Jorge Gallo Kim Robeson Creative Writing 5 November 2008 Schadenfreude Frau Irma Grese, aged twenty-one, Senior

Supervisor of Auschwitz II1. Attributes: efficacy, dilligence, discipline. I am a stout, healthy, fertile, German woman prepared to serve the country that has materialized my ideals. Defficiencies: beauty, grace, appeal, subtlety. I was leader of the Bund Deutscher Mdel2 and moved to the Belief and Beauty society, voluntarily, at age seventeen. My experience in school was unpleasant and as a result I climbed the ranks of a Party dominated by men, and am proud of my achievements. I hold no contempt or compassion for Untermensch3; my work is only mechanical, orderly and entirely logical. Such are the requirements of the Beast of Belsen. They think that I am unaware of what they call me when I am not around. They do not know that I find out about everything. The Beast of Belsen, they say, and I whip them on the next day. They have nowhere to run and I have nothing else to do. Business at the camp is much more well-organized than Waffen4 superiors tend to think. At the end of the day they are cattle and we are workers. To guide a herd is a task that requires discipline and rigor, but is greatly rewarding. I see trains roll into the main station, billowing smoke, and I feel the twist of joy in my innards. The feeling is indescribable accurately; it comes and passes in seconds, but its intensity has only multiplied with time. Sometimes I order the wards to take up the biggest hoses and pump water into the trail cars, which leaks through the wood covers and rains down on prisoners. There is nothing quite like the writhing bodies of newcomers, untangling themselves within the constraints of the car. The floor is cold. Most of the time it snows in the morning. As they march out of the sorting areas, I assess their bodily structures and break them. The science of debasing a mans will to live is a very exact one. They line up, shivering, and I withdraw my pistol. I will admit that I enjoy picking who I will shoot. The process is intended to be random; as a result, nobody believes themselves to be safe if they work hard or hide. But personal bias is also factored into the matter. Perhaps it will be an old woman who is still grieving the shaving of her hair. The obese and the rare, retarded prisoner are highly prioritized. I let them fall unceremoniously and watch the expressions of the others. The exact same animalistic fear dominates the entire crowd. I scream at them and the wards remain silent. This is step one.
1 2

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/grese.html League of German Girls, a Nazi female youth organization. 3 Sub-human: a term used in Nazi racial ideology to refer to all people considered inferior, including Jews, Gypsies, Slavs, homosexuals and Soviet Bolsheviks. 4 Waffen-SS, the combat division of the German Schutzstaffel or SS.

Step two involves the election of prisoners to be gassed immediately. I let them know that they are going where they will not come back from. Of course, I say nothing direct, but they know when I point them to the left and they are escorted by guards to the disinfection rooms. They are, in all certainty, well-aware that they are not disinfection showers, but they will cling to the last hope that they can find. Hope and the consequent destruction of it are basic material, outlined carefully in manuals and pamphlets. I know many of them by heart. Haupsturmfuhers have called me fanatical, on account of my sex and my adherence to the Party. I pay no mind to them. At this point the new arrivals have been decimated, and the remaining workers are ideally able-bodied and capable of performing manual labor. I let them go, and they begin their work almost instantaneously. Some have pondered the possibility of revolt among prisoners. I laugh in the face of these concerns. The theory holds two vital fallacies: the first is the assumption that Untermensch are capable of assembled thoughts and complex planning, which is simply preposterous. The second fallacy is the consideration that the prisoners may still have some fighting spirit in them. But when they are given nothing to eat but cold bread and soup without body or nutrients, they become very automatic. I ride through the camps and see it in the way they carry themselves; very silent, very still, always shuffling out of my way. Often it makes me smile. The complete submission of their will to live or die is a crucial sign of success in the last leg of the operation. After all, Herr Interrogator, the Jew is a resource. He is perhaps the most valuable resource discovered by Germany or the world. His hair is U-boat insulation material. His muscle is construction labor. His body is a donation to medical research. His wealth is the gold of the Party. His skin makes for a fine lampshade or valise cover. The notches of his spine are rings! Herr Interrogator, do you understand the paradox of my condemnation? Is a farmer hanged for sacrificing cattle to feed his family?