Elsa Baumann

by Alun Williams

My grandson asked me for my views on passion, not in the sexual sense of course and I told him that the most impassioned person I ever met was Elsa Baumann. “Who?“ he asked, thinking I would mention Martin King whom I met in Washington just before his famous dream speech. “Elsa Baumann was a friend of mine and she never made a speech in her life,” I replied. “She was about eight years old and looked straight into the eyes of a Nazi soldier as he prepared to beat her mother. Only he knows what he saw in her pale blue eyes but he stopped, picked the mother up and put her on the train. The soldier cried as the train left for Bergen Belsen and I never saw her again.”

6S

Alun Williams, ex-member of East of the Web and author of Lila Darling, lives in Wales. He now writes in Critters Bar and Zoetrope under "maxie slim" and "Maxwell Allen." Several shorts by Alun have been published in Write Side Up, Cambrensis and Secret Attic.