Threadbare Stars

      At the Auschwitz concentration camp, the dead fell from the clouds.

     White ash and snow mingled in the gray of the sky, indistinguishable from each other. Above, the fires of death came down with a Siberian frigidity.

     We stood in a line, single file. My shirt itched against my body, but discomfort was the most unpleasant beneath my star. The extra cloth rubbed against my skin with each movement, forming a star-shaped abrasion underneath.

     Ahead, a man strolled through our ranks. It was clear that he held himself higher than the rest of us. An SS badge stamped carefully on his chest, the officer marched purposefully in my direction. His eyes scanned the prisoner’s shirts with determination, bleeding coldly through our stitched numbers and homespun stars.

     Pink, red, blue. These colors clung to our shirts, tattered banners of imprisonment. A patchwork symphony, a leather storybook. A shopworn constellation, lost and forgotten in the gray of the sky.

     I stood, shaking from the effort, the green star burning a hole in my chest. Snow and death piled on my shoulders. Visible through the cold, my breath collected in small clouds of ash.

     In, out. Closer. In, out. Closer. In went the air and out came the ash. Burning with each breath, my dry lungs choked on the cold air. Just as the officer approached me, a cloud of chilly air left my mouth. The vapor dissipated across the officer’s face, settling as a mist on his glasses. His eyes, partly concealed, fixed on my shirt’s number.

     “Prisoner 1048,” he said.

     The man stared coldly into my eyes, and only then could I truly see him. I could see the fire in his eyes and feel the poison in his breath, his arms like twin lightning bolts. He was the one who flourished in death, the nightmare of nightmares.

     And so I looked into the eyes of this man, eyes that had forgotten the goodness of the world. I looked into the darkness behind his gaze, studied the face that smiled in spite of the death around him.

     “Prisoner 1048!”

I nodded quickly, hardly moving my head but still showing the extent of my comprehension. He glared back with his thousand eyes, and I looked back with a fragile defiance, as broken as the air around me.

     Ultimately, his gaze rested on my lime green star, the symbol for criminals. Licking his lips, the man continued his monologue.

     “Prisoner. Criminal. You are no longer either of these things. From this day forth, you will be known as Kapo.”

     I had not known of the torment of the kapos, the regret that would stay with them for the rest of their lives. Instead, I was beside myself with joy. I knew of the hearty meals, the fancy armbands, the lack of work, and the eternal power. People would fear me, and I would fear no one.

     I would be a leader, an almighty Kapo.

    The officer led me to a large room, where he gave me civilian clothes and an armband, symbolizing my rank. Unlike my star, the armband felt like armor. With it, I could do anything. My rank by itself would take blows for me: I would be invincible.

     He said that my job would be a Vorarbeiter, or a foreman. My task was simple: supervise the prisoners, and keep them in line. That meant beating those that did not work hard enough, and shooting those that did not work at all.

     Then he led me out of the room and back onto the the field. Roll call was over, and prisoners trudged across the dreary landscape, gray against gray.

     The officer said one last thing before he left.

     “Remember, prisoner. You’re now a leader of the workers out there, but that doesn’t make you one of us. If you don’t do your job, then I won’t hesitate to bring you down.”

     His words poured out in a breath of poison, his eyes burning with fire.

     And then he handed me the gun.

     Sleek, black, metallic.

     When I had imagined what it felt like to hold a gun, I thought of a tremendous burden. The sights would be a display of your victim’s torment, a window into a lifetime of regret. I expected the barrel to split in two: for every one you kill, you kill yourself too. But when I grabbed the gun, it felt like a part of me. It's trigger was easily in reach. Death was an extra appendage that I could practice with.

     Now I understood the way the Nazis must have felt. It wasn’t ending a life, watching families mourn upon the freezing fires of death. It wasn’t killing a child’s laugh, ending a parent’s hope, or ruining a perfect image of happiness. No, it was a point-and-shoot, squeeze-the-trigger, check-and-mate activity. Regret wouldn’t stay with you, it stays with the gun.

     Around me, striped outfits dragged themselves across the broken earth. In a way, they were living in a glass world. Shards of it swirling through the air, glass crunching under their feet. Even they were broken, shattered. Just one bullet could ruin their tiny, shattered world.

     I felt suddenly so powerful, capable of anything. Like someone had turned off the all lights and I still had my hand on the switch.

     I could make them see the light…

     Just before me, a man collapsed. I could see his face, twisted in pain, and could see many things from it. He was carrying a load many times his own weight: a load of family. They were already mourning his pale repose, crying around the inferno of death, a sky-high flame that spewed ash and snow. Tendrils of smoke shattered in the cold, floating down as frozen glass.

     His eyes reflected one very simple truth.

     I could not kill this man.

     My weapon crunched against the crystal ground. Reaching down, I grabbed the hands of the pallid man, who looked up in surprise. I watched as his face twisted into and out of confusion, and then grinned. Together, we held the load of family and pain, life and regret. Walking together yet parting ways at the freezing fires of death.

     There was a day when the dead stopped falling, when the threadbare stars winked out and blue replaced gray in the sky. But my one day as a Nazi would be forever etched into my mind, as much a part of me as an arm or a leg. The day I trod across the glass of the ground, and held the arctic pyre in my own hands. It was the day that I lived and died, killed and saved, remembered and forgot.

     Today, Prisoner 1048 still exists, sprawled next to an unused weapon, and lost under the ashen catacombs of Nazi Germany.