Christmas Eve Blues

Christmas Eve Blues

Noel Laflin

11-30-16

The Christmas Eve spirit flew out the chimney the moment the talk turned dark and conspiratorial.

Someone had mentioned the Holocaust.  And looking back on it, it may have been me. I was about to turn sixteen in two days.
  

“They exaggerated the numbers,” said old man Erik, lighting another Chesterfield and downing his beer. “There were no six million killed.  It wasn’t possible,” he concluded confidently.

“Roosevelt and the Jews saw to that,” replied Rudy, snuggled smug in his chair, legs stretched out across our old linoleum family room floor.

I looked at my father sitting to my right.  He was simmering with rage.

Slowly, he rose from his chair and left the room.  He was back in a moment with a tattered, black photo album clutched to his chest.

“I was at Dachau just weeks after liberation,” he said with a trembling voice.  There had been no time to clean up the place. I took pictures.  Would you like to see them?” he asked our two guests.

There was silence for a moment, before Rudy answered.
 

“It doesn’t change a thing,” he said.  The numbers were faked to break the German spirit.

“Ja,” whispered Erik, the tone of confidence wavering a bit.

My father walked over to the two men and set the old album on the coffee table.  He then went to the chair, removed his jacket and left his own home on Christmas Eve rather then ask his guests to leave.

He went for a long walk around the block – several times.