The Marked Collar

During the Nazi uprising in the early 20^th century, The Grand Mufti in Jerusalem was worried about Zionism and a return of Israel’s Indigenous people to their homeland to escape the holocaust. Arabs are from the Arabian peninsula. My Dutch ancestors were also colonizers, but unlike the Grand Mufti, I know about my nation’s colonial past and I don’t deny the historical facts. I want to live peacefully with the Indigenous people in North America.

Since the Grand Mufti was worried about Jews escaping into Israel from Europe, he organized with Hitler and the Nazis to keep the Jews in Europe so they could be killed. I estimate hundreds of thousands of Jews were murdered because of the Grand Mufti in Jerusalem.

The Grand Mufti did this because he, as a proto-Palestinian, had the same ideology as the Nazis. Although it is not PC to say, the modern Palestinians have the same ideology as this Grand Mufti. They are radicalized and many want to commit genocide against all the Jews so that they can establish the caliphate in Jerusalem.

My Dutch grandmother told me she didn’t hate Germans but she hated Nazis. She drew this distinction as I make the same distinction between Arab Muslims and Palestinianism. Palestine is  not a nation state in exile. They have no Palestinian language, culture, values, or history except decades of terrorism.. Where you peel back the layers, what you get is ISIS/Nazi.

I wrote “The Marked Collar” short story about my Opa. He was driven into becoming a saboteur during the Nazi occupation. This happened to my family when the Nazis took control of the Netherlands. It is not harmless to platform Nazis or Palestinianism.

When Nazis/Palestinianism takes control, it results in extreme violence. Even if there is a liberation, the effects will last for several generations. This is a story based on my family and what can happen to your family once Nazi/ Palestinianism takes control.

This story contains graphic violence. It is the truth but I understand if you don’t want to read it. You wouldn’t want to read what Hamas did either, but it is still the truth about Palestinianism. 

* * *

The Marked Collar

Gerrit presses the waxy package into that steel joint of the IJssel bridge. Finger impressions in a plastic explosive. Like a finger in a stick of butter. It sticks like heavy clay, gripping the metal as if it belongs there. Gerrit presses the fuse so it hangs downward. He lifts his head and smells the cold iron from the river.

I’m ready, he thinks. It’s been a long time.

He watches the coal smoke drift from the distant houses. The moonlight glints off the bridge’s steel ribs. He shifts his weight. His leather work boots make no noise on the frozen mud bank, which is crusty on top but soft underneath. The mud sucks at his feet. Before, he used to tramp around in the wooden clogs. Clack-Clack.  The sound carried ahead of him like an announcement. He doesn’t wear clogs anymore-anywhere.

I’ve passed this bridge many times, he thinks. Always alone.

The sharp chemical tang of explosives reminds him of a fresh cut pig fat- a sweet unnatural smell almost as familiar as the smell of river rot and old marsh grass. The IJssel Valley often has a thin white moonlight reflected off the water. Even with cloud cover, a pig farmer used to night work can see well enough.

Gerrit came to the bridge alone with the last bit of plastic explosive. He took a couple pieces several weeks ago from the back shed. From behind the Zutphen pub.  Jan, from Raad van Verzet, stored a stash of the plastic explosive in the shed. But Jan was caught and the Nazis have cleared out the shed. Except the two bricks that Gerrit stole before. Jan didn’t know about Gerrit and the Nazis don’t know Gerrit has the last two bricks.

They interrogated Jan for two days and the Nazis know the plan. The notice of execution is still posted in the pub.

I’m a pig farmer and the Nazis leave a farmer alone, he thinks. No one knows I’m here.

Gerrit has no family and no wife like Jan. Before the occupation, Gerrit was engaged. A week after the occupation, Saar with the red curls told him she couldn’t marry him. She left Zutphen to stay with family in Utrecht. Gerrit’s mother has been dead for many decades and his father is dead and buried since he was twenty. Gerrit and his younger brother, Pieter, had worked the farm. A year ago, the Nazi-appointed burgemeester came by the farm with Pieter’s work effort order. Pieter was shipped to Amsterdam. Pieter, who was younger and stronger, worked in a shipping yard lifting timber, cleaning hulls, and carrying materials. Worse, Pieter was forced to eat food rations while the others starved. The Nazis collect food and ship it from Amsterdam. The Dutch blow up bridges. The Nazis beat and starve and send families to the boxcars.

Gerrit found out about Jan’s stash two weeks ago during porkchop delivery at the Zutphen pub. There is a kitchen in the back, with an open door behind the building. When Gerrit arrived, the owner was out and Gerrit went to put the porkchops on the counter in the back kitchen.

Gerrit heard it through the open kitchen door, the door that opens to overhear people chatting behind the pub.

“We’ll blow it up next week,” said Jan. Jan, loud, never stopped wearing clogs like Gerrit. Gerrit heard him stomp away from the back door in his wooden clogs, the clack-clack echoing into the pub’s kitchen.

Gerrit peered out the back door. They were gone. Gerrit went and took the two bricks from the back shed then. He didn’t know why he took them. Later, entering the pub’s dining room from the kitchen, Hendrik, the pub owner, gave him the letter. There are many letters and so Hendrik just told him.

“They beat him. Not the hunger. Pieter said too much. Happened in ration line,” said Hendrik, shaking his head. “You know you can boil and eat a tulip bulb? “

Gerrit swallowed. There’s been many beatings. Nazis do it in the street.

Gerrit had to ask. “Saskia paid me last week for some porkchops. Could I drop them off here?” Saskia is Jan’s wife. They have two daughters.

Even Hendrik scrunched his nose, mustache bristling. Hendrik, the town news bearer.

“Don’t be talking about her no more. The Nazis wants us to talk. They took her to the boxcars with the rest of his family.”

Gerrit made the mistake of going by the freight yard in the beginning. He saw an open box car. At night, pale faces in the darkness of an open box car. Petals on a wet, black bough. Gerrit won’t go there again.

Now, standing by this bridge, Gerrit looks for a match. The IJssel Valley often has a thin white moonlight reflected off the river water. He says nothing out loud. All a sentry could hear is the sound of rats in the reeds. The water is lapping and there is an occasional creak of the bridge’s steel girders cooling in the winter. There may be some faint German voices from the sentry hut upstream.

They think the plan is gone, thinks Gerrit. There could be a sentry. But Jan is gone. I’m alone and they don’t know I’m here.

Gerrit hears it. The click of a lantern shutter. Light slicing through the reeds. There is a blond boy holding up a lantern. The sentry’s face exposed in the lantern light with a mole on his right cheek. Like Pieter.

“Wer ist?” The blond boy lifts up the lantern, astonished. The Nazi is young, maybe 17. The eyes, the brows, and resemblance to Pieter is uncanny. But his collar. A marked collar with two grey bars.  Common for his age and rank. The marked uniform collar is too large for his neck.  On his chest, the eagle insignia.

The grey bars. The marked collar. An oversized collar, marked, as obvious as the notice of Jan’s execution in a pub. As obvious as the swastika-ed red banners in the street. Obvious as a pale face in a boxcar.

He moved pigs at night countless times. He trusts his feet. Pig slaughter requires a silent approach before the pig can squeal. The boy would not expect it.

Gerrit lunges forward. Hand over mouth. The boy’s eyes go wide and the boy’s breath is warm against his palm.

Stick the pig.

Gerrit brings his right hand up, the knife under the jawline. The blade enters the soft tissue, gliding past the tongue root. It hits carotid and jugular in one movement. The boy’s knees buckle. It only takes a few seconds. Gerrit catches him, lowering the body as it falls. There is warm blood, metallic, sharp, and it spurts on Gerrit’s wrist. Gerrit smells the boy’s soap. The blood-soaked marked collar.

The light, he thinks. They will see the light.

He snatches the dropped lantern and slams it against the stone in the embankment. The light dies. In the moonlight, the boy is pale.

The uniform. Take it off. Burn it. They’ll assume another deserter.

Gerrit drags the boy to the edge of the bank. He works quickly, mechanically like all those years with the pigs. He takes off the tunic, collar tabs, shoulder straps, the eagle insignia, the boots, and the belt. The pig fat smells sweet and unnatural, like the sweet smell of plastic explosives. He wipes the cold sweat off his brow. With the back of his hand. Like a farmer would.

Into the river. No one distinguishes a body down river. Easy now and into the water. A soft splash. There it goes. The current takes him away slowly like a log caught in a spring melt. The body will be lost to the black water.

He has a sack. Toss in that German wool to burn later. Put in the collar tabs. Everything into the sack. No one knows he is here. He can burn it at home. Wool will burn slowly, bitter, and acrid.

By the steel joint now.

“Light the explosive.” That’s the only thing he says out loud. But he says it under his breath.

He retreats immediately. He waits for the blast.