A Monologue

Presently I am studying a module called "Playwriting for Beginners" and our first exercise was to write a monologue from an imaginary character that had to have a 'reveal' at the end. I thought it would be a good idea to post what I wrote here.

"I swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help me God.

My name is Bruna Adler. I was born in Poland and moved to Frankfurt in Germany in 1908 with my parents when I was a young child. I am unmarried and have no children. I was a secretary at an accounting firm in Frankfurt until 1941. Like many of my peers I read Der Sturmer and began to hate the Jews, I saw what they were doing to our country, and I wanted to help. I felt I could be most put to use in the SS and was at first a guard in my town, rounding up the Jews and sending them to the camps. At first I did not know what was at the camps, I assumed the Jews and other lower classes were being made to do something constructive, making things needed for the war effort, finally making themselves useful. Soon I proved my worth and I was sent to Birkenau camp in Auschwitz in 1942, and was a guard at the female camp under Elisabeth Volkenrath.
My responsibilities included keeping the female camp in order and making sure the prisoner’s were behaving and kept to their work schedules...
Another of my responsibilities was to...pick and choose what campers to...exterminate. The camps were getting increasingly crowded, we had no choice, if I did not do it, I would be shot. I often sent families together; so that no one was left without their family...I thought I was helping them. It was best for me not to think of them as human, in a way they were not, they were Jews and homosexuals, and gypsies, they were...they were polluting our nation...it was their fault...we had no choice.
I never really got used to it though...I remember towards the end I sent off one girl...her mother and sister had died from tuberculosis, she was on her own. I thought it was best for her to be dead herself. But she reminded me so much of...a friend I had at school. She had big brown sunken eyes, and I imagined her hair being as long and thick and the same chestunutty brown colour that I...used to have...I sent her off and I closed the doors on them. And I heard them shuffling around, I heard them work out what was going on and starting to grow in dread and fear, like the same way I had every other time, but I never got used to that sound. The sound of growing panic and confusion, of children crying and mothers screaming and begging for their lives. Of the gas hitting their lungs, the sound of them struggling to breathe.
(Slowly starting to grow panicky)
And I had chosen to put them in there. And I had ordered their clothes off. And I had pushed them through the door when they pleaded and begged for me to let them go. And I had closed the door behind them. And I had turned and left them in there to die. Just for having Jewish blood running through their veins.
Like me.
(Starts breaking down...crying, begging, inconsolable)
I, I’ve never told anyone, please don’t kill me, I’m not really a Nazi, please, please don’t. It was just all to protect me, my name is Ethel Goldberg. I was born to a Jewish mother and...and when she died, and everything started to happen, and I lost my job I thought, I just, I just thought, I should just leave. And I left. And I stole another woman’s papers, and I, I hit her, and she fell and hit her head, and I didn’t mean to kill her but I needed her papers so I took them and I’m sorry, I’m sorry but I had to, I had to because they were coming to get me and everyone I knew and I had to go, I had to go. And I pretended to be Bruna and I, I joined the SS because I thought that’s where they would be least suspicious. And I had to do what they told me and I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. Please please don’t send me off with the rest of them, please let me live, I know I did bad things but I didn’t want to, I had to for my own life. I didn’t want to do those things, please..I...I don’t know...how to say... please, please don’t send me away. I only did it to protect myself. Please don’t kill me. I didn’t have a choice! I’d have been in there with them too otherwise! Please...please...I’m sorry, I’m sorry. "