"Helena's Hell" My Latest Novella
For WWII buffs, my latest project is historical fiction based loosely on a real person. Below are my notes found at the end of the novella for context, hopefully of value:
Authors Notes:
This work of historical fiction is based loosely on Helena Citrónová, who was a prisoner at Auschwitz, one of the largest camps. While there, an SS officer named Lance Corporal Franz Wunsch professed his love for her. He made efforts to make her stay there less awful and saved her sister from the gas chambers. Helena did give testimony at his trial, and Wunsch was absolved of all the charges against him. That’s where the similarities end in the story you just read.
Anton is the analog of Wunsch in this story for me. The camp in this story is a composite of various forced labor camps, but loosely based on Nazi slave labor camp at Ohrdruf-Nord Stalag III, sub camp for Buchenwald. Although my intent is always to be historically accurate where it matters, some artistic license was taken with the story. Those history buffs who know precisely who lived in the various camps, how they were run, etc., will note some inaccuracies. However, the larger aspects of the story, how prisoners were treated and such, are accurate.
Some may think, “Did he have to be that graphic? We know it was terrible.” Let me be clear: what I wrote was the toned-down versions of what took place in those camps. If the reader thinks what I used in this story was difficult to read, I didn’t even touch on the worst of it. However terrible you think it was, it was worse. My hope is that the reader gets an adequate sense of the brutality without having to read about the worst of it. Researching this story gave me nightmares for a week.
Why did I write this story? The memories of those events are starting to fade in the minds of too many, and I hoped by writing a (hopefully!) entertaining historical fiction story, I would do my small part to keep it alive; an unmistakable fact is via writer-philosopher George Santayana: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” I wish I could say “never again” meant something, but history has already demonstrated it hasn’t, as similar has happened repeatedly around the world since WWII.
General Dwight D. Eisenhower, in a letter to Chief of Staff George C. Marshall, April 15, 1945, wrote about his visit to the camps shortly after liberation by US forces: “The things I saw beggar description.... The visual evidence and the verbal testimony of starvation, cruelty and bestiality were... overpowering.... I made the visit deliberately in order to be in a position to give firsthand evidence of these things if ever, in the future, there develops a tendency to charge these allegations merely to ‘propaganda.’”
As with all my stuff, it's a novella and a quick read. Found on Amazon HERE.
