Blood

I have blood on my hands.

It’s not red.

It doesn’t come from inside anyone’s flesh. It comes disguised as blue tainted sweaters, as leather shoes, as garnished silver bracelets, as gloves, as love notes, as envied earrings, as classic novels, and identification cards of innocent human beings. It is blood because these people are dead. It’s on my hands because I have taken their belongings as my own. I have another man’s home-baked cornbread in my mouth. I have his thoughts in my head. That man is dead. His blood is on my hands.

I knew where he was going as his bags and clothes were ripped from him and thrown into a nearby pile. I try to take my greedy and lustful eyes off of his belongings that I was soon to scavenge and look at this confused elderly man’s face. He spoke to me in a shaky voice that trailed off in the dusty wind. He asked me where he was going. I just looked at this pitiful being. No words left me-at least not from my mouth. Perhaps my eyes spoke to him, but I did not let out even a whisper. Maybe he thought that didn’t know where they were taking him, or that I didn’t understand his language. However, both of these were not true. I have heard that question asked in a surplus of languages and dialects, so understanding it was not the reason that I denied verbal communication. I find it better to be silent. Deception is charity for these men and women and even worse-children. It is tattooed in our minds. Some of these people we recognize from a seemingly former life and we are the people who choose life or death for these other people. Every decision is like death. I suffocate. There is no escape. I vomit. I curse. I pray. I know I’m a hypocrite. I don’t care. Neither do the men around me. We all are hypocrites here. In our condition there is no such thing as hypocrisy. We pray and curse by the same God. We are witnessing hell on earth. Every night ends short for us, and we must always be up before our bodies are willing to. Every night is shorter for me. I lie awake shaking on my wooden board from the chill in the air. The chill isn’t from the temperature-its from the eerie knowledge that human beings are being tortured and experimented with just minutes away. I vomit. I curse. I pray. As I shake I hear screams, I hear the thousands of innocent men and women asking me that haunting question of where they were going. It plays like a broken record. I know where they are going. I know what will happen to them. I may be unhealthy, but my mind still works. I may be weak. I may be famished. I may be cold. I may be lonely. I may be in physical pain from the many various diseases in this camp, but I am still on the better side of the fence than these other human beings. They are girded into chambers like sheep, where toxic gas is released and they are inhumanely murdered in mass amounts. I can hear them scream. I can feel the ground vibrate as innocent human beings pound the concrete walls for any attempt of escape. I can smell the odor of scorched flesh and baked hair. I vomit. I curse. I pray. And then I find myself, with my mud covered deformed fingers, gripping the holes of the chain-link fence as I watch a new train arrive and its passengers jump off onto the ground with their cherished belongings in their hands as if they were headed to a Western resort or ceremony. It’s a non-stop cycle. They look around and once again I undesirably make eye contact with them. Again I say no words. They ask me that infamous question and I vomit. I curse. I pray. I have to lie down. I will not scavenge these belongings. I find shade and I lay curled up in the cool dirt. I cry. The dirt and soot on my face immediately soaks up my tears. And then I think of the most detestable thing. My mind has the nerve to raise the question asking me if I’m a good person. Curse my mind! I try to choke myself for having such a despicable thought. I know better. Good? If I were anything it would be the opposite of good. I attempt to vomit but my body refuses to allow it. I try to cough up blood. It denies it. As I lay in the shade of a concrete wall, people are being led to camps where they will only receive inhuman treatment. There’s no good in these camps. There’s no love, no mercy. Even the religious rabbi has begun using the pages of his “holy book” for gauze on his bleeding sores that infest his body. Religion? Faith? And my mind has the ability to make me ponder if I am a good person? I close my eyes. The phrase that is tattooed on our minds revisits me. Deception is charity. Deception is charity. Deception is charity! Is it good for me to stay silent when the new arrivals ask me that never dying question? If I were to tell them of the fate that they soon would be experiencing, would it rescue them? No! No word that I could conjure up could save them. Am I giving hope to them by my face of silence? Is it charitable for us to deceive the innocent men and women into bringing all their belongings just so we can scavenge them while they take their walk of death? There are Red Cross ambulances driving back and forth. To the arrivals that’s all they are- ambulances. To me they are death on wheels. They transport the gas. And this is good? I disgust myself. But yet I can do nothing else. I am trapped. Thousands of human beings’ blood has been on my hands, but there is nothing that I can do. There is nothing I can say. By saying nothing I may be doing the greatest good. So my pitiful self, curled up in the dirt, naked, starving, soaked in my own vomit, could actually be considered a good person despite my condition? Again I vomit. I curse. I pray. I conclude that to live in the worst of times does not negate my duty to live as the best. I am good- pitifully good; a good deserving of damnation. I am suffocating. I have blood on my hands.

I had a paper to write in my English class based on a short story called, "This way for gas, ladies and gentlemen." by Borowski. If you havent read it I encourage you to. The assignment was to put yourself in the narrators position and decide if you were a good person. I wanted to just take some of the points and write a new post on good and evil but it is 1:15am and I really just want to go to sleep. So take a look and tell me what you think. And if you havent read the story go do it. Its a sad story about the Holocaust.