Last Shot

Spring 2011 

By Lauren Painter

I never wanted this.

I am mindless;

taking orders from a murderer,

Angel of Death, I agreed,

but all beneath him called him Franz1.

The train greets Treblinka2 innocently;

they are dead already.

The sign lied “Baths” but gas can’t clean them.

Stuck in a chamber, helpless,

Zyklon-B3 fell to the floors and I made sure

the doors remained strong.

Killed like tiny ants,

they fought to live, banging against the walls.

Through the porthole, I saw pain, struggle,

no way out. We have much in common.

The hospital4 was no place for the weak

to heal, but to be shot,

everything disguised as something it was not.

Black clouds fell closely to the camp,

death suffocating the air.

Lost, stuck inside a prison,

surrounded by nothingness and death.

Guarding, I am lifeless,

just like them.

The thousands of faces populate my mind,

my index comfortably pulls the trigger,

gun pointing at my right temple.

It silently screamed in agony,

but I silently screamed in bliss.

This is my last shot.

1. Franz- SS Chief Commander Kurt Franz of Treblinka’s camp, known as the most cruelest and inhumane commander at Treblinka

2. Treblinka- Execution and concentration camp in Poland during the Holocaust

3. Zyklon-B- Pesticide used in gas chambers to kill a mass amount of prisoners

4. hospital- When weaker prisoners were unable to make it to the gas chambers to be killed, they were sent to another chamber cloaked as a hospital to be shot