Mama is anxious this morning. Her hands, slim and smooth, like lettuce leaves, tremble slightly as they clutch the handle of Kamilla’s pram. We are headed into town, as we did daily, to fetch the loaf of bread that is permitted to each family in our community.
Klaud is walking ahead, as usual. Tati has made Klaud’s responsibilities as the oldest very clear. As soon as Klaud is of age, he is to join the Nazi Party. Tati supports the Nazis- he’s a Party member. Klaud spends a lot of time in our living room, crouched by the burning wood, listening to Tati list off all the acts Klaud will have to follow through with as soon as he is older. It seems to me that Tati already has a foot in the future; he is always three steps ahead of everyone else.
Gustaw trails Klaud slightly. He is louder, and makes up for Klaud’s reservedness. Gustaw is just like our father- he too has a foot in the future. I think that people who have a foot in the future miss an awful lot of the present.
I hold Mama’s lightweight bags for her. She is a lot weaker than she tells us, so I feel it is my duty to help her.
Duty. Responsibility. During this war, every other word out of people’s mouths is either ‘duty’ or ‘responsibility’. To one’s family, community, country, and self. Once I asked why it is considered a heroic act for Poles to kill so many innocent people- none of the Jews seem to have done anything other than exist, yet as we walk through town, we see the incredibly thin people weighed down by the boulders they carry endlessly from one side of the camp to the other, as a punishment for existing, I guess- and Mama struck me across the face. She is not violent, and has never done it since, but she talked to me for a long time, going in verbal circles and trembling as she so often does, that if we utter a word against the Nazis, we will be severely punished.
“Danka,” she said, “If you ever say something like that again, we will be put in Auschwitz, too, even though we are not Jewish.We will be forced to work as prisoners and not one of us will be spared. Do you understand how much you must not speak this way?”
Mama scared me very much when she told me that.
I never want to be a prisoner- I feel relieved that I was not born Jewish, but I feel uncertain, also, of why my father and brothers seem so adamant to continue the killing and torture of innocent people.
I have learned, though, to not voice my opinion. My female classmates and I are taught, student by student, meticulously, to study for our futures. We study how to keep a house. We study how to care for a child. We study how to be unobtrusive, how to silently mend a ripped garment, how to quickly prepare a feast for our husbands and sons. We study how to pass on the information to our sisters and daughters. We do not study why the war is happening. We do not study why our fathers sometimes disappear and never return again, nor do we study why this disappearance makes our brothers stumble and pale. We are handed what people tell us are necessities for the future- but it is as if they gave us a spoon to write with and a towel to write on. They are for actions that are needed when we’re grown, but they are not the right tools.
Now, my family walks by Auschwitz. Klaud keeps his head even, reserved yet determined to become the mold of every Polish son; Gustaw copies Klaud; Mama’s translucent body trembles even more and she averts her eyes; Kamilla babbles lightly, a delightfully ignorant toddler; and I meet eyes with a prisoner on the edge of the camp, near the barbed wire. She appears to be close to my age- eleven or twelve. A young age, yet preparing to be bestowed with those infamous ‘responsibilities.’ The girl has matted brown hair and brown eyes- we have been informed that this combination is deadly. Our teachers, especially Pani Adamski, have told us that we are lucky if we have light hair and eyes- this is not associated with Jews. Therefore, we are considered ‘safe’. I don’t really understand this reasoning. People that have brown eyes can be very good people, so why are they tortured?
The girl continues her careful work- dressed in a striped shirt and matching bottoms, she looks at me through the dark barbed wire. Her clothes hang loosely off her body, as they would on a scarecrow. Her hands, they are so thin, I wonder if she can even properly hold something. But as she digs her shovel further into the ground, I see that there is strength inside of her- some power that is stronger than the torture she bears. Some power that is stronger than the sight of her family members being killed before her eyes.
Another scoop of dirt is thrown behind her, and at last I see what she is working on, as we pass the final bend of the camp’s perimeter, almost out of sight.
It’s a grave. A child-size grave.
I close my eyes and wish that the grave was not dug by the girl for herself- but my heart is telling me otherwise.
*this was written for my History class, in response to a prompt to write from the perspective of a citizen living near Auschwitz. *
Klaud is walking ahead, as usual. Tati has made Klaud’s responsibilities as the oldest very clear. As soon as Klaud is of age, he is to join the Nazi Party. Tati supports the Nazis- he’s a Party member. Klaud spends a lot of time in our living room, crouched by the burning wood, listening to Tati list off all the acts Klaud will have to follow through with as soon as he is older. It seems to me that Tati already has a foot in the future; he is always three steps ahead of everyone else.
Gustaw trails Klaud slightly. He is louder, and makes up for Klaud’s reservedness. Gustaw is just like our father- he too has a foot in the future. I think that people who have a foot in the future miss an awful lot of the present.
I hold Mama’s lightweight bags for her. She is a lot weaker than she tells us, so I feel it is my duty to help her.
Duty. Responsibility. During this war, every other word out of people’s mouths is either ‘duty’ or ‘responsibility’. To one’s family, community, country, and self. Once I asked why it is considered a heroic act for Poles to kill so many innocent people- none of the Jews seem to have done anything other than exist, yet as we walk through town, we see the incredibly thin people weighed down by the boulders they carry endlessly from one side of the camp to the other, as a punishment for existing, I guess- and Mama struck me across the face. She is not violent, and has never done it since, but she talked to me for a long time, going in verbal circles and trembling as she so often does, that if we utter a word against the Nazis, we will be severely punished.
“Danka,” she said, “If you ever say something like that again, we will be put in Auschwitz, too, even though we are not Jewish.We will be forced to work as prisoners and not one of us will be spared. Do you understand how much you must not speak this way?”
Mama scared me very much when she told me that.
I never want to be a prisoner- I feel relieved that I was not born Jewish, but I feel uncertain, also, of why my father and brothers seem so adamant to continue the killing and torture of innocent people.
I have learned, though, to not voice my opinion. My female classmates and I are taught, student by student, meticulously, to study for our futures. We study how to keep a house. We study how to care for a child. We study how to be unobtrusive, how to silently mend a ripped garment, how to quickly prepare a feast for our husbands and sons. We study how to pass on the information to our sisters and daughters. We do not study why the war is happening. We do not study why our fathers sometimes disappear and never return again, nor do we study why this disappearance makes our brothers stumble and pale. We are handed what people tell us are necessities for the future- but it is as if they gave us a spoon to write with and a towel to write on. They are for actions that are needed when we’re grown, but they are not the right tools.
Now, my family walks by Auschwitz. Klaud keeps his head even, reserved yet determined to become the mold of every Polish son; Gustaw copies Klaud; Mama’s translucent body trembles even more and she averts her eyes; Kamilla babbles lightly, a delightfully ignorant toddler; and I meet eyes with a prisoner on the edge of the camp, near the barbed wire. She appears to be close to my age- eleven or twelve. A young age, yet preparing to be bestowed with those infamous ‘responsibilities.’ The girl has matted brown hair and brown eyes- we have been informed that this combination is deadly. Our teachers, especially Pani Adamski, have told us that we are lucky if we have light hair and eyes- this is not associated with Jews. Therefore, we are considered ‘safe’. I don’t really understand this reasoning. People that have brown eyes can be very good people, so why are they tortured?
The girl continues her careful work- dressed in a striped shirt and matching bottoms, she looks at me through the dark barbed wire. Her clothes hang loosely off her body, as they would on a scarecrow. Her hands, they are so thin, I wonder if she can even properly hold something. But as she digs her shovel further into the ground, I see that there is strength inside of her- some power that is stronger than the torture she bears. Some power that is stronger than the sight of her family members being killed before her eyes.
Another scoop of dirt is thrown behind her, and at last I see what she is working on, as we pass the final bend of the camp’s perimeter, almost out of sight.
It’s a grave. A child-size grave.
I close my eyes and wish that the grave was not dug by the girl for herself- but my heart is telling me otherwise.
*this was written for my History class, in response to a prompt to write from the perspective of a citizen living near Auschwitz. *
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