Post by Deleted on Apr 18, 2013 11:04:09 GMT
4/4/11
Realism/Naturalism Story
I’m only sixteen, but I feel ninety with aches and pains in places I didn’t know could hurt and my stomach is growling from hunger all the time.
We arrived here just one week ago, off trains that took us far from home, packed in like sardines with nowhere to cry. Mamma kept holding my sister and me and praying, Papa too, for we had heard of these trains. Half our family had already been taken away in the middle of the night. Many in our neighborhood also had disappeared. We had heard stories that our kind were being collected and brought to labour camps to help with the war, but no one had heard of anyone returning.
We traveled by train all that night and all the next day, the odour in the air getting worse and worse until finally the train came to a stop. Forced out and split into separate groups, Mamma and my sister were torn from Papa and me. Mamma kept crying and begging that we be kept together, but no one was listening. They spoke in a strange language we could almost understand, but did not want to. And the smell in the air was suffocating. What could be the cause of the most horrific stench? My heart yearned to know, but my soul warned against it.
Suddenly Papa was made to go in another line and I screamed to stay with him, but all the boys on my train around my age were being herded together. I watched Papa’s line and saw the old men pushed into yet another line. Why were we being separated like this? I kept wanting to cry, but felt I had to stay strong so they would not think me weak. But I feared I would never see any of my family again.
I was right.
Walking towards a long, dark building with the other teenage boys, I could see in the dim light piles of objects as high as a two story building. What were they? As I got closer, I realized they were eyeglasses in one pile and peoples’ shoes in the other. Suddenly, my heart knew what was going on. No one returned from here because they had no shoes, they had no glasses. I passed another pile and saw it was clothes. In that instant I knew fear at the deepest level realising I was caught in a real-life nightmare with no way out.
We were pushed into a dark building and commanded to remove our shoes and glasses in that strange language, yet somehow we understood. Many of the boys around me were crying, but I refused to cry. They were not going to win. And all the while, the smell in the air was almost unbearable. Again I wondered what could be the cause of such a horrible odour?
Some of the boys were huddled together and whispering. I went over and listened. They had heard stories too, only it was not of a labour camp they were speaking of, but the words concentration camp rang in my ears. I trembled with fear and with cold and with hunger and found myself pacing the tiny space I had with so many young men packed in there. Finally I collapsed and drifted into a strange sleep. I dreamt my family was falling down a dark tunnel and I could not save them.
I woke the next morning being forced out of the building into the light. Only it was not clear light, for the air was filled with smoke invisible in the darkness the night before. Now I could smell the smoke in my hair, in my clothes, on my skin and I could see more trains arriving, the people being filed into separate lines…the old from the young, the feeble from the strong, the men from the women. I searched for sight of my mother and sister, or father, hoping they too would be outside, but saw no one from my family.
All I could see were buildings and lines of people, piles of clothes, shoes and eyeglasses, and many men in uniforms, forcing the people into lines, pushing the people into buildings. They threw scraps of bread at us, like dogs, and gave us barrels of dirty water to drink from, using our hands. Then they gave us shovels and we were told to go into one of the buildings. As we got inside, I nearly passed out from the putrid stench and from what I saw. Charred bones and gray ash were covering the floor so deep I sank in up to my knees. I saw with horror they were human bones. Human skulls. I felt so faint, but knew I had to do as the men ordered.
We shoveled the ash and bones into huge wheelbarrows, feeling the heat still on them. It was then I realized I was standing in an oven. A human oven. It could have been my father, or mother, or sister I was shoveling up. The horror of where I was and what I was doing drove me insane that day. I silently screamed at God, “Why was I not chosen to join them?! Why was I left to clean up the mess of all these human bones and ash?”
It has been a week and I am still here, though in body only. My soul left me that day and joined my family. I have prayed all week I wish I was not so strong, not so young, not so able to work, not me. I have prayed all week I could die like all the others.
I am only sixteen, but feel I have lived the life of a ninety-year-old.