Before descending into the depths of human humiliation, where the smell of death mixes with that of shame Absolutely, I have a question for you. How far would you go to survive a one more minute? Would you be ready to lose your humanity to keep your breath? This story is that of the chai Commando, the most commando dreaded in the camps, the one from whom we never speaks.
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What are you going to hearing does not concern heroes of war. It concerns a man alone facing to a fake and the whim of a guard who was bored. Title: Dive up what you find by which a the smell of hell. Why am I doing this, God? My name was Alexily. I was 23 years old in 1944. I was an army lieutenant red captured near Karkov.
Formerly, I was a teacher. I taught the Pushkin and Tolstoy literature. I loved the smell of old books and creation. But at the Mawthausen camp, I had forgot these smells. Here there was no only one smell, a thick smell, heavy, greasy, which stuck to the skin, to clothes and even to the soul. The smell of the pit.
I had been assigned to the Chai Commando, the latrine commando. It was the ultimate punishment for Soviet prisoners. The Germans considered us Hunters Mansion, subhumans and they thought it made sense that we We lived in excrement. Our work consisted of emptying the false of the camp. Not with push-ups, not with machines, with jumps.
And sometimes when the jumps were missing with rusty pans. It was a morning of November. The sky was low gray dirty like a worn cloth. He was doing cold, a damp cold which penetrated to the waters. There were six of us on board of the main pit. It was a hole gaping four meters deep, filled with a blackish mass, seething with gas and flies despite the freezing temperature.
The smell was so strong that it burned my eyes. It was a mixture of ammonia, sulfur and rot. The new ones vomited when they arrived. We, the ancients, we had learned to breathe through the mouth in small gulps so as not to not feel. I held a long pole in wood, trying to break the crust jelly that had formed overnight on the surface of the pit.
My bare hands were covered in gerers and indelible stains. I don’t looked at them more. I didn’t look at myself more. I had become a stinking shadow that the other prisoners avoided. Even pity stops where disgust begins. Around 10 a.m., the silence of our work punctuated by the clapotti filthy was broken.
Artung the auberchard fury short has arrived. Short was not an old man. He was my age. He was beautiful in a classical Arian sense, blond, blue eyes, smooth face. He wore an impeccable uniform, tailor-made. Her black boots shone like mirrors, but short had a problem. He was bored. Mouthausen was far from the front. There is no had no glory here, no battle, just herd management humans.
So to kill time, short played and we were seated, he approached the pit. He took out a perfumed handkerchief that he pressed against his nose with delicacy aristocratic. It stinks of death here, he said German, his voice muffled by the fabric. But it’s your natural smell, isn’t it the Bolsheviks? We did not respond.
We continued to work with your head down. The rule golden: become invisible. If you are invisible, he doesn’t see you. If he doesn’t don’t see, you live. But today, Kurd wanted to see. He stopped just at edge of the pit, where the planks of wood were slippery. He took out a pack of silver cigarettes, he has some patted one, put it to his lips, then he reached into his pocket to get out his lighter.
It was a lighter magnificent engraved solid silver. A luxury item that glowed strangely in this mire setting. He activated the wheel. Click! The flame burst forth small and yellow. He turned on his cigarette, took a long breath and blew the smoke towards us. He played with the lighter. He did it jump into his leather-gloved hand.
A gift from my fiancée! Did he say like if he spoke to a friend of Munique, of pure silver. He was looking at me. He had spotted my broken glasses, my only vestige of an intellectual. “Cloth professor”, he said, “you know how much is this lighter worth? More than your life, more than the life of all your commando assembled.
” He threw the lighter in the air, catching him in mid-air. A times, twice. My stomach sank. I knew this game. I had seen cats play with mice before break their necks. At the third time, his gesture was voluntarily awkward. The lighter hit the end with his gloved fingers. He slipped. I have saw the silver object describe an arc perfect in the gray air.
He has swirled, shining one last times, then he disappeared. Ploc! A dull, disgusting noise! The lighter has pierced the black surface of the pit and sank. Kurt shouted at tral. Chic! Shit ! My lighter!” He got leaning over the hole, feigning distress. This is Greta’s gift. I can’t lose it. He stood up slowly. His face changed.
The mask of surprise has given way to a cold, cruel smile. The smile of predator who has just found a reason to bite. He pointed at me finger. His gloved, immaculate hand pointed out the Russian professor covered in filth. You, I froze. Yes. You, the quux, did you see where he fell? Yes. Robert Charfureur in the pit then what are you waiting for? I looked the fuse 4 m deep, a mass liquid, toxic, deadly.
I looked short. Come on, he ordered gently. Go get it. But Herro Robert Charfureur, I don’t have enough pole long. He laughed. Who talked about Perche? He took his rent out of his case. The movement was fluid, accustomed. I don’t I don’t want anyone to damage it with wood. You go get it with your hands. I took a step back.
The horror of request took a few seconds to reach my brain. He didn’t want that I empty the barrel. He wanted me to enters. He wanted me to dive. “You are at 3 seconds, Alexeil”, he said, reading my on my mental sheet. “1 He has cocked the hammer of the gun. The choice was simple. A bullet in the head. Now clean, fast or hell liquid. My body chose for me.
The survival instinct is a curse. He makes us accept the unacceptable just to continue breathe, even if the air is poisoned. I put down my pole, I moved towards the edge. The smell has become unbearable and heart whispered to you: “Don’t forget, if you come back without the lighter, I’ll shoot you on it.
Dive until you find.” I approached the edge. The boards were slippery, covered in frost and residue. In low, the black surface was calm, the oily one. Gas bubbles burst from time to time with a little noise obsene blop. I looked at my comrades. They had stopped work. They looked at me with a mixture of pity and relief terrified.
He prayed for me, but he thanked heaven it wasn’t them. “Schenel! Quick!” barked short by firing a bullet into the air. The sharp click made a cloud fly away of crows from neighboring trees. I don’t have not jumped. We don’t jump hell, we go there slips. I sat on the edge. I let my legs dangle. The cold grabbed me as soon as my boots touched the material. It didn’t put water.
It was a paste, a dense mass, heavy, icy. I let go, I fell. The thick liquid swallowed me up to the chest. The thermal shock has was violent, but the olfactory shock was worse. Upstairs, the smell was in the air. Here I was in the smell. She entered by my eyes, by my clothes. It was a chemical burn. Ammonia Stung my eyes, burned my throat.
I had an immediate heartbreak. My stomach contracted violently. I have vomited up my meager morning ration of soup. She fell in front of me, mingling with the remains. A drop of water in the ocean of defilement. From above I heard the laugh short. He reasoned strangely, distorted by the walls of the pit.
It’s good, you’re in your element, Russian. Now search. I tried to move, it was difficult. The mass stuck to my legs hindering every movement. I was floundering in the droppings of 3000 men. I have fumbled with my feet. The bottom was soft, muddy. The lighter was small, the pit was big. “I don’t feel anything with my boots”, and I shouted, the voice broken by panic, short leaning over the hole.
I saw her silhouette silhouetted against the sky gray. He looked like a giant. With your boots, you think you’ll find a silver lighter with boots? He pointed his gun down. Diving ! What? Head underwater? With your hands. Look for the bottom. I looked at the black surface 10 cm from my chin. Put my head in there, my eyes, my ears, my mouth, it was death social.
It was the end of everything dignity. If I did that, I wouldn’t be never clean again. Even if I survived, I would feel that for eternity. No, please! A ball has hit the wall right next to my ear. Shards of earth and feces splashed in my face. “The next is between your two eyes”, Kurt said. He no longer laughed. He mattered. “A. I took a deep breath.
last breath of pure air or almost pure. I closed my eyes so tight that I saw stars. I pinched my lips, I blocked my nose with a hand covered in grime and I plunged it silence. As soon as my head went under the surface, the world was silent. More than cry, no more wind, no more laughter. Just a heavy, crushing pressure on my eardrums. The cold was excruciating.
He me bit into the skull like a vice of ice. I opened the fingers of my free hand. I groped in the pitch black. I I hit rock bottom. It was slimy. I felt indefinable shapes. Of tissues, stones, bones. Panic was going up. My heart was beating so hard my chest felt like that he was going to break my ribs. I I was looking for cold, smooth metal.
I don’t found only soft and rotten things. My lungs were burning. I needed air. I stood up. I pierced the surface. I sucked in the air loudly, spitting out the mud that had infiltrated between my lips. I wiped my eyes frantically to see. I held something in my hand. I have looked, it was a stone, just one stone covered with vases.
Upstairs, Kurt shook his head. That’s not it. He has looked at his watch. You’re wasting time. Greta will be disappointed. Go back. I I was shaking all over. I slammed teeth. Cold and disgust mixed to form a convulsion uncontrollable. Let me out, I I’m going to die here. If you go out without it lighter, you die.
If you stay without search, you die. He crouched down. Do you want to live, Alexeil? So become a glass of earth. Earthworms do not Don’t fear the mud. Come on, dive! I looked at my hands, they were black. I thought of my students, of my books. Man is a thinking reed, said Pascal. At this moment, I was not than a reed covered in shit.
But I wanted to live. So, I dove again. Second immersion. This time I am went deeper. I scraped the bottom with my nails. I was swimming in the fetid darkness. I was sweeping the floor the left, right fossa. Suddenly, my fingers hit something, something something hard, rectangular. I have tried to grab it. It slipped.
My Fingers were numb from the cold. I caught up with him. I squeezed it in my point. It was metal. I am lifted up, propelled by desperate hope of the condemned. I burst from the surface time, covered with a black layer and shining like a statue of tar. I raised my hand high. I have it, I shouted. I have it.
I wiped the object with my thumb. Under the layer of dirt, a silver shine appeared. The lighter. I had succeeded. I had conquered false. I had saved my life. I lifted eyes towards short, waiting for the order to go out. Waiting for clemency. Short looked at the object in my hand. He has mouse. Then his smile transformed into a grimace of disgust.
You did you find it? Good. He stood up and dusted off his impeccable uniform. Good that he didn’t touch me. But look at you, Alexeil, you are disgusting. Do you really think I’m going to take it again this lighter now? He was hit by your hands. He’s been in there. He has makes a hand gesture as if chase away a fly.
He is soiled like you. My heart stopped. What? But you said, I said find it. I didn’t say I wanted it again. He took a cigarette out of his package. He turned to another guard who had just arrived. Hans, you have fire? Mine fell in the toilets. It is unusable. He got returned to me one last time. Keep it, it’s your treasure now.
the king of shit to his crown. He has ripu he added the sentence which sealed my destiny for the day. Now clean yourself but not outside. You stay in there until the evening roll call. If you try to get out first, I’ll pull you on it like a rabbit coming out of its burrow. He’s gone. I stayed there in the middle of the pit with the lighter in money clutched in my hand.
It was 10 half past hours in the morning. The evening call was to be said. I had to pass standing in excrement to freeze in clutching a useless luxury item that had just cost me my soul. The first minutes, the adrenaline of the survival kept me warm. I had found the lighter, I was alive. But when the the sound of Kurt’s boots has gone away, the chemical and physical reality of my situation hit me hard.
I couldn’t go out. The parishes were too slippery, too high. And anyway, the sentries in the watchtowers had received the order. If the black head protrudes from the hole, we shoot. I was doomed to wait. heh it’s a day’s work, it’s a night’s sleep is a journey in train but in a false skepticism to open sky at -5° 8h it is a geological eternity.
The cold has started his undermining work. The material around of me, stirred by my dive, began to freeze again. A crust reformed, imprisoning me chest like a corset of frozen concrete. My legs no longer felt anything. The blood had deserted my extremities to protect my vital organs. I don’t I chattered my teeth more.
I had passed at the next stage. Rigidity convulsive. But the stone was not the cold was the silence that did not was not one. The pit was alive. The gases rose, the methane, ammonia. My head was right above the surface. I was breathing this pure poison. My head started to turn. Black dots danced before my eyes.
I started to delirious. I thought my classroom Cov. The walls weren’t green, but the glass flowed, melted, became brown. I was trying to recite a poem by Pushkin to keep my mind hooked to something beautiful. I loved you and my love perhaps, but the words tasted like ashes and of excrement. I couldn’t defile poetry with that mouth.
Towards noon, the social ordeal began. It was break time for the career commando. I heard heavy footsteps on the boards above me. The boards disjointed, separated which served as latrine, tired ways, sighs. The prisoners came relieve. They didn’t know that I was there, just below or maybe he didn’t care. The dissent does not warn.
I saw a shadow above me. The light was blocked by a crouching figure. I wanted to shout no, wait, there is someone. But what right did I have? They were sick. They were afraid hoods that time their time to the latrines. They didn’t have the choice. I pressed myself against the wall muddy. I lowered my head. I have turned up the collar of my soiled jacket to cover my hair and waited.
This who fell from above was not the rain was the final humiliation. The man above groaned in pain. He had the bloody diarrhea of the camp. And me down there, I received everything. I have cried quietly. My tears traced white furrows on my face blackened. I was no longer a man. I I wasn’t even an animal anymore.
The animals don’t do that to their fellow human beings. I was become the receptacle, the trash living of the Third Reich. The man got got up, he adjusted his pants and then he looked through the cracks in the boards. He saw something moving downstairs. He saw my eyes shine in the darkness fetid. He jumped.
My god, it was a Frenchman. I recognized him by his accent. He leaned down. Hey, there is a station downstairs. Shut up ! whistled finding the strength to speak. “Shut up where they are they going to shoot?” He remained frozen. He has understood the horror of what he had just done do involuntarily. “Sorry,” he said. whispered.
“Sorry, comrade, I didn’t know.” He reached into his pocket. “Hey, he dropped something thing. It wasn’t a stone, it was a piece of bread, a small hard crust, as big as a walnut. The bread fell into the mud 10 cm from my shoulder. He floated for a moment on the crust. I looked at this bread. I had hunger, a wolf’s hunger, but the bread touched death.
French is gone chased by a hood. I was left alone with the soiled piece of bread. I have reached out my hand, I took the bread, I wiped it on my sleeve. Gesture ridiculous, absurd, and I ate it. I ate the bread covered in shit because I wanted to live because hueshur it’s long and my body burned those last few calories to not freeze.
As I swallowed, I felt something to break permanently in me. The teacher was dead. The one who remained was a capable creature of everything. Hours passed. The sun began to decline. The cold has intensified. I no longer felt my rims at all. I didn’t even know anymore whether I stood or floated. I still hold the silver lighter in my left hand.
He had become hot, warmed by my palm. It was the only clean thing, the only thing precious. I was talking to him. You are beautiful you shine. You are silver. I I was going crazy. I was talking to a lighter so as not to scream. At 5 p.m., the light changed. The winter twilight has made the even darker pit. I started to fall asleep.
It’s sweet death, the hypothermia that rocks you. We feel well, we’re hot, we want to close eyes and let it flow. Sleep, Alexeille, a voice told me in my head. Let go, it’s over. You have struggled enough. My knees buckled, Liquid came up to my chin. I was going to drown in excrement, gently, without making noise. Suddenly, the siren screamed. Calls him.
The sound strident pierced the fog of my brain. The call. You had to be there. If we are not there, we are considered escaped. And if we are considered escape, he kills ten men of our barrack. 10x men. My friends, Ivan, the little Micha, old Sergey. I don’t couldn’t kill them with my weakness. I opened my eyes.
I screamed a scream changed to wake up my muscles. Stand up, stand up, Carrion! I tried to move. My legs were caught in brown ice. I had to have a snack with my points. I moved towards the edge, centimeters by centimeter in halting. I reached the rotten wooden ladder and slippery that hung to the side. I raised my arm, grabbed the first bar. My hands were slipping.
I no longer had any grip strength. I used my teeth. I bit the wood covered with filth to hoist me up. I was going up. I was coming out of the grave. When my head went over the edge, the wind Icy slapped me. It was the most beautiful feeling of the world, fresh air. I rolled on the frozen ground next to the was.
I was a shapeless mass, stinking, shivering. A guard saw me. He wrinkled his nose. He didn’t even point his weapon. He just went back three meters. Raos, out! he shouted designating the camp. Go get in line, port. I tried to get up. I am fell back. I got up. I walked. I was walking towards Apple Platz. I left behind me a black trail on the white snow.
The others prisoners moved aside as I passed as if I were the plague incarnate. The red sea opened 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 was not finished. The hardest part would be tonight at the barracks when it is necessary wash without water, when necessary sleep with this smell, when it should face the gaze of others who had seen what I had become.
The evening call was torture static. I stood in the last row. The cold of the night had frozen the layer of filth on my clothes, forming a rigid shell that burned my neck skin with every movement. Around me, a 2 m void had formed. The guards passed by holding their noses. Even police dogs usually if aggressive, retreating growling, disturbed by this smell which was not that of a prey, but that of carrion.
When the order to break ranks was given, I headed towards the block wine, my refuge, my home. I dreamed of heat. I dreamed of collapsing on my pallet between Ivan and Sergeille and sleep until death. But when I crossed the door of the barracks, the dream broke. The warmth of the hair, instead to comfort me, melted the ice on my clothes.
The smell that was contained by the gel exploded. In a few seconds, the confined air of dormitory has become unbreathable. A dense, hot, suffocating stench invaded space. The 300 men kill. Then the whispers started. Whispers of anger. It’s Russian. It’s Alexeille. Good god, get out of here, we can’t breathe. I moved forward to my usual place on the third chalis level. Ivan was there.
My friend Ivan, we shared our bread. I supported him when he the tifus. He looked at me when I arrived. He has put his arm in front of his face. I have it seen crying. Tears of shame but also rejection. “Don’t come here, Alexe,” he begged. “Please, we’re going to vomit. We won’t be able to sleep. Ivan, it’s me. I’m cold.
I know! he shouted, a note of hysteria in the voice. I know it’s you, but you feel death. Go away. The head of chambered, a political prisoner Polish, approached with a stick. He didn’t hit me. He pointed to the door. Not on the beds. You are going contaminate the benches where I sleep? I asked, trembling with fever, earth, near the door, where there is the drafts, and if I hear you move, I’ll throw you out in the snow.
I looked at my comrades. Nobody has held my gaze. They lowered the eyes. They were ashamed to reject me, but their physical disgust was more strong as their loyalty. The short nose had succeeded. He had broken the brotherhood without even lifting the little one finger. He made me an outcast among the outcasts.
I went near the door. The floor was raw concrete, frozen. The wind passed under the shutter poorly adjusted. I sat down. I squeezed my knees to my chest. I don’t couldn’t sleep like that. I felt dirty all the way inside my EOS. I had to wash. I waited let silence fall on the block. Towards midnight, I got up slowly. I went out. It was mo- 10 degrees.
The moon illuminated the camp with a light pale. There was a pile of snow dirty near the wall of the barracks. I I’m undressed. I took off my jacket cardboard. My pants redit. I found myself naked in the polar night. My body was a white skeleton covered with black spots. I took some handfuls of snow and I scrubbed.
The snow was abrasive like paper glass. I rubbed my chest, my arms, my legs. I wanted to snatch this second skin that my body had on me given. I rubbed until the skin turns bright red, until I’m bleeding. Blood flowed onto the snow. It was good. The blood is clean, the blood is noble. But the smell remained.
She was embedded in my ports. I had the feeling of being branded red. I was shaking so hard that my bones collided. I took back my clothes. I had no choice. This was what it was like to freeze to death. I put the soiled fabric on my raw skin. It was torture. I entered the barracks. I curled up in my corner near the door.
I couldn’t sleep. I searched in my pocket. My fingers touched the cold metal, the lighter. I took it out in the moonbeam that passed through the door slot. It was shining. A little rectangle of pure silver, engraved with initial Gothic. It was someone else’s object world, a world of heated living room, of cigars, women in silk dresses.
He belonged short, to the man who looked at me, laughing. Short threw it away because I had it touched. To him, I was contagious. My subhuman taint had destroyed the value of money. I stroked the metal with my skinned thumb. I have pressed the dial. Click. A small flame appeared. Right, blue at the base, yellow at the top.
I fixed this flame. Fire is purifying. The fire never gets dirty. Let him burn wood, coal or garbage, the fire remains the fire. I brought my hand closer to flame. I felt its tiny warmth. A dark idea sprouted in my mind numb. I will not sell this lighter. Nobody would buy it. I don’t I won’t throw it away. I will keep it.
Not like a memory, like a weapon. Short thought he broke me. He thought that I was going to die of shame or cold this night. But he had given me, without to know him the way to hate him concretely. I looked at the flame dance. You think I’m from there shit, Kurt? She whispered to the flame. But it’s you who’s rotten.
Me, I am just dirty. The dirt will go away. But you, your rottenness is eternal. I have closed the flap. Slap! The darkness came back. I squeezed the lighter in my point like serving a pomegranate unpinned. I was no longer cold. The hatred kept me warm. I swore to myself to survive just to see the day when men like Kurt would be dragged in the mud in turn.
But the destiny, this tragic joker, had a another plan for the next day. Because we don’t do not dive with impunity into the bowels of the disease. To the little morning, when the siren screamed, I didn’t couldn’t get up. It was not the cold, it was the inner fire, the tyfus. I didn’t live to see the end of winter.
The tifus is a beast voracious. He devoured me from the inside out three days. I remember the fever. She was gentle compared to cold of the pit. I remember Divan, my friend, who braved disgust for come and sit next to me, braving the orders, braving the rain that emanated of my ports. “Forgive me, Alexeil!” he cried, wiping my forehead with a damp cloth. I was scared.
I have you left alone. I couldn’t speak anymore. My throat was swollen, dry as hell. old leather. I looked for his hand. I have slipped the cold object into his palm. The lighter, he looked at it horrified. “Throw that!” he whispered. It’s cursed. I shook my head. I gathered my last breath to whisper. “Keep it ! That’s that’s his name. This is the proof.
I died on December 12, just before dawn. My body was thrown into the false commune, joining the thousands others anonymous. But the lighter is stay. Yvant kept it. He hid it in his boot against his skin, burning like a secret. 5 months later, house fell. American tanks have crossed the gates. The eagles of stone were felled.
It was the chaos. The SS were fleeing towards the forests, changing uniforms, burning documents. The hoods were lyched by the prisoners, drunk with vengeance. Ivan was still alive, skeletal, haunted but alive. He stood near the main entrance, looking at the columns of prisoners Germans captured by the Americans. US soldiers were sorting the captives.
SS towards Martht, most Germans raised their hands swearing that they were just simple cooks, drivers, accountants forced to work there. Nix Nazi he shouted, SS. Suddenly Ivan froze in a line men in Vertmart outfits, the regular army, less suspect than the SS, he saw a silhouette familiar.
The man no longer had his impeccable black uniform sure. He wore a soldiers jacket too big, dirty, torn. He had rubbed himself the face with dirt to appear miserable. But Yvan recognized the approach, this arrogant way of walk, even in defeat, and especially his cold blue eyes, which scan the crowd with contempt, short. He was trying to blend in conscripts to escape judgment.
He was telling something to a JI American, miming that he had been injured on the forehead. The American soldier seemed hesitate. He was going to let it pass in the line of ordinary prisoners. Yvan ran. His weak legs barely carried but the rage him gave wings. He jostled the other deportees. He crossed the safety cord.
Stop! he screamed in Russian then in bad German. Alt assist Kin soldier. It’s not a soldier. Le Ji raised his versavan rifle. Backof. Back off. Short turned Alive. He didn’t recognize him. For him, all the prisoners looked similar. Shaved heads, empty eyes. “This madman is attacking me!” shouted short in German.
“I am a simple corporal. I have never set foot in the camp. Ivan stopped 2 m from him. He was shaking.” “You’re lying,” said Ivan. “you the short charfureur dawn. You was the master of the fake. Short Harry, a nervous but confident laugh. The false! What a fake! You’re crazy my old! Look at my hands. I am a fighter. not a toilet guard.
He showed his hands. They were dirty, blackened by the earth. I don’t have no proof on me. No tattoo, no paper. It’s my word against that of a delusional Bolshevik. The American soldier watched the two undecided men. Without proof he could not execute a prisoner of war. Short to mouse. That same smile he had when he threw away the lighter.
“Let me pass,” he told the Ji. It was then that Ivan rummaged through his boot. Wait, said Ivan, he came out the object, the silver lighter, even dirty, even tarnished by the past months in a boot, he had kept his nobility. Yvan held it out towards Court. You have lost something, at the barchard fury? Court’s face fell decomposed.
He looked at the lighter like if he saw a ghost. He recognized the engraving, the intertwined initials, the gift from Greta his fiancée from Munique. Where? Where did you get this? He stammers, instantly losing his mask of ordinary soldier. “A friend went to look for you”, said Yvan with a icy voice. “He dove into the shit because you ordered him to.
He died for that.” Court had a reflex stupid, an owner’s reflex. He stretched out his hand to take back his property. “It’s mine. Give it back to me.” The soldier American understood. The short gesture was a confession. Only a rich man, a officer, could possess such an object and only the owner could claim with such arrogance.
The Ji grabbed short by the collar of his jacket. He threw him to his knees in the mud. Gatcha, you son of a I got you, son of The other prisoners who had observed the scene approached. They recognized Kurt. The circle closed. Kurt screamed. No, it’s a mistake. Greta. He looked Ivan. Help me, I’ll give you the lighter.
I give you everything. Ivan looked at the man on your knees. He looked at the lighter in his hand. He turned the dial. Click ! The flame burst forth. Ivan approached Kurt. He approached the flame from the face of the Nazi who retreated terror. You’re right, Kurt, Ivan said. It’s your lighter. But the flame The flame belongs to Alexeille.
He blew the flame, then he threw the lighter at Kurt’s foot. “Keep it,” he told the prisoner who advanced with stones and iron bars. “He is all you.” Ivan turned around and distant. He didn’t look at what happened passed afterwards. He just heard the screams. Screams that sounded like strangely to those of a man who drown, not in a false one, but under the weight of his own crimes.
Epilogue the eternal flame. Ivan returned to Russia. He became an engineer. He doesn’t never talked about the war. But every year, December 12, day of death of Alexeille, he lit a candle on his window sill. He looked at her burned to the end. They say that hell is a place of fire. But those who have lived Mataosen know that hell maybe cold, watery and smelly.
Alexei was not a fallen soldier fight. He didn’t get any medals. He died because a man was bored and wanted to see how far another man could lower itself. However, it is Alexe who won. He kept his humanity deep down false. He has transformed the object of his humiliation into instrument of justice.
He proved that even covered in filth, the soul remains clean if the cause is just. Today, if you visit the memorial, there is no more smell. Grass pushed back. But if you listen to the wind, you may hear the click with a silver lighter. The sound of the memory that refuses to go out. This was the story of Chai Commando. A story which reminds us that the dignity does not depend on the cleanliness of our clothes, but with the strength of our mind.
If you want to honor the memory of Alexeil, this professor who plunged into hell to leave us a lesson, do a simple gesture. Write the word flame in the comments for let its light shine brighter than the darkness of the pit. Subscribe to War secrets forbidden. We we will continue to stir up the mud history to find the truth. Thank you. Mr.
