08-20 09:51:39 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Easily the best series ever posted on Uber, in my opinion. Have you considered contacting a publisher about making a book out of this?
Submitted by Amontillado (user info) at 2007-08-20 09:24:01 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Excellent.
Submitted by Axolotl (user info) at 2007-08-20 09:21:19 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
It looks like October 1942 was the height of Nazi power.
We haven't had someone who's seriously tried to take over the world in a huge empire for a long time now. Maybe in our generation.