THE ICE OF WINTER

SYNOPSIS THE ICE OF WINTER

It was cold that morning when I walked up to the barracks. I wondered what people were brought in. And if they were usable for my investigations. I was always working on investigations. As a doctor, there was always something I wanted to know. Here in the barracks, I was living my dream. With lots of Guinee pigs at my disposal, I had only to choose. I usually started questioning the new people who were brought in. All about their medical history throughout their life. All about their family and their medical history. I was looking for all that was strange. All the things that I did not know about. Or twins. Brothers and sisters. People who looked alike. I did tests on those people. All kinds of tests. Mostly without sedation. Nobody cared. They were going to die anyway. Going to the gas chambers. Orders from above. Orders that made all kinds of people rise up for the occasion. People who loved power. People who liked to hurt other people but couldn’t express that kind of behavior in ordinary life. As a doctor, you make a promise to heal people. To make them better to the most of your abilities. With Hitler coming to power, all things good were made wrong. All my abilities were put to work at the dark side, but assumingly to the good side. But I didn’t mind, I did what I was told to do. Investigation of the human body. Investigation on bodies of people who didn’t matter. Who didn’t belong to our strong Arian race. We couldn’t investigate on ourselves? Not the things I planned to do.

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Intro: Black Celebration by Depeche Mode

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I felt proud to be the all-important Arian doctor. I really made it. At 36 years old I made it to this important position as a doctor at camp Bergen-Belsen. Not a doctor in the normal meaning of the word, but a person with medical knowledge to conduct experiments on people in the camp. Especially experiments on how to kill and dispose of people in the fastest way. On an almost industrial level. We didn’t want to spend money on food for them when they had to be killed anyway. And we got thousands and thousands of people coming in at one point in time. So it had to happen fast and without any stagnation or trouble.

Not the kind of thing I thought of first when becoming a doctor. But I had this other side to my character that was not known to people. In ordinary life, I did not show this side. It was too extreme and not tolerated. But the impossible became possible as soon as the war started. The new leader brought new rules and new ideas. Suddenly, the impossible became the way to go.

It was a disorder in my head that made me able to do this kind of work. To be this kind of man. I knew that I was different from my teen years. I was intelligent. I made it through school and University easily. Passing cum laude. I knew it was not normal to enjoy to see people in pain or die. Or wanting to murder people. Common sense kept me from murdering people as I knew I would go to prison when I got caught and I would not take that risk. I wanted to become a doctor when I came to know that I could so work with dead bodies. I became a medical examiner. I could use my knowledge of how people became to die when the war started. I just turned the whole thing around.

When Hitler came in the picture, with all his ideas of keeping our Arian race clean, I offered my ideas and expertise. The idea of murdering great amounts of people was exciting to me. And it was made legal! It was the job of my life! I dived right into it as soon as I got my appointment. I became to work at different camps. I set it all up. My ideas were met with excitement. Wow! So many people, in so little time? Will it work? Let’s try. Let’s build those gas chambers. Let’s build those ovens. And so it happened.

Was it bad, what I was doing? Of course. That was not how I was brought up! My mother always told me to be kind to everyone, and that killing was a sin. You would go to hell! But if I wouldn’t do it, someone else would. Orders from above. It made me feel innocent. Like I was free to do what I wanted. The guilt was not on me and I could do all that I wanted. The Fuhrer was happy with all the progress we made. We made a start and could go now at full throttle.

I didn’t think about the injustice against the Jews, Roma, and Sinti or any person that was killed. My head just wasn’t build that way. The pain these people had to go through, it only made me happy to work this job. With Hitler, the world had a great mastermind of evil, and I was just happy to participate. So choose your leader wisely. It’s not only him who is coming to power but also the ones he is bringing with him.

**

Nanette

We were brought into the shower. We had no choice. We were not used to showing our nakedness to other people. But after cutting our hair the feeling dawned that evil had come upon us and that there was no escaping. Lots of people were standing with us in this room. We were waiting for the water to run but suddenly people were falling down. My mother covered me, so no people would fall on me. People started to panic and wanted to get out of the room. People started choking and couldn’t get air. I was feeling sick to my stomach. Still hiding beneath my mom in a corner of the room on the floor I sat quietly. Being so little I didn’t understand what was happening. It went quiet in the room and everybody had laid down on the floor. I wanted to ask my mom what had happened but she was asleep. I could not wake her up, I felt so sad! Suddenly men came in. I was still hiding beneath my mom so they wouldn’t see me. The men started dragging all the people out, by their arms or legs. I still didn’t understand it. Suddenly a man grabbed me and then my mother. I was so scared! He looked at me, he must have seen that I was awake. He grabbed me and took me to a room, it was hot in there…. 

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Haevn – We are

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This screenplay is not entirely finished yet