Oskar Schindler: of war, machines and twisted things

Year 13, Lawrence Area School)

THE day the Kvatch Ghetto was emptied into the work camps was, I often thought, the turning point.

It was the moment when the pit opened itself inside my stomach, the feeling of wrongness took hold of me and festered and grew like rot and decay, until it was too much for me to deny.

I could no longer deny the truth set before me; that war did indeed make monsters out of men and I, I too was no different.

Shaking my thoughts clear of my dark reminiscing, I reached over to pick up the glass of wine sitting on the table beside me and took a small sip, lips quirked at the irony that I thought I had found my success all those years ago.

Indeed, I had found my success, as one of the gears of the machine that had already been spinning for quite some time; the great, monstrous machine named genocide.

Wiping the scowl off my face, I took another sip of wine to calm myself, my gaze sweeping the room from my comfortable chair by the blazing fireplace.

Back then, on the day the Kvatch Ghetto was cleared, I made many, many excuses, deluding myself into thinking that there was some kind of logic behind the Nazis actions — some kind of righteous method to their madness.

It was months before it truly set in and the gaping abyss in my chest became too large to ignore.

What I had witnessed was unprovoked, unexplained murder — the destruction of entire families, of homes, of innocent lives. For nothing!

This time I couldn’t stop the scowl from spreading across my face as I placed my wine down.

Standing after a minute, I reached over and snagged my glass of wine once more before walking to the large window overlooking the farmlands beyond.

Gazing over these peaceful, sunny farmlands often acted as a balm for my aching heart. The view calmed me.

Looking over these quiet, peaceful lands served as a reminder of why, even though I had lost my fortune, even though I had lost my one true chance of success, I will never, ever wish for those days to return.

I had come to that conclusion long ago, that I would rather live as I do know, unsuccessful and repentant, rather than unrepentant and successful, another cog in the war machine; the murder machine.

My gaze swept out across the land beyond the panes of glass in the window.

My eyes were drawn towards the sinking sun as it bathed all before it in a strangely cleansing array of oranges and reds, stretching the shadows of the world further and further as it sank, until eventually they would be all that remained, covering the world in their eerie darkness.

I am no saint. I have sinned, I have seen terrible things and I have done terrible things.

But I am no demon, no devil lurking in the shadows to prey upon the weak.

I am just human; a flawed, sinful species that makes mistakes and, hopefully, learns from them.

And indeed, I learnt from mine, the hard way.

I am a man who saw an opportunity for success and grasped it with both hands, and in doing so, found myself not fully understanding what I was doing, jerked into the cogs and gears and spinning wheels of the great machine of ending eras.

The war machine, that swallowed tens of thousands, millions even, and spat out only mangled corpses and shattered dreams for broken families to bury.

Back then, I had become a part of the great, terrible, horrifying machine called genocide, which took an entire culture, an entire religion, and tore it to pieces, mangling it in the jaws of persecution.

And I am rather proud to admit that in the end, I was a wrench in the works, throwing that great, terrible machine off ever so slightly with my actions, rather than be another cog that kept the machine running.

Turning my back to the last, wilting rays of sunlight and gulp ing down the last of my wine, I moved to leave the room.

I continually remind myself that I have never been an angel, a haloed saint, but I am hardly a monstrous demon either.

I am a human being, flawed and imperfect.

I’ve made mistakes, far too many to ever remember. I still make just as many.

And I learn from them, and will continue to learn from them until the day I go to face my judgement in the heavenly court above.

And as I ready myself for sleep and climb beneath the warm covers of my bed, I find that I am oddly content with that.

Because I, Oskar Schindler, am a human being, and I am damn proud of it.