Hans Koenig Poem by Clyde King

My name is Hans Koenig. I was a prison guard at Mauthausen. I would have
gone to the Russian front for the Fatherland but for my epilepsy that started after being wounded in Poland. Death stared at me and I was terrified of it. I have
epileptic fits 2-3 times a week and that made me unfit for combat in our righteous war against the Jewish and Communists. 'Righteous? ' you ask? Yes! Our priests and pastors even blessed our weapons and said God was on our side! ' 'May God bless the Third Reich for a thousand years, ' our Fuhrer declared.

And he righteously ordered the extermination of all Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals, and Jehovah's Witnesses, although I had respect for the integrity and unity of the Witnesses.The others were filthy vermin. My epileptic fits gave me a moment of such power and strength!

I liked making an example of my power over these wretches every day, to instill fear in them, mainly because when I had my fits, I would throw myself on the ground and convulse for nearly a minute, and I was vulnerable to being attacked by them. I especially despised one little Jewish man, filthy dog, because he had a cataract that looked like a full moon on his right eye. When he stared at me, I felt a shudder of evil passing through me. But I had a fit one day and the Jew put a stick in my mouth or I would have bitten my tongue off. He saved my life! A Jew kept me from dying! I couldn't accept such humiliation!

So I humiliated him every day by hitting him with my rifle, slapping and spitting on him, taking away his meager rations, working him seven days a week (they always got Sundays off as a rest day) , and I'd make him stand all night on the parade field in freezing temperatures. My God, how he suffered! One day he dropped dead. His evil eye no longer terrified me.

One lovely Spring day I had convulsions that made me bite off my tongue.I threw myself on the ground, grasping my rifle, and bled to death. As I bled, a group of his comrades stood about me, smugly smirking at my suffering. My aura of grandiose power slowly faded away with my life.