JUDGMENT AT DACHAU
This story is not meant to offend anyone of any religious background. It is a retelling of "Death's Head Revisited" with a little of "The Passers By" thrown in. Please comment nicely!
NARRATOR: Daybreak at Dachau . . . the abandoned camp of unspeakable evil, deserted now for many years. Only two ghostly figures remain, two sentinels standing guard over a past that cannot and will not be forgotten. Here there is no forgiveness, only memories of torment and undying despair. This is Dachau, home to two ghosts imprisoned together for all time. And for one strange visitor yet to arrive, it is also the main entryway into . . . the Twilight Zone.
SS CAPTAIN LUNTZE: (A big ugly brute, with an impatient and eager way of talking.) Becker, look outside the gate. Am I imagining it, or are there men walking down that road?
BECKER: (A small, sad-faced man with a gentle yet determined voice.) What does it matter, Captain? You and I are never going to leave here. I am bound to Dachau by my suffering. You are bound to this place by your crimes. They were unspeakable crimes, Captain, crimes that cannot and must not be forgotten.
SS CAPTAIN LUNTZE: (Impatiently) Yes, Becker I know! I've told you a thousand times, I'm sorry for the . . . let us say, mistakes I may have made when I was commandant of this camp. I know I am bound to you for all time. But still, I cannot help feeling there is something odd going on just beyond the gate. I see men, many just boys really, walking slowly in the mist. Many are wounded, but they appear to be helping each other along. Some men dressed in blue, some men dressed in gray . . . where have I seen such men before?
BECKER: (Sadly) It does not matter, Captain. Wherever they are going, you cannot follow. Your crimes cannot be forgiven.
SS CAPTAIN LUNTZE: (Excitedly) I remember now! The American Civil War, the great burger krieg! I read of it in school. It was a war to free the schwarzes, those black men from Africa. The soldiers were mostly white, though. Some wore blue and some wore gray. Where are they going? And why are they helping each other now?
BECKER: (Slightly uneasy) It does not matter, Captain. Those men are soldiers from another time, another war. You are not a soldier. You are a monster, an animal strutting in a black uniform. You can never . . .
SS CAPTAIN LUNTZE: (Impatiently) Yes, yes, I heard you the first five thousand times! What I have done can never be forgiven! Not to argue with you or disagree, but those men in gray . . . it seems to me that the men in blue have forgiven them. See how they help each other along? Now why do you think it is that the men in blue can forgive their enemies, Becker, when you cannot?
BECKER: Those men in blue were not victims! They were never gassed, tortured, hung! You did those things to me! And to the women you did worse things, things I cannot describe.
SS CAPTAIN LUNTZE: Ah, I see. If only I had been a gallant, noble soldier, like those Americans in gray. They never hung their slaves, or whipped them to death? They never burned black men alive, or tore them apart with dogs, years after the war was lost? Those noble men in gray, and their sons and grandsons, they never degraded black women with vile and unspeakable tortures?
BECKER: (Angrily) I know nothing about that! And I don't care!
SS CAPTAIN LUNTZE: In other words, you can't forgive the evil done here, to you. But you can overlook the evil done elsewhere, eh? But look! One final stranger is coming down the road. He appears to be lost, Becker. He's not in uniform, and he's coming right through our main gate!
THE STRANGER: (A big, ugly unshaven brute, much like LUNTZE in body type and personality, though his face strangely resembles that of BECKER.) Is this the Beverly Hills Sex Addiction Clinic?
BECKER: This is Dachau, monument to man's evil. You must leave now. This place is only for ghosts, only for the damned.
THE STRANGER: Hey, don't I know you from somewhere?
BECKER: (Coldly) I don't think so. You sound like an American, and I have never been to America.
THE STRANGER: That's funny! You look just like an uncle of mine back in Buffalo. My name's Weinstein, Harvey Weinstein. I used to be in the movie business. You sure this isn't a sex addiction clinic?
SS CAPTAIN LUNTZE: (With blunt impatience) No, it isn't. And it isn't a family reunion either. Herr Becker has asked you to leave. Kindly get out while you still can!
THE STRANGER: Hey, wait a minute. I know you. You're one of those stinking kraut Nazis from the war, aren't you?
SS CAPTAIN LUNTZE: The war is over. The guilty have been punished. Don't start something you can't finish, Herr Weinstein.
THE STRANGER: (Shoves the SS Captain like a schoolyard bully itching for a fight.) You think I'm afraid of you? I'm Harvey Weinstein! I ran my own studio! I made guys like you get down on their knees and beg for work. Who do you think gave Kevin Smith his start? What about George Clooney, Matt Damon, and all those other Christ-loving, Jew-hating sons of bitches? Why do you think I pushed them around? Why do you think I made them crawl? I know who you are. I've always known you, like you were inside me since I was a kid. I made those goyim pay for what you did. And I made their women pay for what your kind did to our women!
SS CAPTAIN LUNTZE: (Shoves back.) We are the same, you and I. But this camp isn't big enough for the two of us! (The two big men wrestle like giant grizzly bears, shoving and cursing, snarling and fighting dirty.)
BECKER: (Agonized by the ugliness of pure evil on both sides.) Stop it! Stop it! (As the two bear-like men struggle and claw at each other, the fragile ghost in the striped uniform pulls a razor sharp shard of tin from the camp wreckage and stabs out blindly.) I said stop it, you dirty SWINE!
THE STRANGER: My back! Stabbed in the back! But no, no, it's my eyes that hurt. My eyes! (He falls to the ground, claws at his eyes) Now I see them, all of them, coming after me! The women I hurt, raped, assaulted, humiliated . . . they all look just like Ann Frank! Help me, help me, I'm going insane!
BECKER: (Softly, yet determined.) There is no help for you, Harvey Weinstein. There can never be forgiveness for what you have done. All humanity is sickened by your crimes. You are not one of us, and you never were.
THE STRANGER: The pain! The pain! Make it stop! Make it stop!
SS CAPTAIN LUNTZE: It will never stop.
BECKER: (Quietly) the camp gate is open, Captain. I see men walking down the road. Some in blue, some in gray, all helping each other along. I wonder what is at the end of that road? (BECKER walks off, but then stops at the gate, as if waiting. The SS CAPTAIN joins him, and together they walk down the road, soon fading into the thick gray mist. Only HARVEY WEINSTEIN remains, screaming and writhing in agony on the scorched earth.)
SS CAPTAIN LUNTZE: Becker, this looks like the beginning of a beautiful friendship!
NARRATOR: No false equivalencies intended here. The calculated murder of millions that began at Dachau is a crime unequalled in history. But in all eras of injustice, the weakest, cruelest men have always called themselves victims and proclaimed themselves the avengers of evil. Such men cannot forgive or be forgiven, and whether they come from Berlin or Beverly Hills their only true home is the Twilight Zone.