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American
Auschwitz
By
Clifford W. Lazar
Copyright Ó
1985, 2002, by Clifford W. Lazar
Appearing in Sid's rear view mirror, and then disappearing behind curves,
was a van. If Sid had bothered to
look, he would have seen, and possibly recognized, two young men in the front
seat. The driver was Heinz; the
other was Alex Von Kolman. In the
back were three young men.
A thin one with blonde hair was cleaning a small bore hunting rifle,
ramming the bolt back and forth, enjoying the clatch-slide-click-clunk and the
look of the perfect yellow brown film of oil on the gray steel bolt.
With the bolt open, he looked at the reflection of his thumb as it
wrapped itself down the straight silvery barrel marked with the spiral black
rifling that spins the bullet and imparts its superior accuracy.
Another young man, somewhat cherubic, in his early twenties with black
stringy hair, disassembled a snub-length black M-16 automatic rifle with his
eyes closed, lips counting. His
steady, beefy fingers surgically and rhythmically snapped out bolts and pins and
slides. As he proceeded he thought the nomenclature for each part and
placed the blue gray sculptured steel parts in order on a square of red felt
cloth. "Twenty-nine, thirty,
thirty-one. Ha, thirty seconds and eyes shut!" he shouted.
The third grunted; he was checking an air-cooled machine gun, its soot
black barrel, centered in Swiss cheese-like cooling tube.
The rectangular machined box containing the firing mechanism was mounted
on a tripod. The thirty caliber
bore; big enough to hold a baby's finger was centered in the blunt round barrel,
the size of a baby's fist. Claus,
the lanky machine gunner, sat cross-legged and opened the breach flap and
inserted an empty ammo chain. He
closed the flap, with a slap of his hand, and grasped the two handles, feeling
the tripod grip the floor. He
looked down the barrel of the machine gun, imagining a line of naked Jewish men
35 yards in front of him.
Claus eyed the left-most man, an old man, in his sixties whose hands were
hiding his nakedness, black pubic hair still showed above the wrists.
Soft flaccid skin hung on his small chest. Wisps of black hair. Dark deep-set eyes. “All
the Jews have big noses and dark deep set eyes,” Claus thought.
“Squeeeeze the trigger. Dat-Dat-Dat-Dat-Dat.
The first one down. Dat-Dat-Dat,
the second. Wasting bullets. Dat-Dat, the third, Dat, the head snapped back. Dat again,
Dat. Dat, right between the eyes.
End of the line, no waste. Look
at 'em. Neat, clean"
The young men in the van were all dressed like hikers. Plaid shirts, Levi’s, boots. Behind the van were more vehicles. Two vans, a pickup, two jeeps and a station wagon. All were filled with pale, intense young men, all reasonably dressed like hikers. All were traveling to an appointment; aimed at showing that thirty determined armed men were superior to a thousand Jewish sheep.
"It's good to be away from the city," said Heinz, the wind blowing his bleached blond hair down onto his forehead.
"Yes, and now that we are en route," Von Kolman turned to those in the back, "I'm going to tell you: This hike is more than weapons familiarization and target practice.
"As in the plan, at the next intersection we will fan out. Later we will arrive at the camping ground unnoticed, at different times, from various routes."