Wolves and Sheepdogs
Canterlot, United States, Present Day
The memorial was a simple marble affair, striking in its unpretentious bluntness – a six-sided dark stone pillar with one side broader than the others. Into this was engraved the Star of David, and beneath it an inscription, first in Hebrew, then in English.
Mr. Arrow neither read nor spoke Hebrew, but the translation was clear enough. It read, “In commemoration of more than six million Jews who were killed by the National Socialists between 1938 and 1945.” Beneath it was a list of the largest and most notorious of the deadly camps. To list them all would have taken more space than the pillar had, but what camps were there had more than enough blood to their names.
Auschwitz, Treblinka, Bergen-Belsen, Groß-Rosen… Dachau.
It was not especially cold, but Mr. Arrow shivered.
The memorial was located in a garden behind Neve Shalom, Canterlot’s chief synagogue. There was a small open area in front of the memorial, and a compact bench was set across from it. It was a quiet place, ringed by thick rose bushes that were always immaculately trimmed. Cobblestone paths passed by on either side, with access points to the right and left, but the high bushes always gave the spot a sense of seclusion. If one was sitting down, it was easy to go unseen.
Before she passed, Mr. Arrow had frequented this place with his friend Gertrude ‘Gertie’ Rosenkranz. He’d met the diminutive German immigrant five years after the war ended when he wandered into the first of a chain of diners ‘Ma Gertie’ would open after moving to Canterlot with her son and daughter to start a new life.
Five years after he met her, Gertie had shown Mr. Arrow the numbers tattooed on her arm at Auschwitz.
Five years after that, the two of them finally talked about it.
The old paratrooper never discussed what he’d seen at Dachau with anyone but Gertrude Rosenkranz. Not with his fellow soldiers. Not with his children. Not even with his wife. Dachau was between him, Gertie, and God.
Mr. Arrow was not the sort to talk much, certainly not about his troubles. After his wife died, he talked even less. His friendship with the Apple family had gradually encouraged him to talk more, and he tried to be more deliberate about sharing his stories and his thoughts with people. He’d learned that, even if he didn’t think his life was something to make a big deal about, others disagreed.
Besides, he’d seen enough of life and known enough people, some good, some evil, that he had lessons to pass on, especially to this generation. Mr. Arrow was wise enough to be persuaded to share that experience.
But Mr. Arrow never talked about Dachau.
He didn’t know how.
So, he sat alone on the bench across from the memorial in the privacy of his own thoughts and tried to make sense of them.
The dreams had been coming more and more often, lately. Mr. Arrow did not dream much. Not that he remembered, anyway. When he did, they were sometimes pleasant things. Memories of his wife, Bess, or thoughts of their children.
Sometimes the dreams were dark ones. Dreams of his brothers, torn apart by machinegun fire or cut down by snipers, butchered in the cold of Bastogne and the forests of Korea. But, wherever the dark dreams started, they always ended there, at Dachau. It didn’t matter if it began as a memory of a brother dying in a parachute accident in training or in an ambush near Sunchon; it always ended in that damnable camp.
It was these dark dreams which had haunted him of late. He knew the reason why – seventy-five years was a long time in a man’s life, but to the ghosts of an old horror it was but the blink of an eye. The past’s ghouls had long memories, and no mortal man could live long enough to forget. Far more likely, he’d just get lost in the echo.
Mr. Arrow was a man alert to his surroundings, a wartime habit he’d never outgrown, but even he was not immune to such distraction. So it was that he didn’t hear the approach of the young woman until she was practically on top of him.
She was talking to herself, speaking in a voice that bespoke training in refinement. Mr. Arrow could not make out the words, but it sounded like she was cataloguing a ‘to-do’ list as she walked. Though her voice was refined, she didn’t sound particularly calm as she muttered a litany of minor difficulties under her breath. Her stride kept harsh tempo to her words as her heels clacked sharply on the cobblestone path like the staccato of a cantering horse.
The voice struck Mr. Arrow as familiar, and when the elegantly-clad young woman clacked past, her dark locks bobbing with her stride, he understood why. The black-haired, pale-skinned teen was one of Applejack’s best friends – the aspiring fashion designer. Persnickety, but generous to a fault.
She reminded him of Bryce Braxton, one of the men from his unit who had been called the “only gentile in the garment industry,” as he’d worked for Sears-Roebuck in New York at a time when most of his coworkers were Jewish. It had been solidarity with them that motivated him to join the 101st, and for that solidarity he died in Belgium.
Rarity Belle was a lot like Bryce – same tastes, same career, same courtesy, same generous heart. And, he learned when she dropped her keys and a Yiddish curse slipped out of her mouth, the same tendency to cuss when she thought no one was around to hear.
Her slipup was so unexpected that Mr. Arrow let out an uncharacteristic snort of laughter. The pale young woman flushed beet red as she fumbled for her keys. “Terribly sorry, darling,” she exclaimed. “I didn’t realize anyone was…” she trailed off as she looked up and saw his face. “Oh! Mr. Arrow! What a pleasant surprise!”
The old man rose and nodded politely. “Good day to you, young lady.”
Rarity bit her lip and shifted her purse, seeming quite out of sorts for not only having cursed, but having cursed in front of a venerable old man she happened to know. “I— I was just, well I was in a hurry, you see, and I wasn’t really thinking about—”
Taking pity on the poor girl, Mr. Arrow interjected, “No need to apologize. I’ve heard worse.” After more than a decade in uniform, it would have been impossible not to. “What brings you here today?” he asked, hoping to distract her from her embarrassment.
She smiled gratefully and held up her keys, one of which appeared to go to the synagogue. “There’s a bar mitzvah happening tomorrow and I’m helping out with the setup, so I need to go in and check on a few things. And you?” she continued politely. “What brings you to…” her eyes drifted to the memorial and she trailed off, her flush returning. After a wordless moment, she cleared her throat. “I see. I’m… ah… sorry to have disturbed you.”
It looked to Mr. Arrow that she wanted to dart off, but he held up a hand to stop her. “Wait,” he said. It was instinctive, not deliberate and, once he said it, he wasn’t sure what else to say.
Rarity obediently waited, and she watched him expectantly, but Mr. Arrow didn’t know how to answer her expectations. He could not answer even his own. The old man looked to the memorial for inspiration, but it remained silent.
Mr. Arrow swallowed and closed one of his hands.
The pair stood in silence for a moment. After he’d drawn several breaths, there was one sharp clack on the cobblestones, then another, then a third as Rarity stepped into the enclosure with him, her eyes on the memorial.
Mr. Arrow glanced at her. She glanced back. They both glanced at the memorial. Mr. Arrow ran a hand through his hair. Then, having no better idea what to do or say, he gestured for the bench. The pair sat and stared at the memorial in silence.
How long they sat, neither looking at the other, Mr. Arrow could not guess. Eventually, the silence was broken by Rarity.
“My great-grandfather was an Austrian Jew,” she said. “He had a business partner who saw the writing on the wall in 1937 and encouraged him to take his family with him on an extended work assignment to America before the Nazis moved in. They got out. But their cousins, their aunts, their uncles, his and his wife’s respective parents…” she trailed off and Mr. Arrow didn’t press her with questions he already knew the answer to. “I come here sometimes,” she concluded, “and think about how I wouldn’t be here if that partner hadn’t gotten him that American assignment.”
Mr. Arrow nodded. “What happened to the partner?” he asked after a moment.
Rarity sighed. “Werner Banner,” she named him. “He wasn’t Jewish, so he was safe at first. But he was a member of Josef Mueller’s network.” Mr. Arrow knew the second name; Mueller was a Bavarian lawyer who was the connecting point between the German Resistance, the Vatican’s anti-Nazi spy network, and the Allies. He was also one of the only senior members of Operation Valkyrie, which had so nearly succeeded in assassinating Hitler, to escape execution.
He suspected that Banner had not been so lucky. A moment later, Rarity confirmed it. “After Hitler survived the Valkyrie bombing, Banner was rounded up with the others and shot for treason.” She swallowed and dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief. “Mother said that Great Grandfather never could talk about his friend without crying.”
Mr. Arrow couldn’t blame him. Men like that were worth crying for.
Rarity sniffed and continued to dab at her eyes. “Did you have a… were you…” She couldn’t quite seem to form the question.
In a strange way, that fact actually helped Mr. Arrow speak. He had a hard time speaking for himself. But to spare another her discomfort? That he could do.
“I was in the 101st Airborne,” he explained. “I was there when we liberated Dachau.”
“Oh God,” she breathed, unknowingly echoing his own simple prayer of lamentation those seventy-five years ago. “I… I’m so sorry, Mr. Arrow! I can’t even imagine carrying memories like that!”
Mr. Arrow wanted to correct her that he wasn’t carrying the memories, but rather being haunted by them. But he could not form the words to say so.
It seemed neither of them could form the words, as they lapsed once more into silence. This silence was different, though, at least for Mr. Arrow. It was stifling, painful, like something in his chest wanted to leap out, like if he kept it in even one moment longer that he would burst—
“Never again,” he heard himself say.
Rarity was taken off-guard by his sudden exclamation. “Pardon?” she asked.
“Never again,” he repeated, his voice shaking with sudden emotion. “When we saw those camps, we swore it would never happen again. But did we keep that promise?” His hands balled into fists. “Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia, Darfur… more than a dozen times since we swore, ‘Never again!’ And now? The Chinese government has over a million Uighurs in concentration camps! A founding member of the UN has innocent people in those fu—”
Mr. Arrow took a deep breath and forced himself to unclench his hands. He’d never sworn in front of a lady in his life, and he wasn’t going to give the monsters of the world the satisfaction of changing that now. “—in camps like that, and no one stops them.” He closed his eyes, and felt tears forming between the lids. “‘Never again,’ we said. But there will always be wolves in the world, Rarity.”
Having said his piece, he closed his mouth and let his tears fall. Beside him, Rarity cried as well. He put an instinctive arm around her to comfort her, and she leaned into his embrace, but she said nothing. There was nothing more to say.
Or, so he thought.
“There are always wolves,” Rarity agreed with a shaky voice. “But there are always sheepdogs too.” She reached up and clasped the gnarled hand on her shoulder with her own delicate fingers. “Men like you are the reason we’ve survived the wolves all these years. It’s what God put you here to do.” The young woman met his gaze and smiled through her tears. “Maybe we’ll never reach our ‘Never again.’ But neither will the wolves ever win without a fight!”
Mr. Arrow turned the words over in his head. As he did, he felt a slow, somber smile spread across his craggy features. “No,” he agreed eventually. “No, I guess they won’t.”
The pair sat. A light breeze caused the roses to sway.
“Thank you, Rarity.”
“For what?”
Mr. Arrow’s gaze drifted upwards. “For reminding me of that.”
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So long as men exist, evil will never be extinguished.
And yet, as Charlie Chaplin said, so long as men die, liberty will never perish.
Hope springs eternal, after all, in spite of the cruelties of this world.
I've heard of each of the genocides mentioned here, but never known what to do with that knowledge.
As long as there are people, some people will treat others as things; as means to an end rather than as sovereign beings in their own rights. But there will also be good people who see that happening and decide to do something about it. They won't always win, but I don't believe they ever lose permanently.
10084841
Honestly, one of the best things to do with the knowledge is to remember the stories and share them. Hitler once pointed out that no one remembered the Armenian Genocide (which had happened during WWI and is still not acknowledged by most countries, including the US). He noted that, if no one remembered a genocide only a couple decades old, they'd be able to get away with the Holocaust. Horrifyingly, he was almost right.
When we remember the stories and ensure that others do too, we strip away the power of men like Hitler to get away 'clean.' We might not be able to stop the genocides if our governments won't intervene, but we can keep the people alive in memory and speak truth to power. If people are raised with the knowledge of such profound evil, and of the good that can be done in the face of it, then we're more likely to see people stand up and do something about it when the time comes.
Ok, I feel like a jackass already, but since when did Korea have jungles? Mountainous or otherwise rough terrain? Most certainly. But jungles?
10537258
Oops. Thanks for catching that.
Again, the premise is good, but you should do more show, not tell.
Most people who read this book will be aware of the events. But having characters show their reactions to things rather than...just talking about them makes them seem bland.
As a Jewish person, I do think these lessons are important, but dropping historical facts pushes people away.
Jewish Rarity is an interesting headcanon. I'll admit that.
10543727
Not sure how I missed responding to this one. Thank you for the feedback.
As for Jewish Rarity, she was just a random thought that grabbed me one day and wouldn't let go. It gels with some history in my family with some Jewish garmenteers who were very kind to my family way back, which is probably where the idea comes from.
I... can see that.
To build on the comment to the character I started last chapter:
Seventy-Five years is a long time laid down to bleed on a front. But I can not judge you to say "to long", for I have not measured either your pain or your strength to know the ratio between them. What I can with confidence say is "Rise up to fight...". I use ellipsis rather than an exclamation point because this is a war where shouting is a weapon that has its place, but which cold resolve in a voice of steel or even Vulcan-like reporting of the facts is the armament with the broader need in the armouries of the righteous.
I also acknowledge that you HAVE been fighting this war, simply because I can't imagine you not. Just... not on this particular front until now.
*Salutes*
I may private message you regarding tactical advice in my own area of this war.
To others: I intend on asking the author's permission to bring that front to light here. Keep an eye out in the long-term.