Working in Camp Buna- The Horst Cahn Story

For those who have weathered my blogging, you might remember that Horst Cahn came into my life about one year ago. Five others sat at the Oak Cafe in the Encinitas' Senior Center. 
  The love of my life, Lady Barbara is no more. She played the piano by ear, and we made quite a pair. Abe is gone. He grew up in East Los Angeles and earned his degree at Hollenbeck Jr High where I had taught for 18 years.  
  No longer is Gregorio alive. He sang God Bless America and was a premier clarinetist and conductor for Russia's president Joseph Stalin. Stalin.  Thomas who received a pass from Benito Mussolini to come to America before the war. Yet he might still be alive and kicking. 
  But so what? A little crunched-up 88 year old man made up for the four at Table Five. Immaculately dressed, the, then, 88 year old sat down with a sardonic grin and and had an  answer to every question. He showed us his tattooed number on his left arm and confessed he was the sole survivor of Auschwitz.    
  Most of all, I do miss Barbara. Would you believe she took piano for six weeks but could play by ear. I will miss her rendition of Ave Maria this Easter. In my blog of a year ago, I stated that she worked for the Roger Wagner Chorale. So I guess that I am stuck with Horst Cahn.   
     Hell, I was never ever able to get in that last words in when he invariably interrupted me with, 'I want to tell you something." This son-of-gun just just always has to get the last word in. 
    You might remember from a previous chapter that he mentioned he worked in a camp making rubber. Now I found out more about that camp from a good friend. He presented me with the greatest book I have ever read.  
  I had returned from a two day trip to see my daughter in West Los Angeles. I had entered the Encinitas Parking lot the next morning and placed two cartons of breakfast for Ron. I heard my name. 
   "George, I have a present for you. Here, this is the book I have been pleading for you to read. It is a thorough history of Auschwitz." 
   "Well, this must be my lucky day. I had wished to buy the book. It should make good reading on Metro-Link or the Coaster trains."Another friend showed me how to get a phone-hook up with Google and still another gave me a navel orange from his yard. 
   The next day I yearned to get on the Metro-Link to visit my brother. He lives in Midway City, California. well as often happens, I removed my shoes and  took out my book about Auschwitz. The two hour train ride to the Los Angeles Central Station was a breeze. I could not put down the book. 
   So entranced in the reading, I too became Horst Cahn laboring in a synthetic rubber camp five kilometers from Auschwitz. And, the SS and Himmler had no control over this I.G.Fabian Company. You see, the Germans thought the war should have been over, and didn't for-see the bombing of their cities. The German army needed more rubber. rubber. The head of the camp would not accept slave labor. They wished Ethnic Germans to make the rubber. 
  My Metro-Link train had just passed Laguna Niguel. But I didn't look at how green the landscape looked. Instead I saw Horst Cahn working on the plumbing and doing electrical work.
  I could now see how his six buddies wrapped torn cotton over his the blood when he tried to take his life. I understood how he threatened the Commandant in an early blog. "You shoot me and your son will be shot in the Russian front."  
  The book Auschwitz by Laurence Rees brings the camp life to life. No wonder why my Grandmother Jenny cry when the forty dollar checks to Poland never get to their four sisters. 
   Mr. Horst Cahn is proud of the art work on his left arm. "If thousand of Nazis couldn't kill me, nobody cahn!..A lady told me that the Holocaust never happened. I could have kicked her in the ass but I didn't wish to get my shoes dirty. 
   He survived since he could sell light bulbs for food. He replaced old light bulbs with older ones and traded for food with the Poles. 
  "Synthetic rubber was produced by taking coal and subjecting it to a process called hydrogenation..."  Page 32. My time is up and a bastard next to me is banging the keyboard. (Not edited.) 
   Laurence Rees' book Auschwitz should be in every library 

 Nuts and Bolts from San Diego: There is nothing like reading a good book on train. Your mind can swim in fantasy land. You can become the protagonist in the story.