The Black Parade

Chapter One

         In the twenty years that I have been teaching World History at Blinn College here in Brenham, Texas, not a single class day has touched me like the one that I just had last week on January 27th.  My particular emphasis in this course has always been on the wars that mankind has waged against each other throughout history- especially the Second World War.
         January 27, 1945.  That is the date that my students always tell me, years later, that sticks with them.  The day that hell on earth finally ended, for some seven thousand abandoned souls still trapped within the walls of Auschwitz-Birkenau were freed by Russian troops.
         I think I emphasize this point because my brother is a Holocaust denier, as vicious a form of blasphemy as declaring that there is no God (wait, he does that too).  I cannot deny either fact.  I, Joanna Goldblum, am a German Catholic.  I know nothing of my heritage save that my father's mother came here from somewhere in Germany and settled near San Antonio, Texas, in the mid-1940s.  My father never knew either of his parents, as they died when he was barely a toddler.  My brother Benjamin likes to sit in on my classes when I teach about the Holocaust and mock me later.  "Joanna, why do you teach this as a fact?"  he'll say.  "How could a German have killed his own people, be they Jews or not?  Historians call Hitler a bad man, Satan incarnate.  Why, do they say?  Why, because he murdered six million Jews!  How is it even possible for one to kill so many?  It's not feasible!"
         So he says.  I kept praying that someone would come along and show him the truth.
         She came last week, much sooner than I expected.
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         I told my class of two hundred on the morning of January 26th that the next day we would have a guest speaker in our assembly.  All I'd been told was that the president of Blinn had contacted a ninety-three-year-old woman who had survived the Holocaust.  I didn't know her name, nationality, anything.  All I knew was that she had survived- a miracle few of those persecuted by Hitler and his regime experienced.  I wasn't even sure if she was a Jewish survivor.  For an avid scholar of the Holocaust like myself, this upcoming encounter was going to be phenomenal, as phenomenal as when I'd met Elie Wiesel in Boston several years ago.
         Two books always stay on my desk- well, three.  Mr. Wiesel's Night, The Diary of Anne Frank, and Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf, or My Struggle.  Corrie Ten Boom's The Hiding Place also graces my workspace, but it is a smaller work to me when compared to the others.  Mein Kampf  is a rather interesting read, as I have always thought that reading Hitler's own words of course suggests that such a thing as the Holocaust happened.  Maybe that's just me, though.  My students are always given- at my own expense- copies of these four books to read and study in preparation for the Holocaust research projects that I have them do.
         Sure, I've been derided for my fanatical work- mainly by my own brother.  I suppose that my own pure German blood accounts for this fascination, for how could my people have slaughtered their own race as if human beings were mere cows or pigs?
         I know the Armenian massacre occurred during World War I, led by the bloodthirsty Turks.  Vlad Dracula, "the Impaler," murdered thousands of Romanians in the 1400s.  Joseph Stalin killed more people in his native Russia than even Hitler did.  I barely brush the surface of other systematic extermination attempts that have taken place throughout time.  Perhaps if I were Armenian or Romanian or Russian I would.  I'm not- I'm German.  You know that by now.  Other genocidal incidents do not affect me personally.  I've tried researching to see if I have ancestors who died at the hands of Hitler but have hit nothing but dead ends.  I supposed I'd never find the right Goldblum out of the ones that popped up in the records I'd checked through.  Besides, six million Jews to search through- perhaps more- to see who I might be descended from is impossible.  I guessed that I'd never know who I truly am.
         I was proven wrong last week.
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         My class assembled in the auditorium that Sunday morning, January 27, somewhat confused and more than a little mad.  I'd made them come to my class yesterday- a Saturday!- then today!  They'd just have to miss sleeping in or going home or attending church.  This was vital.
         Two hundred students were there- all of them.  Male, female, of every race and religion this school contained.  I was proud, for once.  Usually my students were rather mediocre in their devotion to classroom activities.  Quite a few had pocket cassette recorders.  Others had brought their binders and pencils.  I saw numerous female students carrying boxes of tissues.  At least some of them understood the sadness of what they were about to hear.  I was glad they at least were able to comprehend that much.  Everyone was silent, myself included.  Our guest was scheduled to arrive at eight.  It was seven fifty-eight.
         The door to the auditorium opened, and a woman stepped slowly inside.  She was bent with age and walked with the support of a shining wooden cane.  Even Benjamin, who naturally wanted to hear what Holocaust story she would tell so he could ridicule it later, stood in reverent respect when she entered the room.
         So began the most intense day of my forty-two years.

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WORK IN PROGRESS.... TO BE CONTINUED