Tuesday, Jul. 13, 2004 - 21:42

...I had this dream last week but was too out of it with fever/flu at the time to make the effort of committing it to ‘paper’. Now, however, I’d like to remedy that.

It began in an open field in the countryside. I was standing on a small hillock watching a slow moving line of poorly dressed people marching towards a roughly cut pit. There were around 30 or more people in this line, most of them old and frail. They were dressed like peasants. Their faces were gaunt, lined, their eyes looking overly large in their half-starved faces.

When I had the chance to meet there gaze what stared back at me was numbed emptiness mixed with a gloomy acceptance of the futility of it all; pain, yes, but pain that was coming to an end.

It was then I noticed the guards walking along side the line of people. Men in dark grey uniforms carrying rifles. I noticed the flash of a Nazi Swastika and at the same moment realised I was in Poland.

Though I don’t remember walking, I found myself moving through the field, putting the doomed people and the pit of death behind me… though I did hear the rhythmic cracks of gunshots echoing behind me.

Now I found myself standing on muddy ground with filthy buildings all around me… my eye was drawn to one squat structure in front of which was a queue of more hapless looking people. Looking around my surrounds I realised with sickening dread where I was: Auschwizt.

Examining the squat building further I noticed it to be windowless. To one side, parked by a wall, was a cart not unlike what might be seen at a train station to carry baggage and suitcases. But I knew that this cart would soon be carrying something else altogether.

I turned to examine the people lined up outside the off-white, squat building. A man in German uniform was near the door. In his harsh, guttural language he was explaining to the procession that they were required to remove all their garments once they were inside; they (the people) needed to be ‘deloused’ as the camp had a serious problem with fleas and scabies, so they would be treated to a shower.

The people in the line up looked scared, lost and confused… old and young, men and women (though less young men than women and old people), my attention was then taken by one particular youth. He appeared to be somewhere in his mid-teens. He was willowy of build, dressed humbly but in clothes that seemed to suit and fit him. His skin was alabaster smooth and fine; his face elfin from which large grey-blue eyes stared out, bristling with pain and fear.

I knew this boy in an instant; recognised him as easily as I would if I’d been standing in front of a mirror. For he was ‘me’, only he didn’t look anything like I do, yet somehow I knew we were the one and the same person… and I knew his story; a farm boy with an older sister who had been murdered – shot – while heavily pregnant, by Nazi soldiers who had visited their family farm…

The boy seemed to be the only person who could see me… I tried to tell him: “Don’t go in there! Whatever you do! Do not go in there!”

But while he seemed to be able to see me, he didn’t appear to understand what I was saying. I tried to warn him further: -

“They’re going to kill you! All of you! With gas! Please, don’t do it… run! Just don’t go in there, whatever you do,” I cried, my throat feeling hoarse from yelling.

But even as I spoke the words, the line up of people was being pushed into the squat structure… the boy with the haunting eyes kept looking back at me…. I felt a horrible ache in my chest in anticipation, I suppose, of the Fate he and the others were to share. I could see, in my mind’s eye, all of them inside, trapped, naked, frantic, terrified as the gas filled the chamber… the screams, the wailing... people clambering to get to the door (locked behind them), their bodies piling up against it; bowels and bladders letting lose, tears falling… Life being raped…

… then I woke up: screaming.

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