Let's Check It Out

earlyfrost:

We talked to them [the prisoners] and in my very limited German I say to them, “We’re Americans - we will save you!” but they don’t say anything. They don’t yell. They don’t cheer. They just stand there, silently. They’re beyond making a noise. They’re beyond having a voice.

I meet a prisoner, I can hardly hear him when he talks. He tells me the German doctors at the camp conducted experiments on his throat and he no longer has a voice box.

I ask him what nationality he is.
“Ich bin ein deutscher jude,” he says. I am a German Jew.

He takes me to das crematorium and insists I go inside. Skulls, bones and ashes are everywhere. Fingers which had been gouged out are still stuck in the walls.

He tells me, “Vergessen sie nie.” Don’t Forget.
I couldn’t. Even if I wanted too.

―Roscoe C. Blunt, from Foot Soldier, via demons