The dark leather seat felt cold and stiff beneath me. Six hours had gone by on this dreadful Paris to Munich railway. I knew there were only two more hours left, but everything felt wrong. My earth-colored eyes and hair bore no similarity to the blue eyes and light brown to blonde hair of the Germans in this metal box of hell. My diminished size compared to these people didn’t help, either. Only being 1.8 meters tall and very thin, I felt like I could topple over at any moment. The thought of possibly even being just simply murdered in an instance raced through my head.
“But what would a bunch of regular people want with a harmless writer?”
“Nothing,” I thought to myself.
The train then came to a halt.

The date was April 3, 1933. I stepped off of the train and onto a brick road at the edge of Munich. It was everything that I expected it to be; extensive, stylized, and very clean. However, one crucial detail appeared to be out of place. Instead of being greeted by banners of the familiar gold, maroon, and charcoal, I instead saw a flag that many would agree better represented how Germany was viewed. A mess of lines the color of the dark, German soil laid upon a white circle like the Munich sky, which then laid upon an uproar of red, the blood of the English and French once spilt by the Germans.
A building came into my vision before I could even notice myself nearing it. Above the painted black door was a splintered sign with words weathered and worn from rain. Die Braunbär Taverne, The Brown Bear Tavern. I opened the door, and proceeded to buy a room for a week and a pint of ale to calm my nerves.

Now that I had gotten a bit more comfortable, I had to focus on the real reason I came to Germany in the first place, to write.
“Of course,” I thought, “I’ll just write about my experience here.”
Throughout that day and the next, I spent a great deal of time exploring all that Munich had to offer. The streets were lined with extravagant concert halls, beautiful cathedrals, and strikingly powerful courthouses. On the other hand, the most interesting part of my experience in Munich was a conversation I had with a quaint, little man sitting on a bench in the center of the city. I approached him, ready to interview a person who I believed truly understood the beauty of Munich and the rest of Germany.
“Guten Tag, would you mind telling me a bit about yourself? I’m writing about my  experience here and I’d like to hear about the life of a citizen,” I said to him.
The man with a cello in his hand, turned his round head towards me, and responded with a smile.
“Oh, I’d be happy to,” the man said. “My name is Ludwig von Strauss. As you can see, I am a cellist. I actually spend most of my days playing it, whether it be in concert halls across the surrounding nations or in the town square like I’ve been doing today.”
“But why?” I asked. “Why not go into banking, or owning a business? You know, something a bit more profitable?”
“Well, none of those things ever really caught my interest. I’ve always thought that I’d rather be happy than rich,” Ludwig said. That statement has always stayed with me ever since I heard it.

My vacation to Munich was more fantastic for the first two days. However, on the third day, it was all scheiße. The Munich newspaper arrived at Die Braunbär Taverne.
The main article was a blow to the stomach that I couldn’t have created in my mind.
“Alle Juden müssen bereit sein, nach Dachau bis ende der Woche zu reisen. Jeder, der zu finden ist nicht registriert Juden versteckt wird strafrecht verfolgt zu stellen.”
“All Jews must be ready to travel to Dachau by the end of the week. Anyone who is found hiding unregistered Jews will face legal prosecution.”
“To hell with my damn experience, this is far more interesting,” I whispered to myself. In this instance, I noticed a skinny man with curly, black-brown hair comforting a hyperventilating women that could only be described as the same.
“Was ist los? What is wrong?” I asked the couple.
“You haven’t heard?!” darted the man, like he was speaking to the dumbest person he’d ever met.
“Of what?” I asked, still very puzzled.
“The Nazi Party coming to power? The imprisonment of the Jews? You haven’t heard of it at all? He asked again as if I was some sort of blundering ape.
“Well clearly I haven’t,” I retorted, trying to lighten the newly dark tone in the tavern. “I assume you are both Jews, correct?”
“Be quiet!” the lanky fellow snapped. “My wife and I practice no religion, but we are both of Jewish descent. We thought that we would be safe from investigation in a large city such as Munich, but now it seems that more desperate measure may be taken.”
“Well, I suppose that now is as good a time as any to introduce myself,” I said, fully knowing it was completely inappropriate. “Monty Gerren, writer, visiting from France. And you are?” The man and his wife turned away and spoke with each other in a hushed tone, occasionally looking back at me, worriedly I could only imagine that they thought I could have been some member of the Nazi Party, searching Munich to find any Jews that have gone unnoticed. I had nothing to worry about, really; I didn’t look at all German, and my speaking sounded very foreign. I hoped that I wouldn’t ever be mistaken for a savage, like a despicable Nazi, now that I’ve learned their ways. The two eventually came to an agreement.
“Our real names are Joshua and Sara Berkovich, but we’ve been using aliases ever since the Nazi Party took control,” Joshua said. “Everyone else knows us by Dieter and Heidi Vogt.”
“Well then,” I said with a faltering smile. “I’ve got some work to do.”

I wrote down the entire conversation I had with the Berkovich turned Vogt couple. They spent most of their recent years staying primarily private from society due to early feelings of anti-semitism. That was really all they could add to the story, as there hadn’t been much else in their lives. I spent the rest of this day and the day after gathering all I could about the Nazi Party’s takeover. Along with the mass incarceration of the Jews into work camps, the Nazi Party was creating a so-called Aryan race of people with blonde hair, blue eyes, and a strong physique. The reasoning behind this seemed like nonsense to me, but I imagine it was perfect in the eyes of Adolf Hitler:
De Führer, the leader, the god amongst men.

If my third day in the “blessed nation” of Deutschland could be described as scheiße, my fifth day would be described as “unglaublich gefickt.” The day was April 7, 1933. I had just finished writing my story, I packed up my belongings, and was ready to travel back to France to publish my story and expose the heinous yet secretive crimes against humanity of Nazi Germany. Before boarding the train from Munich to Paris, I was greeted by two men in brown military uniforms bearing the flag of true German colors. One of them was taller with very soft features. The other was more stout with a more square jaw and more angular features. The shorter one stepped forward.
“Excuse me, your passport sir?” He said with a raspy grunt. I froze for a second with fatigue from writing through the night before, obviously making me look guilty of a crime. I handed the passport to him with a shaking hand.
“We also need to check through your luggage. Sorry, it is standard protocol for non-citizens,” he said. I gave my bag to the short man and he swiftly handed it to the taller man. “You are Montgomery Gerren, correct?”
“Yes, sir,” I responded quickly.
“And could you please tell me your date of bir-.” The tall man cut him off and pulled him away with my book in his hands. I felt I lump in my throat, and my chest began to tighten with nausea. I broke out into a cold sweat with my skin starting to itch and burn out of nervousness as the Nazis conversed.
“Could you tell us your profession?” asked the tall man with a smoother voice than the short man.
“Novelist and journalist,” I responded with my voice beginning to crack.
“Well I’m very sorry,” said the small man. “But we cannot let you leave.”
“Oh no, sir, I have no intentions on publishing the contents of that book,” I lied.
“Ich wie ein dummkopf aus, Herr Gerren? Do I look like an idiot, Mr. Gerren?” the short man said, chuckling. “We’re certain you’d just share the story through speech, anyway, but that’s not the point. You’re now condemned to Germany until further notice. Also, your residence at Die Braunbär Taverne will be relocated to Dreck Straße, filth street, at the far corners of Munich. Joining you will be the rest of the residents in your building. We can’t have any threats to the rising Nazi power.

I didn’t remember coming to Dreck Straße, all I remember is waking to a dark ceiling with no windows surrounding it. The bed felt like stones, and my back ached horribly. Leaving the room, I was able to exit the new house I had been put in. This street seemed like a much different place than Munich. About 20 houses were on this street and they all looked the same: plain gray boxes under a gray sky of the same color. The days passed on this street like minutes. The Nazis would visit the houses once every day to give us small amounts of food. After a number of days, the people now imprisoned here renamed the street to Tod Stadt, Dead Town. I could only assume that soon we would all be sent to Dachau, the work camp, to do endless work like the Jews that were already there. I knew that I had to escape, maybe even bring Joshua and Sara along. However, this became a much harder task to plan, as everyone would grow a bit more dead every sunset.

Nearing the end of the third week, Joshua, Sara, and I made our third attempt at an escape. We met just before dawn, before the Nazis would come to deliver food rations. It was four in the morning, and we started the escape. The sky was the sea in a storm; dark, powerful, and frightening. A bloody red started to creep up into the clouds. We knew we had to hurry. The three of us slipped through the underbrush behind the houses. The black soil sagged down and felt like it was completely falling out of existence. We neared the border until two horribles screeches were heard; a gunshot, and the noise of Sara being shot in the leg. The only way to survive now was to surrender to the guards that would soon appear out of the dark, but even surviving seemed like a poor decision.

This time, we weren’t taken back to our houses. We were put into cells in a concrete building. The time I spent in my new prison was only a day, and it seemed like long enough for a man to be born and die old and poor. I prayed that I could get out of here by some act of god akin to endings in some of my own books. I prayed that this could have all been a dream, but I was horribly mistaken.

This was the day that truly, only one man died. A man in a uniform a darker brown than usual dragged me off of the jagged cell floor. Joshua was standing with his face towards a brick wall.
“Mr. Gerren, you’re loyal to the Nazi Party, right?” the man asked with a drooped frown, ready to eliminate whatever was left of me.
“If it’ll get me home, then yes,” I struggled. “Then I’m very loyal.” A short Nazi with long, blonde hair then handed me a bullet, and a luger pistol. I was now the most deadly person in the room; the luger pistol was known to fire without warning.
“Now,” the Nazi shouted, “Kill this man!”
“Dieter Vogt is innocent!” I argued. “He has done nothing!”
“Playing games with us will not assist in receiving your freedom, Gerren,” the man said with no emotion. “Shoot Joshua Berkovich and earn your freedom, Montgomery.”

The options raced through my mind at the speed of the bullet I could now fire.
“Am I worth more than an innocent man?” I asked myself. “I got him into this situation. I could get him out, but is it the right thing to do? Maybe if I refuse, they’ll let him go free.” I had to make the right choice. I started to lower the gun, the tension started to go away, but I heard the gunshot.
I killed Joshua Berkovich.
I shot a ball of fire and lead through the heart of an innocent man.
Montgomery Gerren is a murderer.

And that’s where my story ends. I’m not a hero, I’m not anyone’s saviour, I’m a killer. I’ll leave this book in my house for someone to find it and hopefully publish it. Aside from that, by the time anyone else ever reads this, I’ll be dead by my own hand. Maybe I’ll do it glamorously. Maybe it’ll be modest. But to whomever finds this book, don’t give the money to my family, just keep it. That might repay my debt, but if it doesn’t, make sure it helps someone.

The book “Zu Offenbaren,” (Translation: To Reveal) written by late author Montgomery Gerren was found approximately six years after his suicide on August 27, 1939; a week before France declared war on Germany in World War 2. The profits from this book’s sales have since been kept by a local musician. He has since asked to remain anonymous.