There was no guilt. They were just following orders. Good Job.

Great, great story that keeps the same cold tone as the first one. I think you should have made it a sequel to the other one, though. I know you couldn’t have entered it into the challenge that way, but it would’ve fit better, I think.

This story hurt my feeling duck. I know it is no more your fault that your characters are who they are than it is god’s fault that i am who i am. With that being said, i am glad that this little gaurd swung from from the gallows at Neurenburg. I am glad that he stood in front of a line of his fellow officers and flinched while he shit his pants, and twitched like the headless rosters my grandmother would let flail about in the yard. No dignity! No master race! And no neck great story by the way.

Dear Mighty Joe,
I am sorry I hurt your feelings.

My understanding of the challenge was to portray someone who thought they were doing good, while they were atually doing evil.

For a very long while I tried to understand just how people could justify the killing of others in the death camps. A lot of people think of the guards as something other than humans. For what human could do this. I knew they were human and tried to understand what they thought, how they justified their actions to themselves.

Ultimately humans think of themselves as good. They can and do justify very bad things being done for good reasons. The end justifying the means.

I tried to pull of the mask of the demonic guard and hold up a mirror, so that we might see ourselves.

Similar stories to this could be told of suicide bombers, or submarine captains.

Oh by the way. In case you didn’t know.

There really was a Sobibor death camp. There really was an Oberscharfuhrer Michel, who wore a white coat and pretended to be a doctor. There really was a himmelstrasse.

And at 4pm on 14 October 1943, the inmates rose up and killed about 11 guards and 300 of the 600 prisoners in the camp escaped. 50 to 70 of those that escaped survived the war.

great mama was a holocost survivor so it gets you but if i were to say sensor the character for someones feeling, well that is self fullfilling prophecy huh. You can hate the characters and still love the writer who birthed them right? Good job, making the reader feel. you have real talent, like jester and spider type talent, noteworthy.

Thank you for the compliment. My efforts here have been a first attempt at writing in many years. I’ve been a professional story teller for some time, but the written word is a relatively new medium for me.

You have captured the guiltless thoughts of the soldier well, believing what he was told. Doesn’t make it any less disheartening. Truly a virtuous villain, not realizing the bad he was aiding.

elsha come on when you gas screaming people in
’The final solution"
of course you know its bad.
using Aqua net and depleating the ozone in 1987 has plausible deniability, being a mass murder…not so much.

I’m always interested in reading anything related to the Shoah or larger extermination as to this day I regularly wonder how it is that people allowed this to happen. An interesting, though not often discussed fact, is that the musselmen were often in charge of the gas chambers and ovens, not the Nazi guards. Similarly the Hauskommando and Waldkommando at Chelmno were made of prisoners and not guards. Anyone interested in learning more about this should check out Primo Levi’s The Drowned and the Saved or any other number of books (not the film, Schindler’s List). Survivor Guilt, relative to the Shoah, was experienced by most survivors however the most disturbing cases/testimony come from those forced to do the devil’s work. I agree with Joe, the officers all knew it was wrong and should not be forgiven, but I think only the top few were really aware and that things were set up so well that very few were actually affected. Sorry, lots of survivors in my life… could talk about the Shoah for days.

okay, just to clarify, when I refer to those who should not be forgiven I’m not saying those forced (ie. the Chelmno prisoners, etc). I’m thinking more those who came up with the plan. And those who participated willingly.

hey nance great mama’s father was a train engineer he transported jews to all types of camps and she said even the swiss new what was on those trains and where and what they were headed for. she said often times they would see large groups, one containg her aunt laid down on th road and just driven over by tanks, because bullets were becoming scarse at the end of the war. The way this happened is because the nazis were armed with the most dangerous weapon ever invented: belief. People will do horrible things for a belief.