the cab cut through the streets

The cab cut through the streets of Berlin, headed for the airport.
“They’re yours. Do what you want with them,” Gretchen said. “I can’t look anymore.”
Their mother’s cousin Wilhelm had handed them the small bundle as they were leaving Frankfurt. That was before Auschwitz, where they’d wept with everyone else over the inexplicable inhumanity wrung out there by ordinary work-a-day men.
“How could such horror exist in an advanced state like Germany?” they’d wondered with everyone else.
Gertrude looked down at the fading photograph and small book. Its edges curled like leaves in a fire and, indeed, the felt seemed hot to the touch. “Why didn’t we know this?” she said.
The photograph showed a handsome man, smartly dressed in the uniform of an SS officer. His name was printed at the bottom in bold German script: Gerhardt Manheim, their mother’s uncle. The book was his diary, detailing the tedium of life in the barracks near Warsaw, Poland. In a precise hand he described his daily grind of paperwork, his frustration with the poorly trained recruits from southern Germany, the lack of amenities available in Poland, and the long days at the Umschlagplatz, loading boxcars with “der Juden.” Those cars, she knew, carried men, women, and children to tortured deaths. To Gerhardt, though, it was just another day.
It seemed that every other page was filled with his longing for home, his desire to see his fiancé, whom he identified only as “M,” and his fears for his younger brothers. In the weeks before Christmas, he described his plans to surprise his storm troopers with roasted goose, chocolates, and cigarettes, as well as how he ingeniously managed to trade, beg, and steal every item on his list, including a black market recording of American jazz. It was a delightful story, marred only by occasional mention of “der Juden”, how their riots in the ghetto forced the storm troopers to risk their lives to restore peace. He came to treasure the days of loading, when “the sheep” were relatively docile, meekly filing into the cattle cars.
The cab stopped. Gertrude snapped the book shut like a child who’s been caught in her mother’s dresser. She looked at Gretchen, her twin, then at the handsome man in the photograph. He was in them, there was no denying it.
She turned the picture over, reading the faded lead, “Gerhardt. Killed by bandits in the bloody Warsaw Revolt, April 22, 1943.”
Gertrude slipped the photograph into the book, which she put in her purse beside her passport, which lists, among other vitals, “Date of Birth: April 22, 1943.”
She and Gretchen walked into the airport, back to the tedious details of living.