The Holocaust Opera

by Mark Edward Hall

In time, however, the music began to affect them all in ways that Aaron did not understand. He and Mengele had been experimenting with harmonic tones inside the structures of the songs and finally began to understand how they could be discreetly placed into the compositions. The tones were so subtle that they added no discernable differences in the compositions from the viewpoint of a casual listener. There were definite and noticeable differences in listeners who were exposed to the songs over a period of time.

  The addition of these peculiar tones caused headaches and depression in all of them. Mengele became irrational and began to abuse Brawne verbally. He pushed the sessions to the very limits of emotional and physical endurance. Aaron did not like the changes in Mengele and he liked even less what Mengele was forcing him to do. He’d never imagined that music could be manipulated in such a way, and he was horrified that Mengele was so devious, so barbaric, that he would consider using the muse as weapon.

  As each session closed, Mengele seemed to be slipping further and further away from rational thought. As a buffer against the sickness and the negative compulsions, he began to drink heavily, and with intoxication he became even more belligerent and abusive. Brawne seemed to be the one taking the brunt of his rage, for she began to show signs of physical abuse. Aaron became convinced that Mengele’s sanity was slipping even as he fought to hold onto his own.

  In those days, Aaron rarely saw his father, but realized that a position in the camp orchestra had spared Abraham, at least for the time being. So he played along, biding his time, hoping that he could keep his own sanity intact long enough to take advantage of an opportunity to escape if one should arise.

  As Mengele’s rationality eroded, he began to pay more and more attention to Eva. As he coached her singing, he would hold his body close to hers. All the while, Eva would steal terror-filled glances at Aaron. Brawne would avert her eyes, as if in shame, not daring to look upon Mengele and his blatant misbehavior.

  Aaron was furious with rage and jealousy and he was nearly crazy with hate for Mengele. There was nothing he could do. There was nothing any of them could do. Mengele held omnipotent sway over everyone in camp and not a soul dared question his authority.

  One night, after a particularity long and brutal session, Mengele, drunk, spirited Eva away, leaving Aaron and Brawne alone together.

  “What is he doing with her?” Brawne whispered to Aaron as tears welled up in her eyes.

  “I don’t know,” Aaron replied in frustration. “She will not confide in me. Something is happening. She is not the same woman I married.”

  “He has taken her as his lover,” Brawne said. “I can feel it.”

  Aaron gazed at Brawne with intense scrutiny. “You are his lover, are you not?”

  “Was,” Brawne said. “Now he beats me when I question him.”

  “Are you a prisoner?” Aaron asked.

  Brawne shook her head. “I am German. I came here with Josef two years ago, but I do not like what I see here: all the barbarism. I do not like what he has become. He’s obsessed, insane, and I have begun to fear for my life.”

  “Why don’t you just leave then?”

  Brawne made a noise that might have been a small, humorless laugh. “It would never be allowed,” she said. “I know too much.”

  “Then we are all prisoners,” Aaron said. “God have mercy on us.”

  Aaron and Brawne parted company then, Brawne leaving of her own volition while Aaron was escorted to his cabin by the guards. It was the last time he ever saw Brawne alive.

  Two days later, Eva returned to Aaron bruised and bleeding, tearful and whimpering. There was something else that Aaron noticed other than the physical. There was something in her eyes that had not been there before, some terrible knowledge or infestation, or both. When Aaron pressed her, she had simply said that Mengele was in the process of giving her something that she could never under any circumstances divulge. It was so sacred, so ghastly, that its disclosure would mean death for them both.

  So the nightly rituals continued—now without Brawne—and at the close of each session, Mengele would take Eva with him rather than sending her home with her husband. Each day, when she returned to Aaron, that thing in her eyes had grown brighter and more dreadful somehow. Along with it, her fragility grew until she was nothing more than a pallid and lifeless husk incapable of anything but obedience.

  Through an accident of logistics, one day Aaron and Eva found themselves alone together for a few moments. It was the first time in weeks, and Aaron, no longer able to contain himself, pressed her for answers.

  “Do you want to die?” she said, her eyes bright with terror. “Do you want all of us to die? I cannot ever talk about what he is doing to me.”

  “You must. I am your husband.”

  “No, Aaron, I cannot!”

  “Do you know what happened to Brawne?”

  “I believe that she is dead,” Eva told Aaron. “I think he killed her. I sense it in him. He will kill us both if ever we speak of this again.”

  Although that was Eva’s final word on the subject, Aaron sensed, even as it all ended and they gained their freedom, that it was not over, that Mengele had made indelible wounds on Eva that might someday come back to haunt them both.

  Now

  “Papa never told me any of this,” Jeremiah said. “I had to find out for myself after they died.” He pointed at the scattered papers on the floor. “After they found out that I’d become...infected, they almost went mad. You see, I never knew anything until five years ago...God, if they’d only confided in me...maybe I could have prevented all of this from happening.”

  Jeremiah stopped talking as his eyes filled and spilled over. I was both stunned and speechless. I had never heard such a story. Even as I knew that time was running out, I could not take my eyes off Jeremiah. I sat forward, like a child, my eyes round in my face, my mouth open in awe, as I anticipated the rest of this extraordinary tale.

  “My mother was a different woman after the abuses of that monster,” Jeremiah went on. “She was distant and cold, her nights filled with terrible visions and panic attacks. In later years, she was overcome with self loathing, and on a number of occasions she even attempted suicide. You see, she knew that the Angel of Death would return someday, that he was not done with her. He had instilled his terrible promise in her all those years ago.

  “I’m getting a little ahead of the story,” Jeremiah said. “In the camp, during that long and torturous time, while the air was filled with the acrid stench of death and the anguished screams of the condemned, Aaron had to sit there at the piano and play. He had to write and rehearse that cursed opera, wrought upon him by an unholy entity, while in a room nearby the woman he loved was undergoing some sort of supernatural transformation by a monster not of this Earth.”

  Then

  Aaron vowed each night and each day that he would kill Mengele. If it was the last thing he did before he died, he would destroy him. So, like a child with a particularly fertile imagination, Aaron dreamed of taking Mengele apart, working over the myriad possibilities in his mind until he was nearly crazy with them.

  Change was in the air. In recent days, there had been talk of war’s end. Rumors spread quickly in camp. There had been rumors before, but this one had come from the guards.

  By this time, Mengele had lost all sense of purpose. He was obsessed now more with Eva than he was with the opera, and the only good that came of those terrible days was that the body of music began to lose focus. Aaron believed that this is what saved all their lives, perhaps the lives of many more thousands, millions even. It was a terrible trade-off, however, for he would never again be able to look at Eva or their lives together in quite the same way as he had before the horrors of genocide changed them so dramatically.

  So, one night, more than a month after Brawne’s disappearance, there
was a commotion outside that distracted the guards. There were gunshots and people screaming. One of the guards left his post inside and went out to check on the commotion. That left Aaron alone with a single guard. He saw a rare opportunity and tried to overtake the soldier, but he was beaten to the floor with the butt-end of the guard’s rifle.

  The next day, Mengele had Aaron’s father, Abraham, hauled out into the yard, and while Aaron and Eva, as well as most of the camp looked on, Mengele produced a powerful-looking knife with a jagged-edged blade. He swung the fisted weapon high above his head, spun around so that everyone could get a good look at it and said, “Let this be a lesson to those who would dare subvert my authority!”

  The arm containing the knife descended in a vicious arc, the reflective blade glittering like a dark jewel in the mid-morning sun. Aaron screamed, “Nooo!” and tried to break free of his captors, only to be beaten to the ground by a ferocious rain of cudgel blows. Mengele drove the blade into Abraham’s abdomen just below the navel, brought his arm powerfully up, and split the man open like a gutted fish. Abraham’s innards spilled out onto the ground at his feet. His eyes, open wide in shock, stared at his murderer. Mengele yanked the knife out and backed away. The two guards holding the older man let go of him. Abraham fell to his knees, still staring at Mengele with his shocked expression, before keeling forward and landing face first in a pile of his own steaming intestines.

  Now

  Jeremiah’s voiced choked to a halt as copious tears coursed down his cheeks. He lifted his hand to his face, his fingers lightly and absently caressing the scar there, and I was keenly aware of the fact that he believed the weapon that had cut him was the same one that had disemboweled his grandfather all those years ago.

  I was horrified, barely able to breathe. I had never heard such a barbaric story. It wasn’t the end. God, no. Far from it. I would soon discover that the worst part was yet to be told. I remained silent, staring at Jeremiah. The truth is, I was incapable of speech. I only wanted him to continue on with his dark tale. I needed to know how it ended. I suddenly felt that I was connected to it in some incomprehensible way; as though I, too, had been there, and had lived it, and had suffered the same cruelties and indignations. Perhaps my soul had somehow intersected with another, I reasoned, for it contained ambiguities that baffled me, and might be made clearer by the story’s outcome. Jeremiah began to talk again, and I sat listening, totally in his thrall.

  Then

  In the next few weeks, Germany fell to the allies. Leadership was in chaos. With news of the end, German troops were abandoning their posts all over Europe. Most of the guards laid down their arms and went home to their families. That left the remaining prisoners without much supervision. Some of the officers, not particularly loyal to the Third Reich, just disappeared. Other, more loyal ones, stayed behind in hopes of keeping order and continuing the genocide. Mengele was among this latter group. It was soon apparent that there would be no rekindling of the status quo. The war was over, and the Nazis had been soundly defeated. While the Russians were in the process of liberating the camps, Mengele made hasty preparations to flee. Aaron was keenly aware of his intentions, vowing to stop him if he could. Eva warned him, however, begging him to let it go, but he would not listen. By then, Mengele had abandoned Eva and had sent her back to her husband. He’d abandoned the muse, the dream of world domination, and told Aaron that no harm would come to him, that he was free to go.

  Aaron had other ideas. In the days that followed, he assembled a small band of willing men and together they rose up against the remaining officers and men. There wasn’t much fight left in them, and the ones who were not killed, ran away. The fracas alerted Mengele, however, and he cleanly made his escape. When Aaron and his men reached Mengele’s quarters, they made a gruesome discovery. Lying on her back in Mengele’s bed, strapped spread-eagled and naked, was Brawne. It appeared that she had been dead for quite some time, for her body had already begun to decompose. The marks of torture were still evident on her body, however. There was no doubt as to how she’d died. Aaron and his men took her to a small field beside the compound, dug a hole, and put her in the ground.

  Afterward, Aaron returned to Mengele’s quarters and took everything the monster left behind—personal items, mementoes, musical instruments, every scrap that he could lay his hands on—and he burned it all in one of the furnaces. The one thing he did not find a trace of, however, was the body of work, the music itself, that which he had been forced to compose beneath the brutal hand of The Angel of Death. He understood that it had probably been the only thing Mengele had managed to salvage in his haste to escape the very fate he had perpetrated on so many.

  The killing had finally come to an end, and Aaron and Eva were free. Aaron vowed that it would forever be the end of the evil muse, as well. Eva could not share his sense of closure. She knew Mengele on a deeper and more profound level than did Aaron. She, after all, had been the beneficiary of a dark promise, that although was still thirty years from fruition, would always haunt her darkest dreams.

  After the war, the Gideons were liberated and moved to New York. Once establishing themselves, Aaron joined an organization of Nazi-hunters who were all holocaust survivors, and he vowed to track Mengele to the ends of the earth. There was a tremendous effort amongst these survivors immediately following the war to bring the criminals to justice. A worldwide communication system was set up and many of them did get their due. Years passed, and there was no word of Mengele or his whereabouts. It was as if he had dropped off the ends of the earth. Even so, Aaron never stopped dreaming of the ways he would kill the monster if he ever got the chance. He wanted his own kind of justice.

  Eva felt Mengele’s presence in ways no other human being ever could. Sometimes, in the dead of night, she would open her eyes and he would be there, his smile a frozen grimace on his face, his insistent body pressed against hers, his rancid breath on her cheek, his dark promise a cold and supernatural whisper on his arctic lips. She would bolt upright in bed with a stifled scream locked inside her, fearful of waking Aaron, and that he would...know. For the rest of the night, she would sit whimpering and hugging herself, praying that dawn would hasten its entry upon the world so that she might once again feel safe, that she might once again feel clean.

  Aaron did know. He was no stranger to the despair that haunted his wife’s darkest hours, and those terrible times only strengthened his resolve.

  In the meantime, Aaron continued to compose, trying as best he could to put the terrible memories of Auschwitz behind him. And, in time, he managed to get some of his music published.

  They carved out a niche for themselves in New York society, entertaining at parties and upscale clubs. Aaron played and Eva sang. And, for the first time in their lives, the Gideons had found some semblance of happiness.

  Then one day, more than three decades after the horrors of Auschwitz, their lives again began to unravel. Aaron received a communication that Mengele was alive and hiding out on a farm in Brazil. In spite of Eva’s insistent pleadings to let sleeping dogs lie, Aaron prepared to leave. He was gone for more than three weeks and there was no communication from him. Eva was nearly frantic with worry. Twenty-three days later, Aaron returned, drawn and haggard, his eyes haunted, and despite Eva’s pleadings to confide in her, he would not.

  “For thirty years you have been the keeper of secrets,” he told his wife, with more than a touch of resentment in his voice. “Now, it is my turn.”

  “It has been for our own good,” Eva said.

  “For our own good?” Aaron railed. “Or for yours? Trust me, Eva, you do not want to know what happened in Brazil. You do not want to know what I did to the evil bastard who ruined our lives.”

  Yes, Aaron now had his own secrets to keep, and Eva reluctantly resigned herself to his right to them even as she felt the dreaded promise growing inside her with a renewed sense of ambition.r />
  One night, not more than three weeks after his return from Brazil, Aaron was awakened by the sound of music; beautiful melodies, haunting chord structures, and harmonics. He came awake in a sweat and went to the piano to write it down lest he forget it. He was instantly captivated, thoroughly enchanted. It was as if his mind was conjuring the music from the depths of some previously unknown creative fountain. He was grateful for the inspiration. Eva admonished him, however, cautioning him to be on guard.

  “Nonsense!” Aaron chided. “Mengele is gone and I promise you, he will never again wield influence over our lives.” He smiled and took Eva in his arms; but Eva did not smile back, for she knew that Aaron’s promise was as empty as the cold void that haunted her darkest hours. She, after all, had her own promise to keep, and as she stood in the embrace of her husband’s arms and in the midst of his good intentions, she felt the dark flower of that promise blossoming at the very center of her being.

  So, while Aaron worked tirelessly on the muse, writing it down, sorting it out, organizing it, Eva did her best to avoid him. He was too caught up in himself and his newfound fountain of creativity to see anything beyond his narrow focus. He’d discovered a renewed sense of life and his purpose in it. The joy in the compositions came from the knowledge that he was doing something good for those who had lost their way in the camps, that through this body of music—his music—their legacy would be indelibly fixed in the collective mind of man, never to be forgotten. That in the end, Azrael, the Angel of Death, could not erase their names from his book of death. They would live on in this glorious body of music that Aaron had entitled, The Holocaust Opera. He never suspected...no, that’s not entirely correct. He refused to believe that anything sinister could be at work, until it was far too late.

  Now

  “It was him, wasn’t it?” I said breathlessly. “Mengele? Somehow he’d come back through the music? Isn’t that right, Jeremiah?”

  Jeremiah stared straight through me, as though I were made of gauze. He did not answer me, instead he simply continued on with the story.