My Life As A Jew .
By Awachtler
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I was so scared; I could barely keep my mind straight. I’ve heard shrieks, squeals and as always the crying of people. There were so many people. Will they die? Will I die? That’s what’s going through all our heads. And as I write this I realize we may never know our destiny until the day it arrives. I shudder as I hear another scream as they realize their destiny is death.
One day my father came home and said we must leave. My mother, my little sister and I must go to the old run down apartments two blocks away from our house. He said he would meet us there. We crammed as much as we could into the three little bags we were allowed to take. I packed two outfits, one jacket, my photo album and one pair of extra shoes. My mother had my sister’s bag and her bag in her hands. She told me to take my sisters hand and to not let go no matter what. My dad told us to hurry. We gave him a look of sadness and walked out not knowing that would be the last time we saw him.
When we got to the apartments my dad had instructed us to go to, we realized we weren’t the only ones here to hide. We followed a woman to a certain place in the floor. She lifted it up and I could see stairs that looked like they led to nowhere. They had hid the hideout well. She urged us forward. We found our room and she said we share it with one other family. My family organized what we had in our little cubby hole in the wall. We waited for my dad but after days it was apparent he wasn’t coming. We cried wondering what happened to him. We had hid for months and then one day we heard screaming above us.
We all became really silent, knowing that the Nazis were right above us. Then we heard them click clack their boots across the floor to our secret door in the floor. My heart started to beat faster as they got closer .We had all hid under the beds. Then the secret doorway at the bottom of the steps opened. We heard the footsteps get closer and all of a sudden I was staring at the shiny boots of a Nazi. My breathing hitched then I couldn’t breathe. I held my breath and to my relief he turned then abruptly turned back towards me again. He then bent down came eye to eye with me, grabbed my arm and dragged me out. His other Nazi buddies dragged my sister and mother out. They loaded us up into a small vehicle. We traveled a few miles and then arrived at a concentration camp.
It was the scariest thing I’ve ever seen, People being pushed into huge burn piles and people in long lines finding out where they will be sent. My mother my sister and I waited to find out where we must go. When we got to the table where you find out, they told my mother and sister to follow one man and me to follow another. I thrashed and screamed trying to reach my family. It was no use. They were headed to the burn piles and I was off to the workers unit. And then I was in a room with a hundred other people. I found an empty bunk and wept till I fell asleep. The next long years I was forced to stay there and work. I was finally allowed paper and I wrote this. The day had come to where I was no longer a good worker. I was too tired, too hungry, and worked too hard. This was the day I was to die. I knew how it would go; they would grab me and push me down the long walk to my death I would go in the pile just as my mother and sister had. This story has no happy ending neither did the other six million people’s stories that had died. This is how it is. This is the life of a Jew during the holocaust. This is my life.
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