12. Danner

TWELVE

Dachau, Germany

As if the questions I’ve been asked again and again throughout this registration process, or so they call it, haven’t been enough, there’s another SS guard standing in front of me with a clipboard in hand now. With an eagle eye, he stares at the number inked across my uniform and shakes his head.

“You have committed crimes,” he says, clucking his tongue. “Hiding in an innocent family’s house, endangering their well-being for the sake of your own. What a coward.” His words seethe out between gritted teeth, but I can’t react. It won’t help. “We have a proposition for you. We don’t have space for people like you, so you will be executed.”

My bladder becomes heavy and urine spills down my leg. My head is hollow, empty, nothing but air inside as I try to keep myself upright.

“Such a coward,” he says again, staring down at the damp stream, lining the leg of my uniform.

The moment reminds me of when I was a kid and Gerty read my fortune, telling me I would pee my pants at school. It was meant as a joke and never happened. Maybe she did know…just not when it would happen. If this tyrant is going to kill me, I wish he would just do to me what was done to the other man who tried to find his son. He was shot. It was quick.

“If you would rather avoid execution, there’s a different opportunity you can take. A nice healthy man like you, despite being Jewish, can be of significant use to us—to our country, even.”

“I do-don’t understand,” I say with a stutter.

“We need lab rats for medical data. If you agree to be a lab rat, we will spare you execution.”

I want to ask him what happens after they use me…whatever that means, but I would receive an answer I don’t want to hear.

“Okay, I’ll do it,” I agree without giving it much thought.

“You’ll do what? You must say what you will be doing so I understand properly.”

He’s just a devil in a uniform.

“I’ll be a lab rat to help my country.” A cool breeze blows between my limbs, reminding me of the wet pants I’ll have to sit in until they dry.

“Very good. Follow me.”

After walking past several blocks, the guard opens the door to one on the right and shoves the heel of his boot into my lower back, catapulting me into a barrack with what appears to be over a hundred other men. I take in the surroundings, focusing on the two rows of three-tiered wooden bunks. Perspiration, sewage, and bile as pungent as skunked onions and eggs is all I can smell upon entering the musty dank space. The air doesn’t move, only I do. I’m just another body to take up room, garnering me expressions that I try not to take personally.

I walk down the row, skin-covered bones dangling from every which way as I seek a small spot to claim for however long I’ll be in this location.

“There’s a spot over here,” someone says. A man around my age holds his hand out so I can see where the voice is coming from. I imagine I must look eerily similar to the way he does with my shaved head, dirt-covered face, and this dingy uniform, left with nothing but eyes, nose, and a mouth to suit as my only form of identity.

“Thank you. I appreciate your kindness.”

“You don’t want to sleep on the floor if you can avoid it. The mice are relentless here,” the man says.

“I can imagine.” I toss my small pile of belongings up onto the third tier of the bunks and use the rickety ladder to climb up to the top. The available space is just large enough for my narrow body to lie flat, but it’s all I need.

“They took a bunch of men out of here this morning, so an open spot is a sign of luck I suppose,” the man says as I sit back against one of the wooden beams framing the row of bunks. “Hans Bauer.” He holds his hand out.

“Danner Alesky,” I reply, taking his hand.

“It’s nice to see someone around the same age here. I’m not sure why they tossed us into the elderly men’s barracks.”

“I take offense to that,” the man in the next bunk over says, swatting his hand at us. His voice wavers and crackles as if he hasn’t spoken in a while, except he surprises me with a bout of laughter to follow. “I’m just messing with you. I’m Eli.” He reaches his hand out to shake mine and I return the kind gesture.

“See?” Hans says, gesturing his hand out to the man before they both share a quick chuckle. “He thinks shaking hands is necessary here.”

“I’m Fred,” the man right below me shouts up through the fine crack between the platforms. “I’m not as old as Eli, but your new young friend thinks I am. Us old men know a thing or two. You’ll find us useful. You’ll see,” he says with a snicker.

“Nice to meet you,” I reply, wishing I could wave or shake his hand, but I’d have to hang over the edge of the bunk to do that.

Once the three of them stop laughing at their old-jokes, Hans continues with his question, seemingly intrigued to know everything about me as quickly as possible. “So, where are you from?” he asks. “You must be about twenty-one or something, right?”

“I’m from Munich, and you’re close. I’m twenty-two.” Not old enough to be considering this place to be where my body is found someday. “How about you?”

Hans doesn’t answer right away. He seems lost in thought, as if the question requires him to jog through his memory. He must have arrived here a long time ago. “Salzburg. I’m nineteen.”

“Still the baby here,” Fred speaks out.

“I’m from Prague,” Eli adds. “I’m sixty-two—not quite as elderly as your friend described, and I arrived by a dark train crammed with a thousand other people. It wasn’t the most comfortable trip I’ve taken.” I see Eli is sarcastic and poking fun at this awful situation.

“I might have only come a short distance, but it felt longer in the back of a dark truck, alone with a skeleton.” The memory of falling onto a body sends a chill down my spine.

“A skeleton?” Eli asks. “They don’t get much more creative than that, I tell ya.” Creative?

“They do like to disorient us,” Hans says. “I take it you didn’t arrive with anyone from home then?”

I shake my head. “No, I’ve been taking slow steps toward my ultimate destination for a year and a half now. I thought I was being heroic, leaving my mother and brother behind in search of my father, but that didn’t end well as you can see.”

With a sullen grimace, Hans palms my shoulder. “Even if you had done everything differently, you’d still be here, as would I, I’m afraid. Don’t blame yourself for any decision you’ve made. The last thing we need is to live with guilt. I left my mother and sister behind because I had a chance to hide somewhere. My mother forced me to leave, despite it being an unthinkable decision I couldn’t bear to make on my own. She wanted me to go if there was even the slightest chance I could be spared from what might come, especially for all the men where we were. I ended up hiding in a crawlspace of an attic, protected by the love of my life. Her father found out and called the authorities. Having known him most of my life, it’s still a hard bullet to bite, knowing he handed me over the way he did.”

“That’s unimaginable,” I tell him. Though nothing seems quite unimaginable these days.

“Poor lovesick kid,” Eli adds. “She slept in the attic with him sometimes.” Eli chuckles as his eyebrows dance around his forehead.

“At least he knows what love is. Life would be meaningless otherwise,” Fred says, his words more serious than the last comments he made.

“I miss Matilda, every day, my heart just bleeds for her, praying she’s still okay wherever she is. It kills me being away from her. We grew up together, never spent much time apart at all. We were best friends, and there wasn’t enough time. There’s never enough time,” Hans says, staring through me. “Anyway.” He shakes his head as if to push away his thoughts. “Did you leave a special woman behind?”

I think about the question, knowing there’s only one woman I’ve ever considered special, but there would never be an opportunity in this lifetime to have what I wish we could have had together. Me as a Jewish man, and she as a German with Aryan roots…there was no hope for anything more than friendship.

“There was, but it was never meant to be.”

“See, he’s a smart man who wasn’t looking to have his heart broken,” Eli says, pointing at Hans.

I’m not sure about that, but I suppose I’d be in much worse shape now if I had been with her.

Hans hums with thought. “What’s her name?”

The corners of my lips pucker into a small smile at the thought of her.

“Emilie.”

Her name feels distant on my tongue, but I can imagine her beautiful face as if it were just yesterday when I said goodbye. I knew that was the end for us—I could feel it in my chest, but I didn’t have the heart to tell her I didn’t think I would ever see her again.