The dog nipped lightly at the black boots of Lukas Bielschlan, whom Friedhelm Albrecht watched from the fence.  Bielschlan chuckled and patted the dog on the head.  Friedhelm looked at the dog solemnly, "Why does he treat you better than he should treat his fellow man?"  Bielschlan took off his SS cap and looked at the clouds over the sky, "Looks like rain."  He put the cap back onto his head and pulled at his left cuff.  Aside from the barracks outside of the fence, the only signs of living arrangements were small housings inside the barbed-wire perimeter which contained shelves for the inhabitants to sleep on.  Daily, two or three soldiers were to enter the shelf houses and take any of those who died in the night to the furnaces.  Outside of them and the hospital, there were few areas of interest.  Hospital.  To say it was such was a blasphemy.  The SS would make a list of those who would be less effective at work or would take too long to recover and send them to the chambers.  Friedhelm hated it, thinking that the only job that could possibly be worse was being one of the poor souls who had to carry the dead from the gas chambers to the furnace.  The idea made him sick.
  His mind was drawn away from the business as he heard commotion from the new "water collection pit" from behind the farthest shelf houses.  Two other Jews stood talking back and forth harshly, arguing over the reliability of the Allied forces who were to liberate them.  Friedhelm ignored them, refusing to let his hopes rise.  The Allies were supposed to have been on their way three years ago as well.  It had summed up to nothing.  It more than likely never would.
  The dog ran forward two yards and lowered his head and wagged his tail playfully for Bielschlan, who laughed and picked up a stick on the ground and threw it away from the fence, sending the dog running.  Friedhelm winced as if in pain, "He is nicer to the dog than us."  And why? Juden.  Jew.  He'd heard it enough to know why.
  Hey there, Jew, look at you.  Have half-a-mind to kill you...
  The National Socialist Party Anthem was just as horrid.

  Bielschlan walked on, laughing at the dog.  His black boots thudded onto the ground.  The gray of his uniform was inexplicably perfect in the surrounding landscape.  He was death walking amongst Man.  He turned and looked at Friedhelm, "Isn't their something you can do you filthy Jew?"  Friedhelm shook his head, "Not in this vile."  Within hours, he knew he would be transported to the "shower chambers".  As he walked away, he looked at the fence.  The long, stretched barbed-wire that traced down the camp.  The dog looked at him innocently from behind it before going back to Bielschlan's boots giddily.
  "I am lower than the animal," Friedhelm said quietly, "We all are.  As long as we are behind this fence, we are less than animals."
  Friedhelm walked away, waiting for the SS to make their daily pick of who was to be sent to the chambers and knowing he would would be among them.