“SEARCH IT!” ordered the German, throwing the object into the septic tank.
Before descending into the depths of human humiliation, where the smell of death mingles with that of absolute shame, I have a question for you. How far would you go to survive one more minute? Would you be willing to lose your humanity to save your breath? This is the story of the Chai Commando, the most feared commando in the camps, the one that is never talked about.
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What you are about to hear is not about war heroes. This concerns a man alone facing a fake and the whim of a bored guard. Title: Dive in until you find the source of the smell of hell. Why am I doing this, God? My name was Alexily. I was 23 years old in 1944. I was a Red Army lieutenant captured near Kharkiv. I used to be a schoolteacher.
I taught Pushkin and Tolstoy literature. I loved the smell of old books and crepe. But at the Mawthausen camp, I had forgotten those smells. Here, there was only one smell, a thick, heavy, greasy smell that clung to the skin, to the clothes, and even to the soul. The smell of the pit.
I had been assigned to the Chai Commando, the latrine commando. This was the ultimate punishment for Soviet prisoners. The Germans considered us to be Hunter Mansion, subhuman, and they thought it made sense that we lived in excrement. Our job was to empty the pits in the camp. Not with push-ups, not with machines, with jumps.
And sometimes when the buckets were lacking, with rusty pans. It was a November morning. The sky was low and a dirty grey, like a worn-out rag. It was cold, a damp cold that penetrated even to the water. There were six of us at the edge of the main pit. It was a gaping hole four meters deep, filled with a blackish mass, bubbling with gas and flies despite the freezing temperature.
The smell was so strong it burned my eyes. It was a mixture of ammonia, sulfur, and rot. The newcomers were vomiting when they arrived. We, the elders, had learned to breathe through our mouths in small gulps so as not to smell. I was holding a long wooden pole, trying to break the frozen crust that had formed overnight on the surface of the pit.
My bare hands were covered in germs and indelible stains. I stopped looking at them. I stopped looking at myself . I had become a stinking shadow that the other prisoners avoided. Even pity stops where disgust begins. Around 10 o’clock, the silence of our work, punctuated by the foul splashing, was broken.
Artung the Auberchard fury has arrived. Court was not an old man. He was my age. He was handsome in a classic Aryan sense, blond, blue-eyed, with a smooth face. He wore an impeccable, custom-tailored uniform. Her black boots shone like mirrors, but short had a problem. He was bored. Mouthausen was far from the front.
There was no glory here, no battle, just the management of human herds. So to kill time, a short game was played and we were seated, he approached the pit. He took out a scented handkerchief which he pressed against his nose with aristocratic delicacy. ” It stinks of death in here,” he said in German, his voice muffled by the fabric.
But that’s your natural smell, isn’t it, Bolsheviks? We did not respond. We continued to work with our heads down. The golden rule: become invisible. If you are invisible, he cannot see you. If he doesn’t see you, you live. But today, Kurd wanted to see. He stopped right at the edge of the pit, where the wooden planks were slippery.
He took out a pack of silver cigarettes, tapped one, put it to his lips, then reached into his pocket for his lighter. It was a magnificent lighter made of engraved solid silver. A luxury item that shone strangely in this setting of filth. He turned the dial. Click! The flame sprang up small and yellow. He lit his cigarette, took a long breath, and blew the smoke towards us.
He was playing with the lighter. He tossed it in his leather-gloved hand. A gift from my fiancée! He said, as if he were speaking to a friend from Munich, about pure silver. He was looking at me. He had spotted my broken glasses, my only remaining vestige of intellectualism. “You, Professor,” he said, “do you know how much this lighter is worth? More than your life, more than the lives of your entire commando unit combined.
” He threw the lighter into the air, catching it mid-air. Once , twice. My stomach knotted. I was familiar with this game. I had seen cats playing with mice before breaking their necks. The third time, his gesture was deliberately clumsy. The lighter hit the tips of his gloved fingers. He slipped. I saw the silver object trace a perfect arc in the grey air.
It whirled, shining one last time, then it disappeared. Plop! A dull , disgusting noise! The lighter pierced the black surface of the pit and sank. Kurt pushed a criterion to tral. Great ! ! “My lighter!” He leaned over the hole, feigning distress. “It’s Greta’s gift. I can’t lose it.
” He straightened slowly. His face changed. The mask of surprise gave way to a cold, cruel smile. The smile of a predator who has just found a reason to bite. He pointed at me . His gloved, immaculate hand indicated the grimy Russian professor . “You,” I froze. “Yes. You, the idiot, did you see where he fell?” “Yes. Robert Charfureur in the pit, so what are you waiting for?” I looked down at the 4-meter-deep shaft, a liquid mass, toxic, deadly.
I looked down . “Go,” he ordered softly. ” Go get it.” “But Mr. Robert Charfureur, I don’t have a pole long enough.” He laughed. “Who mentioned a pole?” He took his lighter out of its case. The movement was fluid, practiced. I I don’t want it damaged with wood. You’re going to get it with your hands. I took a step back.
The horror of the request took a few seconds to register in my brain. He didn’t want me to empty the barrel. He wanted me to get in . He wanted me to dive in. “You’re 3 seconds away, Alexeil,” he said, reading from my mind’s eye. “1 He cocked the pistol. The choice was simple. A bullet to the head. Now, clean, fast, or liquid hell. My body has made the choice for me.
The instinct for survival is a curse. It makes us accept the unacceptable just so we can keep breathing, even if the air is poisoned. I set up my pole and walked towards the edge. The smell became unbearable and your heart whispered to you: “Don’t forget, if you come back up without the lighter, I’ll shoot you .
Dive down until you find it.” I approached the edge. The planks were slippery, covered with frost and residue. Below, the black surface was calm, oily. Gas bubbles burst from time to time with a small, obscene “blop” sound. I looked at my classmates. They had stopped working. They looked at me with a mixture of pity and terrified relief.
He prayed for me, but he thanked heaven that it wasn’t them. “Schenel! Quick!” barked briefly while firing a bullet into the air. The sharp crack sent a flock of crows flying from the nearby trees. I didn’t jump. You don’t jump into hell, you slide into it. I sat on the edge. I let my legs dangle. The cold gripped me as soon as my boots touched the material. It didn’t add water.
It was a paste, a dense, heavy, icy mass. I let go, I fell . The thick liquid swallowed me up to my chest. The thermal shock was violent, but the olfactory shock was worse. Upstairs, the smell was in the air. Here, I was surrounded by the smell. She entered through my pores, through my clothes.
It was a chemical burn. The ammonia stung my eyes and burned my throat. I had an immediate heart attack. My stomach contracted violently. I vomited up my meager morning ration of soup. She fell in front of me, mingling with the rest. A drop in the ocean of filth. From above, I heard the short laughter.
His reasoning was strange, distorted by the walls of the pit. That’s good, you’re in your element, Russian. Now, search. I tried to move, it was difficult. The mass clung to my legs, hindering every movement. I was wading through the excrement of 3000 men. I groped around with my feet. The bottom was soft and muddy.
The lighter was small, the pit was large. “I can’t feel anything with my boots,” I cried, my voice broken by panic, and I leaned short over the hole. I could see his silhouette against the grey sky. He looked like a giant. With your boots on, you think you’re going to find a silver lighter? He pointed his weapon downwards.
Dive in ! What ? Head underwater? With your hands. Look for the bottom. I looked at the black surface 10 cm from my chin. Putting my head in there, my eyes, my ears, my mouth, that was social death. It was the end of all dignity. If I did that, I would never be clean again. Even if I survived, I would feel this for eternity.
No, please! A bullet hit the wall right next to my ear. Pieces of dirt and excrement splattered in my face. “The next one is between your eyes,” Kurt said. He wasn’t laughing anymore. He was counting. “A. I took a deep breath. The last breath of pure, or almost pure, air. I closed my eyes so tightly I saw stars. I pursed my lips, pinched my nose shut with a grimy hand, and plunged into silence.
As soon as my head broke the surface, the world fell silent. No more shouting, no more wind, no more laughter. Just a heavy, crushing pressure on my eardrums. The cold was excruciating. It bit into my skull like an icy vise. I opened the fingers of my free hand. I groped in the absolute darkness. I was touching bottom. It was slimy.
I could feel indefinable shapes. Fabric, stones, bones. Panic was rising . My heart was pounding so hard in my chest I felt like it would break my ribs. I searched for cold, smooth metal. I found only soft and…” Rotten. My lungs were burning. I needed air. I stood up. I broke the surface. I inhaled heavily, spitting out the mud that had seeped between my lips.
I frantically wiped my eyes to see. I was holding something in my hand. I looked; it was a pebble, just a pebble covered in mud. Above, Kurt shook his head. That’s not it. He looked at his watch. You’re wasting time. Greta will be disappointed. Go back in. My whole body was trembling. My teeth were chattering.
Cold and disgust mingled into an uncontrollable convulsion. Let me out; I’m going to die here. If you go out without the lighter, you die. If you stay without looking, you die. He crouched down. You want to live, Alexeil? Then, Become an earthworm. Earthworms aren’t afraid of mud. Come on, dive in! I looked at my hands; they were black.
I thought of my students, my books. Man is a thinking reed, Pascal said. At that moment, I was nothing but a reed covered in But I wanted to live. So, I dove in again. Second dive. This time, I went deeper. I scraped the bottom with my fingernails. I was swimming in fetid darkness. I swept the floor of the pit, left, right.
Suddenly, my fingers hit something, something hard, rectangular. I tried to grab it. It slipped. My fingers were numb with cold. I caught it. I squeezed it in my fist. It was metal. I surfaced, propelled by the desperate hope of the condemned man. I burst from the surface in time, covered in a black, shiny layer like a statue. of tar.
I raised my hand high. I’ve got it, I shouted. I’ve got it. I wiped the object with my thumb. Beneath the layer of grime, a silvery glint appeared. The lighter. I had succeeded. I had defeated the fake. I had saved my life. I looked up at Court, waiting for the order to leave. Waiting for mercy. Court looked at the object in my hand.
He smiled. Then his smile turned into a grimace of disgust. You found it? Good. He straightened up and dusted off his immaculate uniform. Although he hadn’t touched me. But look at you, Alexeil, you’re disgusting. Do you really think I’m going to take that lighter back now? It’s been touched by your hands. It’s been in there.
He waved his hand as if swatting away a fly. It’s as filthy as you are. My heart sank Stopped. What? But you said, I said to find it. I didn’t say I still wanted it. He took a cigarette out of his pack. He turned to another guard who had just arrived. Hans, do you have a light? Mine fell in the toilet. It’s unusable.
He turned to me one last time. Keep it, it’s your treasure now. The king of has his crown. He slurred his words and added the sentence that sealed my fate for the day. Now clean yourself up, but not outside. You stay in there until evening roll call. If you try to get out before then, I’ll shoot you like a rabbit coming out of its burrow. He left.
I stood there in the middle of the pit with the silver lighter clutched in my hand. It was 10:30 in the morning. Evening roll call was about to begin. I had to stand in freezing excrement clutching a useless luxury item that had just… It would cost me my soul. For the first few minutes, the adrenaline of survival kept me warm.
I’d found the lighter; I was alive. But when the sound of Kurt’s boots faded away, the chemical and physical reality of my situation hit me full force. I couldn’t get out. The walls were too slippery, too high. And anyway, the sentries in the watchtowers had received their orders. If the black head sticks out of the hole, they shoot.
I was condemned to wait. It’s a day’s work, a night’s sleep, a train journey, but in an open-air septic tank at -5°C, 8 a.m. is a geological eternity. The cold began its insidious work. The matter around me, stirred by my plunge, began to solidify again. A crust reformed, imprisoning my chest like a corset of frozen concrete.
My legs felt nothing. The blood had deserted my extremities. to protect my vital organs. My teeth were no longer chattering. I had moved on to the next stage. Convulsive rigidity. But the stone wasn’t the cold, it was the silence that wasn’t silence . The pit was alive. Gases were rising, methane, ammonia.
My head was just above the surface. I was breathing this pure poison. My head began to spin. Black spots danced before my eyes. I began to delirious. I thought my classroom was in Cov. The walls weren’t green, but the glass was flowing, melting, turning brown. I tried to recite a Pushkin poem to keep my mind attached to something beautiful.
I loved you and my love perhaps, but the words tasted of ash and excrement. I couldn’t sully poetry with that mouth. Around noon, the social ordeal began. It was break time for the commando of The quarry. I heard heavy footsteps on the planks above me. The loose, splayed planks that served as a latrine, tired footsteps, sighs.
The prisoners were relieving themselves. They didn’t know I was there, right below, or maybe they didn’t care. Disorder gives no warning. I saw a shadow above me. The light was blocked by a crouching figure. I wanted to shout, “No, wait, someone’s here!” But what right did I have? They were sick. They were afraid of the guards who timed their time in the latrines.
They had no choice. I pressed myself against the muddy wall. I lowered my head. I pulled up the collar of my soiled jacket to cover my hair and waited. What fell from above wasn’t rain; it was the final humiliation. The man above groaned of pain. He had the bloody diarrhea of the camp. And me down below, I took it all.
I cried silently. My tears traced white furrows on my blackened face. I was no longer a man. I wasn’t even an animal anymore. Animals don’t do that to their own kind. I had become the receptacle, the living garbage can of the Third Reich. The man stood up , adjusted his trousers, and then looked through the crack in the floorboards.
He saw something move below. He saw my eyes gleam in the fetid gloom. He jumped. My God, it was a Frenchman. I recognized him by his accent. He leaned over. Hey, there’s a station down there. Shut up! he hissed, finding the strength to speak. “Shut up, or they ‘ll shoot?” He froze. He understood the horror of what he had just done unintentionally.
“Sorry,” he whispered. “Sorry, comrade, I didn’t know.” He reached into his pocket. “Hey, he dropped something.” It wasn’t a stone, it was a piece of bread, a small hard crust, the size of a walnut. The bread fell into the mud 10 cm from my shoulder. It floated for a moment on the crust. I looked at that bread.
I was hungry, ravenous, but the bread was practically lifeless. The Frenchman was chased off by a car hood. I was left alone with the soiled piece of bread. I reached out , took the bread, and wiped it on my sleeve. A ridiculous, absurd gesture, and I ate it. I ate the bread covered in because I wanted to live because hueshur is long and my body was burning its last calories to avoid freezing.
As I swallowed, I felt something inside me break completely . The schoolteacher was dead. The one who remained was a creature capable of anything. Hours have passed. The sun began to set. The cold has intensified. I couldn’t feel my rims at all anymore. I didn’t even know anymore if I was standing upright or if I was floating.
I was still clutching the silver lighter in my left hand. It had become warm, warmed by my palm. It was the only clean thing, the only precious thing. I was talking to him. You are handsome , you shine. You are made of silver. I was going crazy. I was talking to a lighter so I wouldn’t scream.
At 5pm, the light changed. The winter twilight made the pit even darker. I was starting to fall asleep. It’s a gentle death, hypothermia lulling you to sleep. We feel good, we’re warm, we want to close our eyes and let ourselves sink. “Sleep, Alexeille,” a voice in my head was telling me . Let go, it’s over. You’ve struggled enough.
My knees buckled, the liquid rose up to my chin. I was going to drown in excrement, gently, without making a sound. Suddenly, the siren wailed. He calls her. The shrill sound pierced the fog in my brain. The call. You had to be there. If we’re not there, we’re considered to have escaped. And if we are considered to have escaped, he kills ten men from our barracks. 10x men.
My friends, Ivan, little Micha, old Sergey. I couldn’t kill them because of my weakness. I opened my eyes. I let out a muffled scream to wake up my muscles. Stand up, stand up, you carrion! I tried to move. My legs were trapped in the brown ice. I had to break my fast with my points. I moved towards the edge, centimeter by centimeter, pausing as I did so .
I reached the rotten, slippery wooden ladder that hung to the side. I raised my arm, I grabbed the first bar. My hands were slipping. I no longer had any grip strength. I used my teeth. I bit into the filth-covered wood to pull myself up. I was going upstairs. I was coming out of the grave. When my head went past the edge, the icy wind slapped me.
It was the most beautiful feeling in the world, the fresh air. I drove on the frozen ground next to the chimney. I was a shapeless, stinking, shivering mass. A guard saw me. He wrinkled his nose. He didn’t even point his weapon. He only moved back three meters. Raos, out! He shouted, pointing towards the camp. Go line up, port. I tried to get up.
I fell back down . I got back up. I walked. I was walking towards Apple Platz. I left a black trail behind me on the white snow. The other prisoners moved aside as I passed by, as if I were the plague incarnate. The Red Sea parted before Moses. But it was a sea of disgust. I was alive. I had the lighter in my pocket.
But I knew the hardest part wasn’t over . The hardest part would be tonight at the barracks when I had to wash without water, when I had to sleep with that smell, when I had to face the gaze of others who had seen what I had become. The evening roll call was static torture. I was standing in the back row. The cold of the night had frozen the layer of filth on my clothes, forming a rigid shell that burned my skin with every movement.
A 2m gap had formed around me. The guards passed by holding their noses. Even the usually aggressive police dogs backed away, growling, disturbed by the smell, which was not that of prey, but that of carrion. When the order to break ranks was given, I headed towards the wine block, my refuge, my home.
I was dreaming of warmth. I dreamed of collapsing on my straw mattress between Ivan and Sergeille and sleeping until I died. But when I stepped through the door of the barracks, the dream shattered. The warmth of the fur, instead of comforting me, melted the ice on my clothes. The smell that had been contained by the gel exploded.
Within seconds, the confined air of the dormitory became unbreathable. A dense, hot, suffocating stench invaded the space. The 300 men fell silent. Then the whispers began. Murmurs of anger. It’s Russian. This is Alexeille. Good God, get out of here, we can’t breathe. I moved towards my usual place on the third level of the cellars. Ivan was there.
My friend Ivan, we had shared our bread. I supported him when he had the tifus. He watched me arrive. He put his arm in front of his face. I saw him cry. Tears of shame, but also of rejection. “Don’t come here, Alexe,” he begged. “Please, we’re going to throw up. We won’t be able to sleep. Ivan, it’s me. I’m cold.
I know!” he shouted, a note of hysteria in his voice. “I know it’s you, but you smell like death. Go away.” The block leader, a Polish political prisoner , approached with a stick. He didn’t hit me. He pointed at the door. Not at the beds. “Are you going to contaminate the straw mattresses where I sleep?” I asked, trembling with fever, “On the floor, near the door, where there are drafts, and if I hear you move, I’ll throw you out into the snow.
” I looked at my comrades. No one met my gaze. They lowered their eyes. They were ashamed to reject me, but their physical disgust was stronger than their loyalty. The Nazi had succeeded. He had shattered the brotherhood without even lifting a finger. He had made me An outcast among outcasts. I went to the door.
The floor was bare concrete, icy cold . The wind whistled under the ill-fitting door. I sat down. I pulled my knees up to my chest. I couldn’t sleep like that. I felt dirty right down to the inside of my EOS. I had to wash. I waited until silence fell over the block. Around midnight, I got up quietly. I went outside . It was 10 degrees. The moon cast a pale light over the camp .
There was a pile of dirty snow near the barracks wall. I undressed. I took off my stiff jacket. My pants were loose. I stood naked in the polar night. My body was a white skeleton covered in black spots. I scooped up handfuls of snow and rubbed. The snow was abrasive like sandpaper. I rubbed my chest, my arms, my legs.
I wanted to tear off this second skin that the snow had given me. I I rubbed until my skin turned bright red, until I bled. The blood flowed onto the snow. It was good. Blood is clean, blood is noble. But the smell remained. It was ingrained in my pores. I felt as if I were branded . I was shaking so hard my bones rattled.
I put my clothes back on. I had no choice. It was that or freeze to death . I put the soiled fabric back on my raw skin. It was torture. I went back into the barracks. I curled up in my corner by the door. I couldn’t sleep. I reached into my pocket. My fingers touched the cold metal, the lighter. I took it out into the moonbeam that streamed through the crack in the door. It shone.
A small rectangle of pure silver, engraved with Gothic initials. It was an object from another world, a A world of heated parlors, cigars, and women in silk dresses. It belonged to Court, the man who had looked at me, laughing. Court had thrown it away because I had touched it. To him, I was contagious. My subhuman defilement had destroyed the value of money.
I caressed the metal with my scraped thumb. I worked the wheel. Click. A small flame appeared. Straight, blue at the base, yellow at the top. I stared at that flame. Fire is purifying. Fire never gets dirty. Whether it burns wood, coal, or garbage, fire remains fire. I brought my hand close to the flame. I felt its tiny warmth.
A dark idea sprouted in my numb mind. I will not sell this lighter. No one would buy it. I will not throw it away . I will keep it. Not as a souvenir, but as a weapon. Court thought he had broken me. He thought that I was going to die of shame or cold that night. But he had unknowingly given me the means to hate him concretely.
I watched the flame dance. “You think I’m , Kurt?” she whispered to the flame. ” But you’re the one who’s rotten. I ‘m just dirty. The dirt will go away. But your rot is eternal.” I slammed the lid shut. Smack! Darkness returned. I clenched the lighter in my fist like one clenches a live grenade . I was no longer cold. Hatred kept me warm.
I swore to myself that I would survive just to see the day when men like Kurt would be dragged through the mud in their turn. But fate, that tragic joker, had other plans for tomorrow. For one does not plunge with impunity into the bowels of disease. In the early morning, when the siren wailed, I couldn’t get up. It wasn’t the cold, it was the inner fire, the Tyfus.
I didn’t live to see the end of winter. The tifus is a voracious beast. It devoured me from the inside out in three days. I remember the fever. It was mild compared to the cold of the pit. I remember Divan, my friend, braving disgust to come and sit beside me, defying orders, defying the stench emanating from my ports.
“Forgive me, Alexeil!” he cried, wiping my forehead with a damp cloth. I was afraid. I left you alone. I couldn’t speak. My throat was swollen, dry as old leather. I reached for his hand. I slipped the cold object into his palm. The lighter. He looked at it in horror. “Throw that away !” he whispered. It’s cursed. I shook my head.
I gathered my last breath to murmur. “Keep it!” That’s his name. That’s the proof. I died on December 12th, just before dawn. My body was thrown into the mass grave, joining thousands of other anonymous bodies. But the lighter remained. Yvant kept it. He hid it in his boot against his skin, burning like a secret.
Five months later, the house collapsed. The American tanks crossed the gates. The stone eagles have been shot down. It was chaos. The SS fled towards the forests, changing uniforms and burning documents. The hoods were licked by the prisoners, drunk with vengeance. Ivan was still alive, skeletal, haunted but alive. He stood near the main entrance, watching the columns of German prisoners captured by the Americans.
US soldiers were sorting the captives. SS towards Martht, most of the Germans raised their hands swearing that they were just cooks, drivers, accountants forced to work there. “Nix Nazi!” he shouted, “SS.” Suddenly, Ivan froze in a line of men in Vertmart uniform, the regular army, less suspicious than the SS, he saw a familiar figure.
The man no longer had his impeccable black uniform. He was wearing an oversized, dirty, torn soldier’s jacket. He had rubbed his face with dirt to look miserable. But Yvan recognized the gait, that arrogant way of walking, even in defeat, and especially his cold blue eyes, which scan the crowd with contempt, short. He was trying to blend in with the mass of conscripts to escape judgment.
He was telling something to an American JI, pretending that he had been wounded at the front. The American soldier seemed to hesitate. He was going to let him go through the line of ordinary prisoners. Yvan ran. His weak legs could barely support him, but rage gave him wings. He jostled the other deportees.
He crossed the security cordon. Stop! He shouted in Russian and then in broken German. Alt d’assist Kin soldat. He is not a soldier. Le Ji raised his versavan rifle. Back of. Back up. Court turned to Vrivant. He didn’t recognize him. In his eyes, all prisoners were alike. Shaved heads, empty eyes.
“This madman is attacking me!” she shouted short in German. “I’m just a corporal. I’ve never set foot in the camp. Ivan stopped 2 meters away from him. He was trembling.” “You’re lying,” said Ivan. “You’re a short-tempered butcher. You were the master of the fake. Short Harry, a nervous but confident laugh. The fake ! What fake! You’re delusional, old man! Look at my hands.
I’m a fighter, not a toilet attendant. He showed his hands. They were dirty, blackened by dirt. I have no proof on me. No tattoo, no papers. It’s my word against that of a delusional Bolshevik. The American soldier looked at the two men, undecided. Without proof, he couldn’t execute a prisoner of war. Short smiled.
That same smile he’d had when he’d thrown the lighter. “Let me through,” he said to Ji. That’s when Ivan rummaged in his boot. Wait,” said Ivan, and took out the object, the silver lighter, even dirty , even tarnished by months spent in a boot, it had retained its nobility. Ivan held it out to Short. You ‘ve lost something What, in Barchard’s fury? Court’s face fell.
He stared at the lighter as if he were seeing a ghost. He recognized the engraving, the intertwined initials, the gift from Greta, his fiancée from Munich. Where? Where did you get that? He stammered, instantly losing his mask of an ordinary soldier. “A friend went to get it for you,” Yvan said in an icy voice. “He went down that because you ordered him to.
” “He died for that.” Court had a stupid reflex, a property owner’s reflex. He reached out to take back his property. “It’s mine.” “Give it back to me.” The American soldier understood. Shorte’s gesture was an admission. Only a rich man, an officer, could possess such an object, and only the owner could demand it with such arrogance.
The Ji grabbed Shorte by the collar of his jacket. He threw him to his knees in the mud. ” Gatcha, you son of a I got you, you son of a ” The other prisoners who had watched the scene approached . They recognized Kurt. The circle closed. Kurt screamed. “No, it’s a mistake. Greta.” He looked at Ivan. “Help me, I’ll give you the lighter.
I’ll give you everything.” Ivan looked at the man on his knees. He looked at the lighter in his hand. He worked the wheel. Click ! The flame leaped. Ivan approached Kurt. He brought the flame close to the Nazi’s face, who recoiled in terror. “You’re right, Kurt,” said Ivan. ” It’s your lighter.
But the flame The flame belongs to Alexei. He blew out the flame, then threw the lighter at Kurt’s feet. “Keep it,” he said to the prisoner who was advancing with stones and iron bars. “It’s all yours.” Ivan turned and walked away. He didn’t watch what happened next. He only heard the screams. Screams that sounded eerily like those of a man drowning, not in a pit, but under the weight of his own crimes.
Epilogue: The Eternal Flame. Ivan returned to Russia. He became an engineer. He never spoke of the war. But every year, on December 12, the day of Alexei’s death, he lit a gougie on his windowsill. He watched it burn to the very end. They say hell is a place of fire. But those who have lived through Mataosen know that hell can be cold, liquid, and stinking.
Alexei was not A soldier fell in battle. He received no medals. He died because a man was bored and wanted to see how low another man would sink. Yet, it was Alexe who won. He kept his humanity at the bottom of the pit. He transformed the object of his humiliation into an instrument of justice.
He proved that even covered in filth, the soul remains pure if the cause is just. Today, if you visit the memorial, there is no longer a smell. The grass has grown back. But if you listen to the wind, you might hear the click of a silver lighter. The sound of memory that refuses to fade. This was the story of the Chai Commando.
A story that reminds us that dignity lies not in the cleanliness of our clothes, but in the strength of our spirit. If you wish to honor the memory of Alexeil, this teacher who plunged into hell to leave us a lesson, make a gesture. Simple. Write the word “flame” in the comments so its light shines brighter than the darkness of the pit.
Subscribe to War Forbidden Secrets. We will continue to sift through the mud of history to find the truth. Thank you. Mr.
