Esser The Butcher

1. Auflage 2022
ISBN: 978-3-347-75107-1
Verlag: tredition
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 261 Seiten

Reihe: tredition GmbH

A nine-year-old boy has to watch his father being cruelly killed in a concentration camp. He is traumatized for the rest of his life because he can never forget the names of those men who were involved in the murder. The boy comes to the USA, is adopted there and experiences a happy youth. He studies and starts a career with a New York advertising agency after graduation. At that time, horrific murders were happening all over the world. The criminalists are at a loss. Neither the motive, nor the perpetrator or the perpetrators can even be recognized to a degree. From Paraguay via Italy to Egypt, there is feverish investigation. In New York the circle closes at the end.

Rolf Esser, Jahrgang 1948, ist im Hauptberuf Lehrer und inzwischen pensioniert. Er unterrichtete an einer integrierten Gesamtschule in den Fächern Deutsch, Gesellschaftslehre, Kunst und Musik. Seit etwa 1990 war er für verschiedene Verlage als Autor im Bereich Unterrichtsmaterialien tätig. Darüber hinaus war er immer künstlerisch und musikalisch aktiv. Neben der Ausstellung seiner Kunstwerke (zuletzt im Osthaus-Museum Hagen) spielte er viele Jahre als Schlagzeuger und Gitarrist in Bands seiner Heimatstadt. Rolf Esser hat inzwischen drei Jugendromane, einen Roman für Kinder, zwei Kriminalromane, eine Kurzgeschichtensammlung, ein Sachbuch für Musiker und eine Reihe von verschiedenen Unterrichtsmaterialien veröffentlicht.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Esser, Rolf

Leseproben

Chapter 1

In the Concentration Camp

Its five o´clock in the morning. There is order here. In German thoroughness, the men stand in rank and file, divided into groups, recognizable by their badges, the so-called corners, which were sewn to their striped garments: political, criminals, emigrants, biblical scholars, homosexuals, asocials and Jews. In addition, they must bear a number. Man becomes the number. He has no name, he loses his reputation and honor.

At this early hour, the men stood stiffly on the large square in front of the wooden barracks, ready for the count. Already at four o´clock they were awakened and had to clean the wretched rooms of their lodgings. It is still dark, bright headlights brighten the action. The April of 1945 is already well advanced, but the morning is still cool and the thin, emaciated figures freeze. Not to be compared with that night in January of the extremely severe winter, when they had to stand here collectively as a punishment for the escape of two prisoners in an ice cold. For fifteen men it was death.

They stand there and basically have no strength for it. They are all prisoners. In the morning they have to endure the torture of the Apell, which repeats itself in the evening. In addition, they are sent to the equally debilitating workplace: road construction, tree cutting, construction work, weapons factory - every slave work is conceivable as long as a profit is obtained from it.

There is a typhus epidemic in the camp. The barracks of the hospital are overcrowded. Those who are still able to stand on their legs must also take part in the towing table and be beaten to work. Many of them will not experience the evening.

All these men were taken into custody and went to hell. With the difference that there is not only a devil in this hell, devils are here in the dozen. Nine of them stand before them, all men of the SS-Totenkopfverband. The SS Obersturmbannführer Fritz Meinert, the first guard of the Schutzhaftlager, has the say. The prisoners are under the control of the Schutzhaftlagerführer in this concentration camp. His direct superior is the camp commander Eduard Weiter. He was not seen any more for a long time. The dirty business now deal with his merciless subordinates.

The Schutzhaftlagerführer Meinert is feared for the execution of punitive measures and executions. As late as September, he ordered ninety Russian prisoners to be executed. He is uncontrolled, enters the prisoners, beating them with a whip, or hounding dogs upon them.

They are there, thousands kept so by nine men who proudly wear their SS uniforms and feel themselves as masters, as lords of life and death. Also this morning, the piercing voice of Meinert penetrates deep into their brain. They will never forget it if they ever will survive this camp. "I will ruthlessly destroy anyone who does not devote himself to all his daily work. You are a miserable heap of plagues, pretending to be sick, to evade your duty. Have you ever wondered why you were put in protective custody? I will tell you, because you are, without exception, lazy, industrious rascals who use shamelessly the state´s well-being and the goodness of the Führer. "

So they hear it every morning. Before Meinert, it was another Schutzhaftlagerführer. They are all of the same kind, these SS perpetrators, animated by an order of extermination, which the Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler has time and time again thrown in with them and underpinned with orders and ordinances.

However, in his most recent decree, Himmler ordered the prisoners´ labor to be secured. The prisoners are the only ones who can keep armament production going for the still raging and long-lost war. They must therefore no longer be unnecessarily punished or tortured. Such an opinion is not reached by Meinert. Not for nothing they call him the ´butcher´ in the camp.

Alone, as Meinert new arrivals is going to welcome, when they have crossed the camp gate, is unmasking. The whole sadism of this SS man unfolds in his first sentence, which he hurls out: "Here no one has to laugh! The only one who laughs here is the devil, and the devil is me!" He also never forgets to mention that there is only one way out of the camp, namely through the chimney of the crematorium.

The camp is surrounded by a high barbed wire fence, which is also powered by electricity. There are two SS guards with machine guns on eight watchtowers. Himmler had written down in the posting that prisoners had to be shot at once without warning. In numerous unnatural deaths, the concentration camp guards simply state that they had shot prisoners in an alleged escape attempt. As an escape attempt, you can only enter the wide safety strip along the fence. An actual escape attempt, however, is almost always fatal. And once he succeeds, the fugitives are almost always caught again, tortured them terribly, and then shoot them before all eyes.

For half an hour they had to listen to the salvating verbal excesses of Meinert. In the first row of a group stands Hermann Glockenspiel. Two yellow juxtaposed angles in the form of the Davidstern on his jacket, which the Nazis call ´Judenstern´, characterize him as Jew, as all here in this group. In the eyes of the SS, the Jewish prisoners form the lowest level of the hierarchy in the camp. Even in the rank order among the prisoners, they are at the bottom.

Hermann Glockenspiel is sick, he also has typhus. He could just drag himself to the pitch. Next to him stands the nine-year-old Erich, his son. Slowly Hermann disappear the senses, then he faints, falls forward and strikes the ground.

It is as if Fritz Meinert had been waiting for such an incident. Immediately, he grows up before the impotent and shouts: "You damned Judensau, just want to sneak out of work! We´ll drive you out, once and for ever!" A hint from him and two SS Sturmbannführer hurry up and grab the poor Hermann Glockenspiel, whose nose is bleeding from the fall. They drag him into the middle of the square. There is a kind of gallows framework that is used for all kinds of worst punishments.

The SS men tie Hermann´s arms on his back and pull him up with a rope back on the gibbet pile. Piling - a punishment, which is no longer welcomed by the SS leadership. Because of the preservation of the labor force. Meinert! does not care. In this medieval torture, the delinquent suffers unimaginable pain and agony.

Hermann is still powerless. Now the SS minions drag him down the jacket so that his upper body is free. Meinert pulls the whip out of his belt, which he always carries with him, and strikes Hermann Glockenspiel in the best way. Whether the intensified torrent of pain awakens Hermann from his impotence, he must suffer with all his still existing senses worst torments. He cries out all his misery. Then he fainted again.

Little Erich must look at it all. When the father begins to scream, he immediately wants to hurry to him. A Jewish fellow-inmate standing behind him can just keep him behind. Erich begins to weep. The fellow prisoner holds his mouth shut. It would be impossible to imagine what would happen. The first guardian of guardianship also does not stop in front of children.

Then the prisoners move out to work. Erich must go to the ammunition factory, where he has to sort and transport cartridge cases. He has to get together very much, he thinks of his father all day.

After the morning roll call, Fritz Meinert wants to have a second breakfast as always. He has to get out early every morning. He owes that to these bastards here. He goes over to the strictly divided SS area, which is twice the size of the prisoner area. Here are SS training camps with barracks and training rooms, workshops where prisoners also work, team barracks and officers´ apartments, a bakery and the administration building.

Meinert and his wife live in a spacious officer apartment. When he enters the apartment, it smells of fresh coffee. His wife Gisela knows his work rhythm very well, she has prepared everything for breakfast. Gisela is a thin, impoverished woman. She seems to lack any kind of zest for life. Basically, she knows exactly what her husband is doing there in the camp, alone, she doesn´t want to admit it. Certainly not to speak to him about it. An Aryan woman has a duty to perform: she must be loyal, willing to sacrifice, capable of suffering, selfless. In her courage role, she takes care of steel, ready to fight, she is the source of the nation and the keeper of high-quality genetic material. The decisions are made by the men.

The Meinerts have a grown son who left for London at the beginning of the war, when he was just 21 years old. He wanted nothing to do with the Nazis and their fatal longing for war. Although Fritz Meinert beat the boy almost bloody, he even refused to join the Hitler Youth. Such a son is a shame for an SS man. He died for Fritz Meinert.

The SS Obersturmbannführer is having a good time at the breakfast table. Nothing is missing. Bread, sausage, cheese, everything there. He also desperately needs it. The day is still long, who knows how much the prisoner pack will still annoy him? "This Jew!" it escapes him and he shakes his head. Gisela flinches. Secretly, she has an idea of what an SS man does to a Jew who beats his only son the way she experienced Fritz.

Gisela evades. "In the morning, a speech by Hitler was broadcast on the radio," she says. "And what did he say?" "We should persevere, face the enemy." Yes, that´s typical Hitler, Meinert thinks. He never thought much of that. Clear statements, clear orders never...