Before the war, my family was happy and loving- living in Krakow, Poland.
My Mama was a teacher and my Papa owned a bakery- over which we lived, my Mama, Papa, older brother, younger sister, my grandparents and I. It was a full flat, but we liked it that way. It always smelled like baking bread and jazz music floated through the air. We sat in the evenings listening to music in the living room- us children doing out homework, Mama grading her students work, Papa and grandfather would read and grandmother would sew. Every summer we took the train into the countryside for picnics and vacations. Once we even went to the Baltic Sea.
And then things changed over night. We were told we had to wear those cursed yellow stars on our clothes to show the world we were Jews, we were 'different'. Then we couldn't go to shops we used to before. Friendly shop keepers that used to give us candy chased us away and called us horrible names. My brother gotten beaten up in an alley and the police refused to do anything about it. There was a pall of uncertainty over all Jewish houses as people started to vanish, and then the storm struck and it seemed like the world had gone mad.
In March 1941, in the middle of the night, we were woken by angry men in Nazi uniforms with guns. We were taken to a ghetto built only for Jews. 17,000 people were crammed into small flats on only a few streets. We thought this was the worst of it, but we were so very wrong.
Always, Nazis with guns and vicious dogs guarded the barbed wire fence that separated our Ghetto from the rest of the city. Anyone trying to cross was shot on sight, no matter what side they were trying to cross from. My best friend tried, and at the age of eleven, was shot dead by the guards in front of his parents.
My sister was bitten by one of the dogs when she got too close, not understanding that the 'puppy' didn't want to play.
It was around this time that my brother joined the secret resistance movement in the Ghetto. I tried to join too, but was told I was too young. There was no uprising like in Warsaw, but at least they did something. He was slaughtered in the street as an example to other conspirators and left for the dogs to feed on. But it was bitterly cold that winter and it wasn't the dogs that ate him, it was our neighbours.
My beloved grandparents were rounded up in May 1942, along with many others the Nazis deemed too feeble to be of any use and were shipped off to the death camp at Belzec. We always hoped they were alive, but I learned years later they were gassed on arrival. Do you know what the gassing was like? They were told to strip naked so they could have a shower before being issued camp uniforms and joining the rest of the people in the camp. No water came out of the showers, just poison gas- it was a slow, painful choking death. If you wish to see proof, go to the gas chambers at Belzec and look at the scratch marks on the inner walls were people tried to claw their way out before they all died in a writhing crushing heap of bodies.
For nearly a year, we lived in a kind of limbo, few had been killed but nothing really got better. After another hard winter we were looking forward to Spring- something even the Nazis couldn't take away from us. Or so we thought. In March 1943, in the middle of the night we were woken up, just like the last time. Papa said we were going to be moved to a bigger ghetto that had been liquidated. I didn't know what that word meant as there were not proper schools in the Ghetto, but I could guess. In reality, he knew were weren't going to a new ghetto, but he was trying to keep us calm so we didn't upset the guards. At 2am on a damp and foggy morning we were loaded into cattle cars at the railway station, the same station we'd taken vacations in the country from in better times, and taken to the Plaszow Concentration Camp.
The ride was stiffing, we were crammed into the windowless cars like sardines. Some people suffocated, others were crushed. My little sister was seven years old and after the hard years before this new twist in our lives was smaller than she should have been. She was crushed when a man started a panic and people stepped on her sleeping form, thankfully it was quick and she never woke up. My Mama held her broken body the whole way to the Plaszow. As soon as the doors were opened, a guard took my sister's body from Mama and tossed it into a garbage pile in a ditch. We knew better than to put up a fuss and it still feels like I betrayed her to this day. As far as I know, she's still there.
When we got past the large metal gates of the camp, men and women evaluated for what work they could do were separated. My Papa was taken ahead of us, leaving just Mama and I before we were forcibly separated. I remember there was much mud and standing water as I tried to run to my Mama. I shouted for her but the guards caught me and she told me to be good, that she'd see me inside. I was so upset that I fought the guards, causing them to restrain me. My metal manipulating powers manifested for the first time in that crush of prisoners and guards as I reached out for my Mama. As I reached, my hands tingled strangely and there was a loud creak as the gates of the camp shuddered, scaring me and further strengthening my power. The gates crumpled in on themselves in front of all of our astonished faces, including mine.
I was knocked out by a guard, but I was not taken to be with my Papa and the other men- I was taken into the camp commander's office as he'd seen what I had done to the gates. The office was beautifully decorated and warm, save for one side that was walled off by glass panes. It looked like a sterile hospital clinic stocked with butchers' tools...which is basically what it was. The commander was called Dr. Klaus Schmidt and he acted like he wanted to be my friend, offering me chocolate, a rare treat in those days of rationing in the Ghetto, in exchange for moving a coin on his desk. 'The chocolate is good.', he said as he ate a piece in front of me, 'You can have it if you simply move the coin. The gates were big and heavy, a coin should be easy.'
I know many people would say they would take this chance to tell Schmidt what they thought about all this, to stand up to 'The Man.' Maybe they would, but I didn't- and if that sounds cowardly to you, try putting yourself in my shoes, wet and worn out though they were.
Imagine for a moment, you are a frightened 12 year old Jewish boy who has lived in the ghetto, your grandparents are missing, you watched your only siblings die, you have been forcibly separated from his parents and you don't know what's happened to them and, to top it all off, you have just undergone a frighting change that you are unable to comprehend. You are now standing in front of the man who has the power over yours and everyone else's lives in the camp including the only family you have left and all he wants you to do is move a coin with your hitherto unknown powers.
But I couldn't do it, I didn't know how.
As soon as I told Schmidt that I couldn't move the coin he reached onto his desk and rang a small silver bell- a sound I still hate because of what happened afterwards. I assumed he was summoning the guards and that I'd be punished, probably in the doctor's exam room from hell, and sent out to join my Papa or perhaps killed for my failure, I never dreamed they would drag my poor frightened Mama into the room, but they did. I managed to give her a hug and she smiled, my Mama smiled. And then we were forced apart again by the guards- I still hate them.
Instinctively, I knew what the stakes were before they were explained to me- I move the coin or my Mama would be killed there and then.
When he did explain things, Schmidt did in a tone that made it sound like whatever happened to Mama was my fault, that I had to choice to let her live or kill her. He pulled a pistol out of his desk and pointed it first at me and then a Mama. My blood ran cold as I mentally panicked, I couldn't do this, I couldn't move the coin and now my darling Mama was being threatened. What kind of son doesn't protect his Mama?
I tried so hard to move the coin and every step of the way Mama was there, calmly assuring me that everything would be okay. I don't know if she thought I could save her or if it was just her way of saying she forgave me- I wish I knew.
The next thing I knew, there was a shot and my Mama was dead on the floor of Schmidt's fancy office, bleeding on his Persian rug. I looked at her body, she wasn't my Mama anymore, and something inside of me snapped.
First, I crushed the cursed bell that summoned the guards who had my Mama- making sure it would never ring again to being someone pain. And Schmidt was overjoyed, thinking I would stop there. I didn't. I screamed in pure rage, crumpling a filing cabinet and still he applauded me. The butcher's tools started to rattle and Schmidt stood up looking around in disbelief. He watched as, at the age of eleven, I took my first lives- crushing the guards skulls with their own helmets.
The guards dropped to the floor, bleeding next to Mama's body as I advanced, arms outstretched, toward the glass that separated us from the experimentation room, the tools, the metal tables it all careened through the air and bounced off the walls as I raged. And Schmidt stood there laughing.
I stopped what I was doing and started to sob, reality finally settling in and he came to me like a Papa would, putting an arm around my shoulders and saying 'I'm proud of you, Erik. You have a gift. Oh, the things you will do!' As he spoke, Schmidt led me into the room I'd trashed and placed the damned coin in my hand before leaving me there to think over my options- help him or watch my Papa die.
I wanted to kill him then and there, but I didn't have the strength left.
I chose to help him, to train under him, both as a way to save my Papa- who died in the camp anyway, and to learn what I could and hopefully use it against him when I had the chance. I did, eventually, but not for a few decades. I was kept away from the other prisoners and actually fed but I still had to be marked and identified- I was prisoner 214782. I still have it tattooed on my arm, a reminder of where I've been and what I'm after.
I didn't get out of that camp until the Americans liberated us. Suddenly, I was free. Almost fifteen years old and alone I returned to my hometown with the help of the American soldiers. I went past the rubble of the Ghetto to the street I'd grown up on, only to find it had suffered substantial damage during the fighting. What wasn't destroyed had been looted by people just trying to survive- I couldn't hold it against them, I would have done the same.
With little more than the clothes on my back I left Poland and bounced around Europe and South America, taking odd jobs as I worked on finding Schmidt- who I knew had escaped. There were a few close calls, but it still hasn't happened yet.
All I have left of my childhood are the empty graves of my family, there were no bodies to bury, and a street address that is now an empty field. I don't even have a photo of my Mama. I'm going to make sure that doesn't happen to others in the future. But this fight is bigger than one man and I'm going to do all I can to see justice for all mutants is served with the help of my new friends.