My idea of morality has always been very straight up. Work hard, be honest, love your family, fight for your nation; what else was there to it? I am a soldier; a soldier just like my father was before me. He fought for our country in World War I and died a very old and content man. There had never been a higher honor for me. Now it was my turn. I am sworn to fight for my country now; sworn to protect it, and to die for it, if duty calls.
I realize how the rest of the world sees me and my brothers-in-arms; in fact I was aware that a section of my own country saw us in such a manner. We were the Nazi soldiers; Hitler’s brutes. Cruel and heartless, ready to carry out Hitler’s ego maniacal plans with every force we could muster. This couldn’t be farther from the truth. It didn’t matter to me who was in power. As far as I was concerned, I am not a Nazi soldier. I am a German soldier and I fight to defend my country. Was I so different from the people who hated us? Was I different from the French and the British, who were fighting for their country as well?
But then again lately small cracks of doubt have started forming in my iron clad simple morality. It had all been well, when we invaded Poland; it was for Germany, to rise from the humiliation imposed on us after WW1, to spread our civilization so that our motherland could stand tall and proud. It was the first step. Hitler’s efforts to help us rise from the pitiful state we were in were heroic. And I was ready to kill or get killed to see our country find that kind of prosperity.
We were then ordered to ostracize the Jews and lock them away in a part of the city, create a ghetto for them away from the rest of the society. It was for Germany. They pose a threat; we need to make sure our country is safe. We locked them in the ghetto and then began the murders, the torture for no apparent reasons. I watched and helped kill members of a family when their wife and children watched. I, who had just started a family of my own back home,. Every time I watched my comrades torture the Jews, make them dance around for their entertainment, rape their women and what not; a part of me cringed. I told myself that my job was to do my duty and turn my face away from everything else. What did I know? I was just a simple soldier trying to protect my country. Maybe my comrades and superiors had a reason for what they did, maybe it was necessary to ensure the Jews did not pose a threat to Germany.
Either way, I kept the actions that I took towards the Jews to bare necessities. But was it really necessary to help my comrades bash in the skulls of two boys just because they were out past curfew, was it necessary to scavenge into Jewish homes and uproot their lives and steal any possessions that they might have? I told myself, yes. It was necessary. Order must be maintained, they must be suppressed and we need them to labor for us, we needed their wealth so that Germany would rise from the broken brambles of what once was our great country, brought down in the First World War.
My first real conflict with myself came when we were ordered to take all the elderly from the Jewish homes and introduce them to a handy little gas chamber. We were asked to gas out innocent people just because they were too old to work for us anymore. I had my mother, still living and beyond the age of some of the people I am being asked to gas. I wanted to be able to do whatever my duty called for my country with a good conscience but every time I took a person from their wheel chair and shoved them to the chamber, her face kept coming to me but I kept throwing them all into the chamber. It was for my country, we needed good healthy laborers and we didn’t have enough wealth to feed another country’s non working population. Besides, it would probably be merciful for them, rather than making them work and live in the conditions that they did live. But then again, they were well off, living happily before we came along.
As my time in Poland went on the cracks in my morality just kept increasing until one day, one of those cracks managed to penetrate the entirety of my morality all the way into the essence of my very being, into my very soul; the essence that made me who I was and the essence that told me who I was becoming. I and nine other of my platoon were asked to transfer a group of Jews to the trains which would take them to the nearest concentration camp. Most of them in the group were people below the age of 20; kids.
As we took them from the ghetto through the mainland of Warsaw, as usual the crowds split to let us pass; a sign of respect or fear, who knew? We marched the kids in a single file when it happened; the event that I would never forget. When we were almost near our destination, a voice from the crowd screamed out and before I knew it a figure flung itself towards us. All ten of us prepared our weapon, as our military instincts taught us. It was a boy, around the age of 10, he fell into the arms of another boy of the same age who was just standing behind me.
‘Isaac. Isaac,’ He wailed as he embraced the boy and the Jewish kid responded sobbing with equal vigor. ‘John!’
‘Kid you are breaking file. Also, you are not allowed to interrupt our business,’ I said sternly.
‘But he is my best friend,’ the kid named John said bravely, tears streaming down his eyes. ‘We have been best friends since before I can remember and I know if you take him I’d never see him again,’
My heart softened. I was reminded of my best friend back home, he was a doctor and we had been inseparable since we were kids. He was the best man in my wedding and now he was the one who was taking care of my family in my absence.
‘He is a filthy Jew, kid,’ One of my comrades, Lucas spat. ‘If you know what’s good for you, forget him and get out of our way,’
‘I won’t!’ the kid said adamantly. ‘I beg you, please let him go.’
‘Take them both out, Maximillan. They can have their reunion in hell,’ Our platoon leader said laughingly to me.
I was torn. I had never disobeyed a command before. But there was no way I could do this. ‘They’d learn their places, won’t you?’ I said harshly trying to separate them, trying to find a way around my leader’s intense command.
My comrade Lucas who had spoken earlier moved to stand next to me and pointing his gun at the two kids, he emptied his entire cartridge onto them. ‘That’s how it’s done,’ He said grinning at me, showing large gaps where teeth used to be.
I smiled back to him, under the scrutiny of my leader who did not look happy with my inability to obey but till today, I have not been able to get the picture of the bloody mess that was those two best friends out of my head.
It has been seven months since I’ve been in Warsaw. Things just keep going from bad to worse. Last night I watched a brother slit his brother’s throat for a handful of rice grains. It was supposed to be a show, entertainment for us, a reward for our undying loyalty to Germany and more importantly, the Fuhrer. It just sickened me; it made me question the morals and the things for which I was fighting. It made me question everything I am. Tonight, I just came back from the Ghetto. My hands are still bloody, the blood of a mother who had no fault but stealing a pail of water from our camp to stop her three month old baby from dying of thirst. I was ordered to throttle her to death, a punishment befitting of her crime and I did that and I watched as she choked blood from her mouth, I listened to her infant cry as it watched the last traces of life desert it’s mother’s limp, skeleton like body.
What was I doing? Was I fighting for my country at this point? Is this truly what my call of duty for Germany is? Can I still feel honorable when I return home after all I have done? Would I be able to hug my children and kiss my wife when I know I have deprived so many of the same blessing; and the people that I’ve done that to were not soldiers like me, when I know that they were helpless and we were strong? Does that make us honorable? I did not know how much longer I can go on with my morality. Then why did I go on? Why did I continue to obey?
‘I was doing this for my country, for Germany. It has to be done. This is for the greater good,’ Or that’s what I told myself anyway in order to be able to sleep at night.
Author's note/Tribute: The holocaust was one of the, if not the most terrible atrocity to occur in the history of our planet. We must remember it, every day and let it never be forgotten, not to hate or be vengeful against the Germans who were more or less victims as well.. It is not even to be spiteful about the memory of one, Adolf Hitler. It is to remind ourselves about the peril of hating. If you have that much hate in your heart, towards any race, any people, any religion you will find yourself committing unbelievable acts of violence, which even you never thought you were capable of. It's time for us to collectively say no to hate, irrespective of religion, irrespective of race. Faith, nationalism, patriotism are good songs to sing, good beliefs to hold in heart, but that's just it.. The moment it hurts someone else, the moment it becomes a dogma, it becomes a fire that would consume you and them.. for there is no you and them.. there is only us.. one people, one earth.