[ WP ] A veteran Holocaust Jewish survivor meets a man in the elevator . As they strike a conversation , he slowly realizes the man was his brutal Nazi prison warden .

There had been something unsettling since the beginning. A nagging feeling crawling its way from the bottom of my stomach towards the tip of my tongue. 
 
 He was a nice enough man. Asked for my floor number in a thick German accent which struck me. It ’ s not often that I ran into people with thick German accents in this part of the city. I had one myself, as did most of the people I lived near, but on an elevator in the Empire State building? It was unusual. There was still so much negative sentiment. The war had ended nearly a decade ago, yet people who heard me speak would look at me accusingly, as though I were a Nazi oppressor rather than a survivor of Auschwitz. The American way of innocence before guilt was not so applicable in everyday interactions. 
 
 This man I was now standing next to had asked for my floor in a quiet tone. The kind reserved for gentle people, who are not strong enough to speak with confidence and conviction. This was not a man who would have survived had he been on my side of the war. Many will disagree, but war has no place for tenderness. 
 
 Aside from our shared place of origin, there was something else familiar about this man. It dawned on me as rapid-fire flashbacks returned. Never gone long, they were the same that woke me every night, covered in cold sweat and urine. 
 
 It was the curve of his nose that had done it. Turned slightly away from me, this partial profile was something I had seen before. The horrors of that place can not be so easily recounted in mere words. The experiences are impossible to articulate, felt only through fierce emotion and indescribable images. Images he had been a part of. Images he had created. 
 
 I used to feel hatred. I used to feel hatred for this man especially. It was a feeling that kept me alive in a world of nothing else. I watched so many die with their mere hope. But I did not hate him. I didn ’ t fucking forgive him either. This is not a mushy realization of forgiveness and love. I looked at him and felt nothing for him. I felt my experiences, I felt the death I had watched, the deaths I had watched him enact. But him? He was nothing. 
 
 The doors opened on my floor. 
 
 “ Have a great day, Sir. ” As I spoke the words I bowed low to him mockingly, keeping eye contact. He didn ’ t remember me. There had been so many, I wasn ’ t memorable. I didn ’ t matter. But I could see a brief flash of fear in his face. He knew he had been recognized. I grinned maniacally at him and left. He didn ’ t matter.
