AHW

My mother shook me awake.

“Mary, we have to leave now.  Pack 1 bag full of stuff,” she whispered.

She rushed out of my room to wake up my brother.  First, I turned to my clock which read 4:00 AM.  Why had we woken up so early.  I hobbled out of bed and stared into the mirror.  In front of me, I saw a girl around 12 years of age.  She had a mane of messy brown hair and piercing green eyes.  She reminded me almost of a porcelain doll.  I quickly got dressed and stared shoving cloths into a large cotton sack.  Questions raced through my head.  What’s happening?  Where are we going?  Why am I doing this?  Then I realized that there was always a reason.  So I kept stuffing and stuffing until I couldn’t stuff anymore.  Within 30 minutes of waking up, My mother, father, brother and I were gathered in the kitchen.

“Mama, are the Nazis coming,” my brother asked.

A frightened look crossed my mother’s face.

“Yes Jack, they are coming.  That’s why we have to run,” my mom informed.

My dad scribbled a fake address onto a little slip of paper and tossed it into the waste basket.  Then, we went around the house and made everything look as if we were coming back.  At around 6:00 AM, a black car with tinted windows stopped in front of our house.  We scampered into the vehicle.

“Hans, we found a family that lives on the out skirts of Amsterdam,” the driver spoke.

“We’ll be safe right,” my father asked.

“Safer than you are living in your own house,” he answered.

The rest of the ride was quiet.  A bunch of thoughts were running through my head.  So the Nazis are coming to get us, just because we were Jews.  It made no sense to me.  I never had thought about myself as inferior, or other Jews as inferior.  I thought that it was crazy.  I had the same right to live as all of the Nazis.

Suddenly, we pulled up in front of a small town house.  A couple came out and opened the doors and embraced us with a hug.

“You’ll be safe here,” they smiled.

But in less than 2 days, soldiers knocked down the doors and found us.  They spat out orders for us to leave everything behind.  We were shoved into a karts, and handcuffed and shackled.  We were being denied of freedom.  They took us to a train station where we were stuffed into train carts with a bunch of other Jews.  The train ride was horrible.  There was no room to sit, so we spent the whole day standing.  I was about to fall asleep when the train came to a halt.  We were ushered off of the train and into little compartments which were supposedly the living quarters.  All that were in them was, a bed which occupied 3 out of the 4 walls and a toilet.