70 Years On

• Archie Sherring, Grade 9, Inaburra School
• Short Story
• 2016

Excellence Award in the 'Top Secret 2016' competition

Seventy years on, it looks the same as before, only less horrific.
Oh, those days seem so real, but they were the past.
I survived. The horror was unique only to Dachau, but I still haven't regained that weight from when I was 15. In 1939, I thought being obese was uncool, but I soon realised it gave me and advantage over the others.
The others that perished over those seven years.
I remember liberation day. The rainbow men, the planes that destroyed everywhere except where we were. Oh that day, that lucky kid Alphonso. He was 6 years younger than me, and had only been there nine days and he was already sick of it. I told him to suck it up, firstly because that is a twenty two year olds purpose, but also because he hadn't been eating mould for seven years. But here we were, after living in Russia for 70 years, we finally return to the place where it all started.
Munich.
Munich was the Nazi birthplace. 1923, and their lust for power begun. 1933 and they were sending politicians to camps. 1935 and they were sending Jews, and then by the end of 1945, when Alphonso arrived, they were sending every opposition.
The Jews were unable to do anything, but in the 1950s, finally the Israelites put their arrogant souls to rest in this place with a shabby memorial. And in the camp, we are surrounded by memories that had been so long forgotten before being made vivid from the moment I walked through the gate.
Most people don't know what we've been through. Because they're dead.
They died from starvation. Skimpy little bodies with fat only on the back of their neck, poor things. Some of exhaustion. They were mainly the construction workers, and they worked hard for nothing. Others. Well, it wasn't easy surviving if your family left. Forty years on, some of them willingly rejoined them.
But here I stand, 85 years old. It's a good feeling knowing that the people that did this to you are locked up in prison for the rest of their lives. Or they're already dead.
And outside those thoughts, I see what I know from memory is a Nazi uniform. Seventy years on, their ghastly spirit thrived through South America, and now they return to this horrific place. They drag me off to the gas chamber, and I know that this is the end. I am Dachau’s longest serving member. I was the face of the holocaust, and now I am the face of the holocaust. Five minutes in, I notice that same blue star on my arm. Seventy years, and it's still tattooed on. Seventy years since liberation, but there's no more Soviet Union now. This is a job for China, and China shall avenge as the Soviets did all those years back. The New Nazi Empire may reach Tibet, but then it's the Silk Road back to Berlin. Or not.