Master Race

Master Race is a disturbing story about Word War II, the Nazis and the concentration camps. It is based on a story from an old horror comic called Impact.

I was in the train station, standing on the platform. I was waiting patiently for my train as I did every morning.

The train ground to a halt and the doors slid open. Passengers came pouring out. Keeping my head down, I boarded the train and took a seat.

I looked around at my fellow passengers, all of them alone in their little worlds. My eyes settled on one passenger in particular. He was wearing a black hat and his face was pale and thin. Something about his face looked familiar.

And then it hit me. It was a face I knew from ten years ago. Ten long years and five thousand miles away. One of the many faces I would never be able to forget, no matter how hard I tried.

My hands began to tremble and I broke out into a cold sweat. I looked at his face and I was drawn back into the past.

It was a madness that swept through the country like a plague. A tidal wave of frenzied hate. Somehow, I found myself caught up in the movement.

I remembered the rallies, the inspirational speeches and the cheering of the crowds.

I remembered the troops marching through the streets, smashing shop windows and brutally beating anyone who tried to stand up to them. I remembered soldiers dragging people from their homes and sending them to concentration camps.

I was young and impressionable. I didn’t understand what was going on. I wanted to serve my country so I joined the army. Instead, they sent me into the SS and I was stationed as a guard in a concentration camp.

I remembered the concentration camp and the unimaginable horrors it kept hidden within. I remembered the misery and fear of the people who lived and died behind those wretched barbed wire fences.

I remembered dragging people from the trains and lining them up, deciding who would live and who would die. The children were separated from their parents, the wives were separated from their husbands.

I remembered marching the unsuspecting people into the gas chambers and listening to their screams as they slowly died. I remembered shooting innocent people in the back of the head and rolling their bodies into mass graves.

I remembered the emaciated corpses of men, women and children, piled high against the gas chamber walls and the terrible stench of human flesh, burning in the crematorium.

I was witness to it all and yet I did nothing. What could I do? I was simply following orders. I may have done terrible things, but I wasn’t responsible for any of them. My conscience was clear.

I remembered the end of the war when the news came that the Russians were only a few miles away. I fled the concentration camp, hiding my uniform and changing into civilian clothes. I tried to lose myself in among the crowds of refugees that walked down the roads, looking for somewhere safe to live.

Somehow, I managed to evade the Allied army. I changed my name. I created a new identify for myself. I went to America, where no one would know who I was or where I came from. Where no one would find out what I did during the war.

When I looked up again, the man was staring at me. I could see the glint of recognition in his eyes. He was one of the survivors from the camp. He knew who I was. He knew what I had done. He wouldn’t let me get away with it. He would call the police and then I would be hunted once again.

The train slowed as it came to the next station. I jumped up from my seat and rushed to the doors. The man in the black hat got up from his seat as well and started walking towards me.

The train ground to a halt and the doors slid open. When I looked back, the man was behind me. He was staring right at me and his eyes seemed to bore through me.

I had to get away. I had to run.

I ran as fast as I could… just as I had run from the concentration camp all those years ago… just as I had been running ever since the end of the war… running from my past.

I ran down the deserted platform and the man in the black hat followed.

Then, all of a sudden, my foot slipped and I felt myself falling…

Falling… falling… falling…

Right under the wheels of the oncoming train.

Half an hour later, the man in the black hat was standing there on the platform, talking to the police.

“What happened?” an officer asked.

“I don’t know,” the man replied. “He was in front of me when I was getting off. Then, all of a sudden, he began running up the platform and as I watched, he jumped under the wheels of the oncoming train. It was horrible.”

“Did you know him?” asked the policeman.

“Not at all,” said the man in the black hat. “I never saw him before in my life.”