"Hurry, everyone, or you're going to get left behind!" Gullible Gladys, always excited to please, was the first one on the cattle car. "This is going to be great!"
The rest of the crowded angry Jews were not so enthused as they were manhandled by scowling, gun-toting Nazis. One elderly man was completely unamused. "These men are beasts stuffing us into cramped cars without even a toilet!"
"They're doing the best they can!" countered Gullible Gladys. "Put on your happy face!"
"You've got a real attitude problem, you do."
"I'm choosing to be positive. I'm one of the good guys!"
A mother and her small children were downcast. "We don't want to go to this camp. I'm hearing horrible things."
"Don't listen to those negative nabobs! The Nazis are trying a New Way. Don't know until you try. Give it a chance!"
"I hear they work you until you drop."
"Are expecting something for free? I know I'm certainly not. Work is good for you. We can't expect concentration camps to be perfect. Don't let perfect be the enemy of the good!"
"I don't care what you say, I still don't want to go."
"Well, the decision has been made! Nothing you can do! They must be so smart to be making all these decisive decisions! It's coming whether we like it or not!"
"What if we get there and it's as horrible as they say?"
"Then it's our job to educate them things aren't working as their good intentions hoped. How can they know if we don't tell them?"
A murmur of disgust percolated through the increasingly squished crowd. Who was this strange woman so insistent on her willful ignorance? Gullible Gladys took the skepticism as a badge of honor. A distinguished gentleman, however, took great exception to her remarks.
"Young lady, you must have part of your brain missing. My life is important. I do not need these Nazis to run it for me. I wish to have no part in this act of evil."
"Oh, so it's OK for everyone else to go but not you? You're too good to ever take any orders? I'm so glad to hear you've got all the answers! My word, the nerve of some people!"
The crowd gasped at her amazing and startling insolence only to be interrupted by a Nazi guard making his way through.
"You, come with me," he ordered Gullible Gladys. The cramped gathering erupted in cheers.
"See, lady? You're going to get it now. Hope you're satisfied!"
"Stupid bitch getting what she deserves licking Nazi boots!"
"Hope you get raped like my sister did. Maybe that will open your stubborn eyes!"
The guard presented her to an officer. "Come with us to headquarters." Gullible Gladys was stuffed into a gleaming black car and ushered to the top floor of a most impressive building in the heart of Berlin's power district. The officer introduced her to the small man sitting behind a large desk. "This is Herr Goebbels. He wishes to speak to you."
"Oh, my! I've heard of you. You're very high ranking! I'm deeply honored you would make time for me."
"Especially you being a lowly Jew," he snarked.
A ripple of excitement from the humiliation shot through her. "Doubly so, sir!"
"We can use someone like you."
"I can't tell you what purpose and meaning it would give to my life to be used by you!"
"I must say, you truly are a piece of work." The Miserable German let loose with a rare smile that so ill-suited his face. "We are going to make you Queen Of The Cattle Cars."
"My life has meaning! If only those others jeering me as I was taken away could see me now! They said only bad things would happen to me here. I'd sure like to put a few of them in their place!"
"We Nazis get a bad reputation sometimes from the malcontents that infest any society. I'm sure there were many aboard you car."
"It was downright shameful hearing the complaints! I truly expect more from my fellow Jews. I sincerely apologize for them."
"You are a most wise and insightful person. The others are blocked by their negativity."
"Exactly what I think!"
The two liars recognized a kindred spirit in each other, forming a bond against the recalcitrant enemy Jews who refused the enlightenment of the New Way. Goebbels laid out a mission for her as they collaborated deep into the night. Gullible Gladys was to be shipped to various induction points to cajole, coerce and chastise any victims showing reluctance.
"Oh, my! I'm going to be very busy! No wonder you demi-gods are conquering the world!"
"The future is ours," hissed the little man.
Off she went, fresh mandate in hand, happier then she'd ever been in her life. This is what she'd longed for her entire life: a clear and irrefutable mandate. Before, she'd had only her worthless own thinking to go by. But now she was free to lie with abandon with not only approval from her applauding superiors of the state but to feed the rising notion of her superior morality. Certainly the most heady times of her life!
Exhaustion set in with the grueling schedule and the constant bickering she had to endure from the unwilling Nazi prey who at one point she even deemed to be "traitors to the Jewish race." But Gullible Gladys thrived on her masochistic martyrdom, perversely proud to risk her life for this Great Purpose. "If I must die for this then I must die," she'd pretend to woefully sigh.
On occasion she'd even win a convert to the cause and nothing made her more deliriously happy. In bed at night she'd revel in these victories that propelled her forward even harder. Gullible Gladys could see no end to her bright future, the sky the limit. She lost all tolerance for even the slightest criticism of the camps, Goebbels himself praising her galling and fanatical nature. She found herself unable to stop congratulating herself for her lifesaving positivity refused by the fools of the world living pointless lives. "And they do it on purpose! Inexcusable!"
An underground assassination group targeted Gullible Gladys as she grew to infamy. This was an especially hot topic for camp refugees who'd survived the horrors. "She's a murderer! Both of people and of the truth. She must be stopped!" But it was pointed out by cooler heads that no one had to believe her lies and that vengeance was the Lord's. For on the Day of Revelation, Gullible Gladys would get on her knees and pray with every ounce of her misbegotten and howling soul she had been killed before her act of betrayal.
The invasions on two fronts by the allies and the deteriorating condition of a bombed Berlin were inconvenient facts Gullible Gladys ridiculed per her religion of blind optimism. "We'll just have to make adjustments is all. Keep your chin up!" But when realists determined the end was near there was a grand rush of a final push for Jewish atrocities. That's when Gullible Gladys got her orders to report for camp. Many soldiers were laughing at her knowing the eye-opening experience awaiting her.
A friend pulled her aside. "Hear those soldiers laughing at you? This is terrible!"
"Just wait and see. They think I won't love it at the camps. I'll show them!"
"Boy, you really don't get it, do you?"
*****
A slow, sinking feeling descended on Gullible Gladys, her world turning from color to black and white. The stench of death and human horror as she passed through the cold iron gate of this monument to insanity filled her nostrils with terror. She attempted to utter one last hopeless lie but her lips failed her. A guard couldn't help but snicker. "Danke schon for all your help in this, Jewess!" The rest of the guards laughed and for the first time in her life Gullible Gladys realized why they laughed. She wretched on the spot.
On specific instructions from her "great friend" Goebbels, she was tied to a wall in a gas chamber. Her daughters were brought in, bound to crosses. "Mommy, you told us to come!" Then they were gagged and raped before her very eyes. "This isn't the pleasant experience you promised!" she wailed as a futile protest. The protest only egged on the guards' satisfaction on showing her what a massive idiot she had been. Then Gullible Gladys descended into hysterical insanity as she watched each daughter loaded into the oven to be gassed alive.
After a while she became numb to witnessing the endless murders mandated by the state she had worshipped. For the rest of her living days she would be a prisoner in her own mind, unable to process the regret of letting monsters decide her life. She was haunted by her old self-deception: "Just say they are not monsters and you'll be a hero!" Gullible Gladys screamed as she realized every argument she thought she'd won she'd actually lost. Like Judas before her, she found no recourse for betrayal.
Post war fury boiled over as Gullible Gladys was literally tarred and feathered, her head shaven, and forced to walk nude in public giving the Nazi salute. Gullible Gladys thought the fury of those she betrayed would be the worst fate she could imagine until she felt the absence of it; left empty and alone in a swirling black world of perpetual nightmares she could never cleanse from her soul. Like all pseudo-liberals, she thought to speak well of evil made her "open and broad-minded to new ideas", a "person above it all" and most of all, "justified without question."
The Queen Of The Cattle Car was branded into the pages of history as an example of one of the great Judas's of all time. But even then, the lesson was not learned as the new fascism of corporations rose to power spawning a new generation of Gullible Gladys's promoting the enslavement of tens of millions, hoping for a future that does not exist until the final day of revelation when every lie is stripped away forever. The more you lie, the more you die.
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