At Least My Suffering Will Be Invoked In An Egregious Analogy To Gaza One Day

By Srul Zaiden, Sonderkommando corpse disposal squad

Belzec, June 24 – Hell on Earth. That’s the only way to get close to describing my existence at the moment, and even then, the words ring hollow, inadequate. No reason, no purpose governs this living death, but I cling to one small spark of hope: that in the distant future, my torment will serve as an example, however wrongly construed, to the plight of a people who elected a terrorist group to govern them and protest against the blockade that restricts the importation of weapons, a blockade that somehow will result in zero deaths from malnutrition.

Our grim work here at Belzec begins with the unenviable task of clearing the dead from the train, and washing out those cattle cars from the remnants of blood, waste, and decaying flesh. Some unfortunates must interact with the Jews being “off-loaded,” and trying in vain to warn them that the “resettlement in the east” the Nazis promised them means an imminent death in pain and terror. I think of the analogies advocates will make to a place where burgeoning sales of luxury cars will take place in the Gaza Strip of the twenty-first century.

Then we proceed to “processing” the possessions and clothing of the arrivals, the vast majority of whom will never see any possessions again, in the few minutes of life they have remaining. I am reminded of the painful choices the leadership of Gaza will face: invest in people, infrastructure, and building up the economy, or in killing Jews? It is the latter where the similarity rings true to me, but that will not be the salient feature of the invocation those decades from now.

The guards will chase the now-stripped arrivals down the path to the killing chamber, beating them and cursing them, just to make sure the Jews’ last moments on earth contain no respite from fear or suffering. One in particular likes to use a pipe or a wrench, and you can see the glee on his face at each sound of bone breaking, each futile plea for mercy. Some never make it to the chamber under their own power, but are packed in sardine-like as the heavy door slams. The guards crank up a modified old Soviet tank engine and pump the carbon monoxide in. They wait twenty minutes. Did I mention the lively beach scene in Gaza?

Our turn to deal with corpses, blood, and human waste comes once again as we must carry the bodies out for burial, but first we must extract any gold fillings. Then we dump them in mass graves. At some point the Nazis will grow concerned at the omnipresent evidence of crimes against humanity, and force our squad to dig the bodies up and burn them. But not yet. For now, I cast my imagination to Gaza, where the unspeakable suffering of fancy restaurants and bridal showers is documented on the internet by the celebrants.

Sonderkommando members rarely live very long; those whom the guards do not kill, will kill themselves; suicide rates are at ninety percent. But at least, one day, our misery will be reflected in the torment of Gaza, where nightlife and shopping malls color a landscape I will never see.

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