Some Unfinished Business

Waking up to a glamorous city, seeing the happy people, and cleaning up France, makes me feel alive.   My name is Alexandre Caron, and I am a Holocaust survivor. Even though it’s been nine years since the end of World War II, it feels like it was just yesterday. Garcon, when you look back at the tough parts of life like losing those you love, you realize that it’s tough being the one who survives.  Sometimes I wish I had died in the ovens.  Though a bunch of us are still trying to move forward with life, I just can’t. Whenever I go to bed, I have nightmares, nightmares that my dead family are coming back as zombies, nightmares that feel like another war is beginning, and nightmares that someone else may finish what Hitler started. One way or another, I have to find these monsters, and end their tyranny.

I will start looking in Germany for some answers. From there, I shall find these Nazis, by using the phone book records, and my memories from the time I spent in the Polish concentration camp, Bergen Belsen. With any luck, I can find some information about these men and bring them to Justice, but it will be my justice, not the courts.

First, I will need to get a passport, then a ticket for Berlin. From there I can find records of these men at the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek library and use the phone books to find them.

Today is Thursday, April 18^th 1955, and the hunt begins. I have taken  a Eurorail train to the station in Berlin, Germany. When I arrive, I Travel to the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek library. The inside of the building is not as wide as the ones were in my country France, before the Nazi’s invaded.  As I walk through the doors, I walk up to the front desk to ask the Librarian if she has any records of German officers from the last World War. She says on level 3, in section D8 16, and with that I say Danke.  Does she notice that I speak German with a French accent, I wonder. As I walk up the stairs, I am surprised to see a huge selection of books still intact, even after what the Russians did to Germany during the final days of the war

On level three, I walk through section D, where I look on level 8 and in file 16, I find Historical records of multiple officers most loyal to Hitler. First, there is Heiner Weber, A colonel who was in charge of keeping the Americans from the European borders. Next, there’s Magnus Zimmermann, a major who was responsible for the air force.  Finally, there was one I had hoped to never about again, General Karl-Heinz Wolf. He was the one I knew personally. In June of 1940, Wolf was part of the invasion party that attacked my country, France. I remember being forced out of my home along with my Parents, My Uncle, My Aunt, my cousins and my brother. We were sent on board a prison truck along with thousands of other French Jews.

My father, my uncle, my cousin Joseph, and my little brother Fabien were separated from my mom, aunt, and other cousin. 

I remember being sent to a concentration camp in Poland with my family, walking in straight lines with many other Jews. As we entered the camp, we could see German guards armed with machine guns and in the tower, several guards stood with heavy machine guns called ZB37. On the other side of the fence, we could see several prisoners digging graves for the dead, each one had a different number on their arms, and I walked with an intense face, knowing that was the fate that awaited us.

I remember being spared the first selection and watching them take my mother and aunts and never seeing them again.  Only the smoke rising from the crematorium.  I saw the guards beating up a prisoner in the camp for not bowing deeply enough as they passed the General. As the rest of us looked on, my father rushed to the prisoner’s rescue and tried fighting off the guards, and as a result General Wolf shot him several times in the chest.  I watched in horror but did not move forward to save my father. The years in the camp got tougher for us. One day, my uncle fell to his knees due to starvation. General Wolf ordered him up, but my uncle did not get up, then he ordered his guards to beat him up only to have Joseph come to the rescue. As Joseph fought off the guards, the general fired his gun on him. My uncle tried to avenge Joseph, but the general fired on him also. Karl-Heinz Wolf had gone too far, first by killing my father, then my uncle then my cousin. I knew from there, he would pay.

As 1944 came , the Germans found themselves on the edge of defeat. My brother Fabien and I knew we had to get out or die. As the guards moved all the remaining prisoners into the transporting trucks, General Wolf was fleeing in his private Steyr Command car and that was the last I ever saw of him.  After American troops came to the rescue, Fabien and I were taken into American tents, given water and bread to sustain us enough to survive the rest of the war.

The files I find here today shall serve as helpful tools to finding these monsters. I will start with General Karl-Heinz Wolf, then move onto Magnus Zimmermann, and finally end with Heiner Weber.

Once I find him, I’ll need a cover story.  I want to watch him.  I want to get to know him. Maybe I even want him to trust me, maybe we will think we are friends.  And then I will strike.  But I am not like him. I will stop with his death, I will not seek vengeance against his family.  I seek only the guity.

From here on out, I will become a being of vengeance, a slayer among Nazi’s, a nightmarish figure. Throughout the country, those who meet my bullets shall call me the Annihilator.