My Honor is Called Loyalty

A piece of historical fiction, My Honor is Called Loyalty is about the price of loyalty upon one's conscience. It was previously published in The MacGuffin literary magazine in 2010.

The door shudders from the weight of Krieg’s foot slamming against it. We wait.

Our firearms are ready, though I know what waits inside will not necessitate weapons. We could kill them with our bare hands if we had to. They are just a little family.

Splinters form and jut out by the handle as Krieg kicks the door again, his black leather boot bulging with the muscle inside it. Oberscharfuhrer Metzger wanted us to move in two teams �" one through the front door, one through the back. We found the back entrance blockaded from the inside however, so our unit had gathered here at the front of the Schultz family home. Dressed in black and standing stock-still in the rain, we might appear to be a mourning funeral party if not for the guns held tightly in our hands.

We are Schutzstaffel and no one here will be mourning the Schultz family. At least that’s what we’re told. What we tell ourselves. And finally, the door collapses.

We rush in, sweeping through the rooms, shouting for the family we know is hiding inside to come out and surrender. No one answers. The Shultzes will never know that half the Schutzstaffel inside their home are hoping the intelligence we received is wrong, and that the family is not there at all. This hope creeps into their voices as it does in my own. It comes out as a tentativeness, a hesitance behind the howling commands. We tell ourselves, and each other, that it’s just nerves that cause our voices to crack and the words to catch in our throats.

I enter the kitchen, and immediately notice something is wrong. Then I see it. There are potatoes on the counter, and none of them are rotten. The family is still here. Krieg stomps into the kitchen, scowling. He is a brute, but not dumb. “They still live here, Scharfuhrer,” he says to me. I nod and point to the cabinets. “Open them.” Krieg and a fellow named Eberhardt begin to throw open the cupboards. I watch, kicking at the rug on the floor and shuffling my feet. Rank breeds priveledge; priveledge breeds boredom.

A voice shouts from behind me. “Scharfuhrer!” I snap to attention. Oberscharfuhrer Metzger enters the room, looking disdainfully at my soldiers and I. “Why are your men tossing the kitchen like thieves?”

“Many Jews hide in cupboards, sir. I’ve seen it before.”

“Nonsense, Fliescher. Jews may be decietful but they’re not that clever.” He points to Kreig and Eberhardt. “Search the basement with the others! We will find nothing here but spoiled foods.” The two men run downstairs. Metzger crosses the kitchen to the cupboards and kicks one of them shut. It slams into its frame like a gunshot and a stifled gasp comes from beneath the countertop. For a second, I think Metzger doesn’t hear it.

He stoops and flings open a door, revealing an old man and a young girl. Metzger snatches the girl from the man’s arms and throws her onto the kitchen floor. She begins sobbing immediately. “Get out here, you animal!” He hauls the older man, Schultz, no doubt, out of the cupboard. The man hits his brow on the frame, but Metzger pays him no mind. He throws the man on the floor as well, but the man catches himself on his hands and stands.

Metzger pulls his pistol and points it in the man’s face. I point my gun at him as well. Schultz does not move. “On your knees!” The Oberscharfuhrer c***s his pistol. Schultz looks down at the little girl crying on the floor, then to me, then back to Metzger. He makes a deep sound in his throat, then spits in the Oberscharfuhrer’s face. The spits lands rights above Metzger’s eye and he slaps a gloved hand to his skin, sneering in disgust.

I shoot Herr Schultz in the head, twice.

*

It is nine months later.

I am at the extermination camp at Maly Trostenets, and the Totenkopfverbande are hard at work. We kill all day. Every day. We kill, and we move, and we burn. All day. Every day.

I am an Obersturmbannführer now. The promotions came quickly, as my unit and I gained honor and reputation through unwavering service to our Führer. These days, it seems like it doesn’t take much to do this, though I don’t complain. Krieg is here as well, and another soldier from our unit named Keller. I talk to Keller very little, and Krieg even less. And yet, they’re the closest to friends I’ve come in a long while.

Oberscharfuhrer Metzger had not been promoted, and when I surpassed him, I lost touch. Last I heard, he had been killed by the Russians, though I do not know how. I cannot say I wouldn’t like to hear the story.

I know little of the war outside, nor do I care to. My parents and my sister died four months ago during a bombing raid by the British. I was not allowed to attend their funerals, what sad and little affairs they might have been. Since then, I haven’t taken the time to regail myself with the exploits of our grand armies.

A new truckload of Roma is coming down the road. The gates to the camp open at my command, and the truck enters, rolling to a stop in front of my Storm Unit. My soldiers lower the back gate of the truck and begin pulling the prisoners from the back. They wrestle with the few who have the will left to fight; of course the soldiers win. I’ve learned that it isn’t a matter of courage for the prisoners to fight back, once they enter the camp �" it’s only a matter of strength. They have barely enough energy to shuffle off to the baths.

Roma fight more often than the Jews and the others, but today’s delivery is a sad and sickly lot, and their dark hollow eyes tell me that the baths hold no mystery for them. They know what’s at the bottom of the stairs. They know that in an hour, they’ll be back on that same truck.

* * *

My day at Maly Trostenets typically goes something like this: I wake up, bathe, get dressed, eat breakfast, and go to the main office. I check the incoming telegrams from the night and early morning, check with the office clerks for papers that require my signature, then leave the office for the rest of the day (if I can). I then do a routine check of every guard post and station in the camp �" I do this every three hours, to be exact.

When the shipments of prisoners come in, I’m always there to supervise. From delivery, to herding them into the baths, to the cleanup �" I’m there. The only thing I’ve never been able to do is go to the woods where they burn the bodies. Never. Rank breeds privilege; privilege breeds cowardice.

The shipments start at about noon and stop at about six at night. On average, we get three shipments a day, with around thirty prisoners in each shipment. When the prisoners have been processed �" either directly to the baths or to the satellite labor camps �" I sign the requisite paperwork, then go back to my quarters. I have a late supper, alone, then I shine my boots. Then I drink myself to sleep. The bottle of cognac is hidden, not very well, inside my closet behind an old shoe box. This bottle is not the first I’ve had since coming to this camp, nor is it the thirty-first. But it is the same bottle to me.

* * *

Doctor Erzberger runs up to me as I enter the chamber. Before the war, Erzberger had been a dentist in Berlin. He’s a dentist here, of sorts. “Look,” he cried. “Look at this!” He held up before my face a tin can full of bloody gold teeth. In his other hand, he held a fistful of dollars. “It’s nothing like those diamonds we found last week, but damn, the job pays well!”

I brush past Erzberger and approach Krieg and Keller, who are looking down at a young man. At first, I can’t tell what they’re staring at, and then I realize �" the young man is still alive. “What in hell-” I start to say, and the two men both jump with surprise. The prisoner moans �" more of a gasp, really �" and his eyes flick back and forth between the three of us.

“When did you sneak in, Frederick?” asks Krieg. If we were anywhere but the baths, I would reprimand him for being so informal. Instead, I ignore him and tap Keller on the shoulder.

“How is this man still alive?”

Keller shakes his head. “I’m sorry, sir,” he says as he runs a hand across his stubble, “I haven’t a clue.”

* * *

I end my day early, retreating to my quarters at half-past six. The shipment of Roma had been the only arrival of the day, and they were long gone by now. I skip supper, but don’t neglect to shine my boots or hang up my uniform. The bottle in the closet comes out early tonight �" it usually doesn’t do so until eight or nine, but tonight it opens up at seven. The image of the living Roma in the baths is still in my head. I’ve heard soldiers say they see the terrible things they’ve done when they close their eyes, but that’s not the case. I don’t have to close my eyes to see what I’ve done.

* * *

I push back the snipped section of chain-link fence to allow Herr Shafer through. He doesn’t go through himself, but opts to help me hold the metal links up for the others. Six men, twelve women, and six children. Twenty four Jews huddle by the back fence of the Maly Trostenets camp. They are the first Jews, that I know of, to escape from one of the camps. And it’s my fault.

The shipment had come in at ten thirty, long after any others. I was already deep into a dark sleep when Obersturmfuhrer Nachtman knocked on my door. Nachtman had the night shift duties that I carried out during the day, and before now, that had never included receiving any shipments. He knocked on my door, his face red in the cheeks and nose, and I wondered if all his redness was from the cold.

We hurried down to the unloading area, where I demanded an explanation for the late shipment. The driver of the truck said that these Jews had been found hiding in a school in Minsk, and the commanding officer had decided that it wasn’t too late to send them on their way. Nachtman mumbled something about shooting them in the school and I ignored him.

Nachtman and I escorted the Jews to the baths, where I had decided they would spend the night. We had no prison cells or barracks for these people, and the only room large enough to hold them all was the bath chamber. We left them there shortly after eleven, locked inside the pitch-black room, that undoubtedly always reeks of death. I can no longer smell it.

And now I stand with my arms in the air, waiting for the last of the twenty four Jews to pass underneath the fence. Nachtman lays dead twenty meters to my left. He stumbled across us, just after I released the Jews from the baths. I stabbed him three times in the belly, and as he fell to the ground, I told him that I was sorry.

I thank God that Maly Trostenets has no guard towers, otherwise we would be spotted in seconds. No prisoners means no need for towers. And here now, I hear a shout. It’s Krieg. He’s running towards me, his hands waving. In the light of the building behind him, I can see a group of guards, but they waver, uncertain of their place in such a situation.

Krieg hollers, “Obersturmbannführer, what are you doing?”

I make no attempt to excuse my actions to him, I only hold the link wider as a twin boy and girl pair rush through. Herr Shafer nods to me and gives me a smile. I havent seen a Jew smile in three years.

Krieg is upon us now, and I turn to face him. I put my hands on his chest as he rushes forward and I push him back as hard as I can. Large as he is, I barely move him. “What are you doing?” he screams again. I punch him in the jaw, and his head snaps to the right so hard I hear the joints in his neck popping. He turns back to me, blood running from his mouth and onto his pristine black uniform.

Krieg throws me to the ground, then grabs me by the coat and hits me across my face. He breaks my nose, and blood pours over my mouth and chin. He makes a snatch at the insignia on my collar, trying to tear it off, then grunts and lets me drop. I fall to the ground, and as I hit the dirt, I look to my left. I can no longer see the escaping prisoners. I look back to Krieg and find that he too is peering into the darkness. He looks back down at me. He shakes his head as he pulls his pistol from its holster. He flicks the safety off and points his gun at me.

I know what he is thinking.

My honor is called loyalty.

And I agree.