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Order this writing that appears in the one-of-a-kind anthology The Final Frontier the Down in the Dirt May-August 2022 issues collection book		get the 420 page May-August 2022 Down in the Dirt 6" x 9" ISBN# perfect-bound paperback book:

My night with the Nazis

Mike Rader

    A voice was screaming in my head. I didn’t understand a word of it. Sounded like a maniac was in my room.

....

    I was halfway through my German assignment, hopping on and off trains from Munich, north through Stuttgart to Cologne, then on to Weimar, Leipzig, Berlin and Dresden. I’m a travel writer, interested in European music and culture, and a major international magazine was paying my expenses.
    In the city of Weimar I’d chosen a grand old hotel. Weimar, a sleepy tourist city today, was once the seat of power. The Weimar Government led Germany in the years between the wars, when crazy cabarets were all the rage, before the Nazis took power back to Berlin. I’d visited the birthplace of the Bauhaus design school, caught the local bus to the infamous Buchenwald concentration camp, and seen where Felix Mendelssohn’s statue had once stood outside the concert house. The Nazis melted it down to build a memorial to Wagner!
    After a heavy German meal of Schweinshaxe, a pork knuckle the size of a small log, washed down with too much Himbeergeist, I went up to my room. Being an old-school writer I pulled out my notebook and scribbled my impressions of the city and what I’d seen that day. Soon I was yawning. I fell into bed and had no problem sleeping.
    Staying asleep was another problem. The screaming voice. A man with colorless eyes was shaking me awake.
    “Achtung, Herr Bruch!”
    I squinted up at the figure in the black coat. A man with a weak chin and the cold eyes of a snake. His rimless glasses caught the light. Suddenly I was furious. Two other men — heavies also wearing black trench coats — were tipping out my suitcases, rummaging through my clothes. I heard a crunch as one of them stepped on a glass souvenir.
    “Who the hell are you?” I demanded.
    Powerful arms seized me, dragged me out of bed.
    “And my name isn’t Bruch,” I shouted, struggling against the morons who pinned my arms behind my back. “It’s Martin. I’m from America.”
    A scream burst from my guts. The creep with reptilian eyes and glasses had slammed his black-gloved fist into my stomach while his two goons bent my arms higher and higher.
    “Really?” Snake-eyes held up a passport I’d never seen before. He thrust it into my face. “Your photograph, your name, ja? You see, Herr Bruch, you are wasting our time.”
    “That’s not mine. I don’t know anyone called Bruch. There was a German composer called Bruch ...”
    The black glove slashed across my face. I recoiled. I spat out a broken chip of tooth.
    “My name is Martin! I’m American! Ask the man at the desk. Mr. Adler. He checked me in two days ago.”
    “There is no one of that name working here. And if you insist on speaking English, you are making your case worse. It is the language of traitors and plotters against the Reich. I want to know what you are doing in Weimar at this time — during the Führer’s visit? And can you explain these?”
    He held up a gun and a stack of money wrapped in paper. I saw more US dollars than I’d ever seen in my life before.
    “They’re not mine. I want to see my consul.”
    “There are no American consulates left in Germany, my friend. Now answer my questions. Who is paying you to kill the Führer?”
    “He’s already dead, you idiot!” I shouted back. “Get out of my room!”
    “Wrong answer.”
    His black-gloved fist struck me again in the face. I went tumbling back. His two thugs caught me and pushed me forward. Again his brutal fist slammed into my face. I was a punching bag. I felt my brain shift inside my skull. I tasted warm blood. I went down. Then the boots went in. I was screaming in agony. Writhing on the carpet. It stank of urine.
    Snake-eyes was kneeling beside me, watching blood gush from my nose and mouth. “And what is this?” He flicked through my notebook. “You have been traveling all through the Reich, making notes. You have even been to Buchenwald! You are a spy, Bruch! You are going to spread false information to our enemies.”
    He quietly rose to his feet, ripping the notebook to shreds and letting pieces of paper flutter onto my body like morbid confetti.
    The brutal boots pounded me again. I swear I heard bones crack. They found my head. Black leather, smashing into flesh, pulping my nose. Then came an order to stop. I stared up at my tormentors through a mist of red. Their expressions were fixed in time, slowly swirling and spinning, and they were talking to me, but their words could not penetrate my mind.
    They dragged me up, hauled me across to the table. My body was a quivering mess. One of the goons slammed my right hand onto the surface.
    My interrogator pulled a fine twist of wire from his coat. Shaking his head in mock despair, he slipped one end of the wire beneath the flesh and nail of my forefinger. I heard my howl, heard myself begging, as the wire worked its way deeper and deeper.
    The cold eyes appraised his handiwork. “You should look after your nails better than that,” he said gently. “Here, let me help you.”
    He snapped his fingers. One of his goons handed him a small pair of pliers. He secured a grip on my bleeding nail and began to rip it from my finger.
    The room was spinning around me. I tasted death like acid, rising in my throat, filling my mouth, spraying out all over the table. My interrogator swore in disgust. His gloved fist struck me again and again. I spilled from the chair. It was like falling from a mountaintop. It took forever before I hit the floor. The boots worked on me again. This time they stamped on me. Like I was a human cigarette butt.
    I woke, hours later, still in my room, sprawled on the carpet, my head roaring with pain.
    I crawled to the mirror by my bed. Hauled myself up. Saw my face in the mirror. Unmarked.
    Stared at my right hand. Undamaged.
    It was almost eleven o’clock in the morning. I had to pack, checkout, catch the train. I turned to my luggage, swallowed. My bags were just as I’d left them. I flipped open my suitcase. No gun. But the packet of money was there. At a glance, it looked like a couple of hundred thousand. What was I supposed to do with that? And there was my notebook, intact, untouched.
    Down in the lobby I saw Mr. Adler at the desk. While he processed my credit card transaction, I asked him: “I can remember hearing a lot of noise last night. Was there some kind of disturbance in the hotel?”
    I’d never seen a look of greater surprise. “No, Mr. Martin. It was a very peaceful night. Nothing ever happens in Weimar.”
    He called for a cab to take me to the train station. I stepped outside to wait. An uneasy feeling persisted on the fringes of my mind. That’s when I spotted the elderly crone shuffling toward me with a tray of postcards.
    I signaled her, “No thanks.”
    She shook her head, insisting, pointing at one postcard — an old black-and-white photograph of the hotel I was just leaving. Only in the picture it was draped with swastikas. A long black limousine was parked outside. Beside it, the familiar image of the man with the small mustache, one hand raised in salute, the other clutching his belt. The caption on the postcard read: “Hitlers Lieblingshotel.” Hitler’s favorite hotel.

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