I came upon this link some weeks ago and have been wanting to post it ever since. It is the only surviving film footage of Anne Frank and I find it haunting, riveting, and oddly beautiful. Anne, ironically, is the Christ figure of the Holocaust. By dying, she gave us back something of ourselves. She made us look into the blackest part of our hearts and hate what we saw there – but without dragging us into a state of self-loathing. Anne forgave us – those of us who persecuted her, who stood idly by, or who simple didn’t know, or didn’t want to know. And by believing that we are good, she helped us strive to be better.
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In the late 1990s I wrote a novella that chronicled the life of a teen-age boy who was the product of a one night stand between an African-American soldier and a Czech mother during the liberation of Pilsen in 1945. His story was complex, as he was growing up in Czechoslovakia in the midst of hard-line Stalinist oppression.
I never published it and it’s still sitting in a drawer somewhere. To be honest, it’s probably not very good. But the story that inspired it is, and I wanted to share it in honor of the 68th anniversary of D-Day.
Truth, Beer, and History’s Massive Tailwind
By Victoria Dougherty
In 1995 I had the good fortune to accompany a Czech film crew to a celebration commemorating the 50th anniversary of the liberation of the city of Pilsen, Czech Republic by us Americans.
It was a joyous event filled with music, great beer (it is the town of Pilsen, after all, where the name Pilsner comes from), hearty food (dumplings, anyone?), and scores of veterans from all the world over. Freedom was new to that part of the world, and it still felt like a dream. The way it must feel in the aftermath of winning the lottery.
About an hour into the merriment, parade watching, and copious beer drinking, I realized that if I didn’t find a bathroom, things might get ugly.
I ran into what I think was a welcome center and was immediately pointed in the direction of a clean, unisex toilet by a kindly woman manning a beer tap.
When I emerged, I figured I could use another beer, so I went over to the woman at the tap and started digging some coins out of my pocket.
“No, no,” she said, and handed me the beer free of charge. “Sit down.”
She offered me a platter studded with several rows of Topinky, which is basically the Czech version of bruschetta: slices of rye bread fried in lard, spread with a thick layer of lard (think cream cheese on a bagel), and topped with diced raw onions and a sprinkle of salt and paprika.
“You’re American, so you’re used to the truth,” she said between bites of Topinky. She pointed outside at the celebration. “But for us, you can see it’s still a luxury.”
And that’s when she told me her story.
It so happened that of the American troops that liberated Pilsen, at least one was an African-American regiment. In the wild revelry that lasted for days after the citizens of Pilsen were finally freed from the Nazis… well, let’s just say there were a lot of very grateful Czech women and a lot of handsome men in uniform around. Not to mention fountains of really great beer to fuel the fire. My new beer wench friend happened to be one of those grateful women, and about nine months after the partying died down, she gave birth to a beautiful, brown baby boy.
Now, what was then Czechoslovakia didn’t have the same kind of racial baggage that we had over here in the United States. People of color (unless you were a gypsy) really were just that, and garnered stares only because they were exotic. So, while an unwed mother was still a bit of a scandal back in the mid to late 1940s, the fact that the child was dark skinned was neither here nor there.
Except for one little problem.
Once the Soviets took over the country, they took over the country’s history as well and declared that it was in fact the Russians – not the Americans – who liberated Pilsen. Contradicting this new truth carried some pretty heavy consequences, which left my new friend in a pickle: fair-skinned babies could be explained away easily, but the dark ones gave new meaning to the ethnic term “Black Russian.”
“So, what happened?” I asked.
“At first I was scared they might take my son. You know, disappear him,” she said. “But it was funny. Instead, people started to pretend he looked like everyone else. I met my husband a couple of years after the war and people would go out of their way to tell me how much my dark son looked like my husband and our other children. Even people who knew. It was crazy. Without talking about it, everyone began to lie.”
She started to wonder if she had imagined making love to an African American soldier and pondered other reasons that could explain her son’s skin color. Maybe her child had inherited a recessive gene?
“At times,” she said. “I really thought I was going crazy. Even my husband started going along with it.”
One thing kept her sanity.
She was walking in the market with her son the first time it happened. He was little – maybe four or five – and right in front of her at a fruit stall, she spied a little boy just like hers: the same age, the same color. The other boy’s mother saw them, too.
“What did you do?” I asked her.
“Nothing.”
She told me that she and the other mother smiled at each other and went their separate ways. It was too dangerous for them to start talking. What they could say would only bring trouble.
And that wasn’t the only mother she encountered over the years. There were a good handful in Pilsen, and when they saw each other on the street, they always smiled the satisfied smile of someone who knows the truth. Not only was it proof positive that they weren’t crazy, but also a reminder that they were being ruled by lies and that there really was a better life out there. A life without fear, invented histories, and hopelessness. She told me she was very proud that the father of her child was American.
I guess it’s one of history’s little ironies that a dark skinned boy was a symbol of truth and hope in a totalitarian society, and one of oppression and bitterness left over from a Civil War and a slave trade in a free one. I didn’t have the heart to tell her that her son’s father went home to a segregated society.
But I did have the heart to tell her what I know to be true: that as long as people are free to speak, things can change quickly. Lies are contradicted – subject to a constant stream of information, bad policies are over-turned, even hearts and minds evolve.
Jan Saudek – Sugar
who don’t know Saudek, let me give you a quick course that’ll at least make you fluent in cocktail party parlance. Saudek is a Czech photographer whose quasi-surreal, often erotic, and always drop-jaw stunning pictures have been making the rounds since the 1950s. Saudek himself is half Jewish and spent part of his youth in the Terezin concentration camp in Czechoslovakia. Maybe that’s where he discovered that the beautiful and the grotesque are inextricably linked – much like pleasure and pain. Saudek is able to elevate the monstrous, the bizarre, the kinky, the ludicrous into things of allure that delight the senses instead of making us cringe.
Sexuality is a big theme for Saudek and he depicts sex with an abandon that frankly, makes me blush. For Saudek, sex can be coy, worshipful, wanton, and depraved all at once. You walk away knowing only one thing – he likes it. A lot. And he makes you like it, too, and in ways you never thought possible.
You’ll have to do your own research if you want to see Saudek’s really raunchy work – I just don’t do that stuff on Cold. But here are some of his less graphic, more {shall we say} classical photos on his favorite subject. “Marie” is my favorite – and I have to say, I think it’s one of the sexiest photos ever taken. If I were a man, or a woman inclined towards other women, I would become lost in her eyes and make my way down from there.
Jan Saudek – Marie
Jan Saudek – Self Portrait
photographer Jan Saudek. Quirky, kinky, raw, deeply sentimental, Saudek is a true Slav – one who celebrates his contrary nature and is able to elevate the most hideous scene – a topless, heavily made up woman with a gun in her mouth, an enormous bare buttocks smiling defiantly, alluringly into the camera -into a thing of beauty. I call him the straight Robert Mapplethorpe, and if you take a look at some of his photos (ones I will not be showcasing on Cold, since I aim for a PG-13 audience), you’ll understand why. Saudek, like Mapplethorpe, is one kinky bastard and has no compunction about putting himself – in all his glory – in front of the camera. He allows us to see him in all manner of sexually deviant or merely sexual contexts – spanking, giving and receiving oral sex, making love to obese women, naked, in shackles. He gives Christian Grey a run for his money.
But Saudek is also unflinching in his ability to depict a simple act of love – something so sentimental that it could be the cover to a romance novel, except that it’s too good. A lot of artists are more than happy to showcase sex, violence, depravity, pain, and yet cannot train their eye on love. That’s too much exposer – perhaps they think it’s anti-intellectual. Yet Jan Saudek will photograph babies from the same adoring, kitten-love vantage as Anne Geddes – only without the kitsch. In the serious art world, that’s a h*ll of a lot more brave than political advocacy or some raunchy pictures.
Yesterday, Jack (my husband) and I received a text from our good friend Dave Bellon. Dave is a four time combat veteran (2 in Iraq, 2 in Afghanistan) and Colonel in the United States Marine Corps. He and my husband go way back. As in back to 6th Grade. And they have indulged in every kind of adolescent antic together – from sneaking whiskey and cigarettes on the railroad tracks, to jumping off Dave’s roof and into his pool (beers in hand) while Dave’s parents were out of town, to doing shameful things to girls who let them while they raged on Spring Break at some God-awful, dorm-like hotel in Daytona Beach.
Although we live several states apart, Dave and Jack still indulge in those meandering, soul-scrutinizing spaghetti bowl conversations that so many men quit having with their friends right around the time they graduate from college. For those men sports take the place of a real exchange – one that risks exposure, intimacy. But not Jack and Dave. And that’s what touches me so deeply about their friendship. Sure, they laugh, they needle each other, they tell dirty jokes, but their banter is the antithesis of small talk. In fact, they speak only of that which matters and it is as refreshing as a bath in the snow – Swedish style.
So that’s why when my husband’s iPhone pinged on Memorial Weekend and Dave’s name came up, I knew he was reaching out.
It was a dreary Sunday in St. Louis, where Dave lives, and he was sitting in his suburban garage watching the rain storm. And he was remembering friends who had fallen. Brave men he had come to think of as brothers before they were ripped from his life. He was thinking of two, in particular, and he asked that we share their names and their stories with our children. We did. And I’d like to share them here as well if I may.
Lt. Col Kevin Shea (1966-2004)
Lt. Col. Kevin Shea was killed on September 14th, 2004 when he was mortally wounded in a rocket attack on Camp Fallujah in Al Anbar Province, Iraq. He was the highest ranking Marine to die in the Iraq War at the time of his death.
A 1984 graduate of Bishop O’Dea High School in Seattle, Washington, Shea accepted an appointment to the United States Air Force Academy, where he was a standout defensive end on the football team, played in the 1987 Freedom Bowl and was a member of the academy’s 1989 national champion rugby team.
After graduating, Shea accepted a commission as a 2nd lieutenant in the United States Marine Corps. There, he completed The Basic School (TBS) and the Infantry Officer’s Course at Quantico, Virginia.
Shea’s assignments included Support Company Detachment Commander, for the 9th Communications Battalion in Operation Desert Storm, Liaison Officer for Marine Forces Central Command (MARCENT) G-6, and JCSE Task Force Commander, Combined Special Operations Task Force, during Operation Desert Thunder, and Communications Officer (G-6) Regimental Combat Team 1 (RCT-1), 1st Marine Div, Operation Iraqi Freedom II.
Shea also earned a Master of Science degree in electrical engineering at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, and served as an instructor in electrical engineering and a rugby coach at the United States Naval Academy, where he was revered by the students.
Shea received the Bronze Star a few weeks before his death. He did not inform his family.
After his death, a highly anticipated rugby match between the Naval Academy, then ranked No. 3 in the nation, and its rival Air Force was canceled when the Navy players decided unanimously to bow out to attend Shea’s memorial and interment at Arlington.
The Marine Corps Scholarship Foundation administers a scholarship in Shea’s name. There is a chapter about Shea in In the Shadow of Greatness, written by graduates of the Naval Academy.
The Kevin M. Shea Memorial Unit Award is given annually to a United States Marine Corps unit that makes exceptional contributions to the Corps.
Gy Sgt Mike Davis (1982-2001)
Gy Sgt. Mike Davis was killed on December 11, 2001 at only nineteen years of age. He is the son of Gy Sgt and Mrs. Michael L. Davis of the United States Marine Corps. His tombstone at the Barrancas National Cemetery in Pensacola Florida reads simply Gy Sgt USMC Gone Fishing. For one so young, he left an indelible impression on all those who knew him, and the memory of his humor, his good nature, and his unflinching character goes some way to fill the hole vacated by his loss. And that’s saying something.
Please pray for these men and their families. Share their names with your children. Don’t let them be forgotten.
c. 2013 all rights reserved
Vysotsk, Russia
Winter, 1960
Midnight
Demyan waited in the back seat of his chauffeured 1959 ZiL-III, strumming his fingers on the arm rest. It was cold, the wind was howling outside the armored vehicle and he was tired. But his time in the field was measured, or so he believed. Soon, he hoped he would spend his days at the Politburo and his nights wherever he chose.
He couldn’t see the hamlet hidden in the trees. But the agent knew the safe house was secure, having spent many a night like a great many agents before him, seducing an endless stream of Bond girl wannabes. He smiled at the memory of the stuffed swordfish mounted on the wall above the bed. It has always been a source of inspiration.
But those days were long past for him. This assignment was different. This mission involved an unarmed American with a proclivity for large breasted women; hence the use of the sanctuary that was scheduled to be consumed in an accidental forest fire in the spring.
It was time. If the gypsy woman had done her job by now, the American would be turned. He would have no other choice. He stepped out of the car, closing the door quietly. His driver knew his job. The car eased itself silently down the dirt road to wait. Demyan turned his collar up and followed the short path into the forest.
A hundred yards away, he opened the door and peeked in. The lamp on the night stand was on, but what he saw was alarming. A jug of moonshine lay broken on the floor, its contents, tainted with hallucinogens intended for the American, was still draining between the floor boards. His agent, a gypsy from Belarus, was naked on the bed with the upper jaw of the swordfish completely buried between her ample breasts. The swordfish’s fin nearly touched the ceiling. He went to the girl but there was nothing he could do for her. Sensing danger, he backed out of the room and walked down the path, triggering the transistor radio in his pocket.
Half a mile away, his driver was on the ground, the last of his blood soaking the grass beneath his face. A light blinked on the dashboard inside the car. A gloved hand put the transmission into drive.
Demyan watched his ZiL approach. He lit a cigarette, as much for warmth as to signal the driver it was safe. When he noticed the car window was down, his head screamed for him to run to safety. He pulled his weapon, emptying the magazine toward the car as he ran as he ran up the trail.
Out of breath, he plunged into the cabin, slamming the door behind him. He spun around, knowing he had to turn the lamp off before his assailant arrived. Then he saw the American laying on the bed, the swordfish pinning him to the mattress. The gypsy was gone.
B Y Rogers is the author of The Sin of Certainty and a growing list of short stories, as well as the creator of The Iron Writer Challenge. At the moment, he lives in Utah with his wife of thirty-eight years, their five children and ten grandchildren. His stories are listed with Amazon and Smashwords.
Amazon – http://tinyurl.com/bq35jgj
Smashwords – http://tinyurl.com/bvxswys
The Iron Writer – http://theironwriter.com/
On behalf of Gerald Elias, Jeff Cohen, Sam Thomas, A.B. Bourn, Sheila Webster Boneham, BY Rogers and myself, thank you for reading and following the Dead Cold flash fiction extravaganza the past few weeks. It has been beyond fun. Please join me again next week as regular old Cold resumes.
I first got to know Brian through ASMSG, a wonderful author group that’s become my virtual corner office with view. I liked his dry humor and
clear-headed observations right away. It made me curious about his work, so I checked out a few of his short stories, namely Black Friday, for which I happily wrote a review (see Books I love). Turns out his writing style is just like his personal style – simple, no-nonsense, and observational. I like that. He doesn’t slip into his characters, he walks next to them – watching, listening, sometimes tripping and making them fall face-first into a puddle. When I first got the idea for a Dead Cold one-stop-shop blog “tour” – or maybe blog party is more accurate – I knew I wanted to have Brian on right away.
Brian is also the creator of The Iron Writer Challenge, a WordPress blog devoted to flash fiction. If you like a quick, fun read and the sport of getting to vote on the best story each week (think Iron Chef), you love The Iron Writer. His new novel, The Sin of Certainty, is out on Smashwords and Amazon.
So, Please join us tomorrow for Brian’s Dead Cold short, A Cold War Forest Night. You’ll be glad you did.
