All the middle aged girls (18-35) were put to the right, and the old and young ones were out to the left. Every single girl in front of me that said they were sixteen or younger were all put to the left. My mother in front of me the solider asks her age. She tells him with her voice cracking, "Thirty-two." She is put to the right. "No." I thought to myself. We are going to be separated. It's my turn and he asks me my age. I tell him confidently, "Sixteen." He stares at me. He puts me to the right. Why me? What was wrong with all the other sixteen year olds? I couldn't tell you. I was just filled with joy to not be separated from my mother. We get into the camp and we're assigned beds. My mother and I shared a bed on the top bunk. We were all given a piece of bread and a small cup of water, and told …show more content…
not to the leave the room till morning. When the German Solider leaves, the whole room becomes filled with whispering, and crying. My mother still crying from the separation from my brother says to me, "Try to get some rest. I have a feeling tomorrow is going to be a really long day." I don't say anything. She is probably right so I close my eyes. The night felt like a short five minutes. Woken by a German solider we are told to follow him outside. We are getting assigned jobs, being told how the days are going to work, and the rules of the camp. We start work as soon as the sun is up, after two hours we get breakfast, we go back to work, four hours later we are given a snack, we go back to work, after 5 hours we are given our final meal, and sent to our rooms for the night. As days go by they all begin to feel the same. I can not tell you how many days have gone by, but I can tell you that it has felt like one whole day has been going on for an eternity and it's not close to its end. We are being served our dinner right now. A whole slice of bread, soup and cup of water. I thought about saving some of the bread for later. I can't finish a slice in one serving that's the most bread we've gotten since the first night we were here. Dinner is over and we all begin leaving to our rooms. But tonight is different, the German soldier who selected us by our age stops us and says the he will be selecting twenty of us to go with him on a march in search of something. Not telling us what we will be searching for, he begins to select us.
"Nancy. Shelly." Names being said one after another, it felt like a lot more names were said than twenty. As every name is called a slight bit of relief is released when I realize it is not mine. Everyone who was called walked to the solider and stopped directly behind him. The German solider pauses. I thought he was done calling names, but a break in the silence I hear my name, "Willimina Berg." My heart drops. My mother doesn't do anything. At this point I don't think my presence mattered to her anymore. So I walk to the solider without saying a word to my mother. I was the last name called and everyone else was sent to their rooms. We were given a few blankets to share and slept on the floor till the morning when we will begin our march for the search of the unknown. "Morning. The day is starting now. We will begin our march in an hour. Be ready to go at the gates in forty-five minutes" said the German Solider. Grabbing a blanket, and a slice of bread I exit the food haul. I'm the first to the gate. Through the fence I can see the women I used to share a room with working, but I do not see my
mother. "She's probably taking her break," I think to myself. I shouldn't be thinking about her, she probably isn't thinking about me. As I am trying to block out the thought of her another girl probably twenty-five arrives at the gate. She sits down next to me without saying a word. One by one more women get to the gate, then the German Solider. He takes role call, and all the women that are supposed to be here are here. So shortly after role call we begin our march. An hour must've past by before we stop. We stop next to an abandoned building. When we stop the solider calls my name and I walk up to him. He says to me that I need to come with him into the building to look for more blankets because our journey is going to be a long one. Without thinking I begin to follow him. He opens the door and I enter the building first, then he follows. I begin looking, but I hear the sound of the door locking. "What are you doing?" I ask him. "Don't worry. This will be fast." He said. "What will be fast?" I ask. He doesn't say anything. He sets down his bag and weapon. Then he begins to walk towards me. I can feel my breath getting heavier. I'm really scared. I tried screaming, but before I could get a sound out he was on me covering my mouth. I wake up from being dropped on the floor. I can feel the cold tears running down my face, but I could not say anything. The other women surrounded me asking what happened but I couldn't find the words to tell them. It was like my voice was taken from me. The solider takes role call again, we begin to proceed forward. Ten days have passed and now after the solider takes role call instead of proceeding forward he turns us around and we begin to head back towards camp. We return back to camp a few days later at night. I get into the room and look at my bed. I do not see my mother. I see a women I have not seen before. I ask the women where my mother was and she just looks at me. I ask again, and then she tells me, "Your mother died when you left for your march. She had a bacterial disease called lockjaw it is caused by tetanus." She continued to speak, but I was not listening. In this moment I realize that when I was selected for the march it wasn't that she didn't want to say anything, it was that she physically couldn't say anything. I realized that through the days we were there working I never checked up on her or asked her if she was okay. How could I have ever been so foolish to think my own mother stopped caring about me? But how could I ever have been so heartless to stop caring about her myself? After this I feel like I really am in a loss of words. Since my mother’s death I haven’t spoken to anyone. Since the incident during the march the only words I’ve spoken was to ask the women where my mother was. Lately I have felt like a walking corpse. If anything I have been asking for death. I break all the rules, I barely work, rarely eat, and I couldn’t tell you the last time I have had a cup of water. I guess in the days I have been hardly pushing through an alliance was being created. One morning right before we open the doors to leave for work we hear bombs and guns going off. After it has all stopped we open the door to see what has gone on. The alliance has taken over the camp and tell us we just need to wait for the Americans to catchup. Only a few hours have passed and the American soldiers are here. The camp is liberated. They begin running in the camp and helping us out to the trucks to get us all to the hospitals. A tan, dark haired, with glowing green eyes man picked me up and began to carry me to the trucks. The sun finally decided to come out and appeared to be directly behind his head giving him an angle like appearance. I’m finally going to be saved and I am just over filled with joy. I feel tears running down my face. Trying to gasp for the air, searching for the words at the bottom of my throat, I am finally able to say, “Thank you.” Then I pass out.
Recently, a 38 year old woman named, Jennifer Teege, discovered that her grandfather was Amon Goeth, the sadistic Nazi who was commandant of the Plaszow concentration camp in Poland and the person who killed more than 8,000 Jews. When Teege was going through depression, she tried doing psychological research at a library, which coincidently, was where she found her biological mother’s book called, "I Have to Love My Father, Don't I?". After realizing this discovery, she could not phantom the fact that she was related to this “monster”. Sometimes, she questions if whether or not she has any traits of him, but learned to accept her history and that they are both two very different people. Throughout Teege’s years, she was born to a Nigerian father who was a student which her mother had an affair with. Since her mother had a lot of work to do, she took Teege to Salberg House, a Catholic home for infants in suburban Munich. She was taken care of for about 3 years, but was adopted and was not able to see her mother until age 21. Now, Teege still sets out to discover more about her family’s history and even wrote books about it as well. In addition, she hopes to find her true identity and expresses that life should not be lived in the past.
At Ten P.m on September 23, 2006, my mother Kelli Elizabeth Dicks was hit by a car on Route 146 southbound trying to cross the high speed lane. She was being picked up by a friend. Instead of taking the exit and coming to the other side of the highway, her ride suggested she run across the street. The impact of the car caused her to be thrown 87 feet away from the original impact zone and land in a grassy patch of land, her shoes stayed where she was hit. She was immediately rushed to Rhode Island Hospital where she was treated for serious injuries. When she arrived at the hospital she was rushed into the operating room for an emergency surgery. The amount of injuries she sustained were unbelievable. She broke 18 different bones, lacerated her liver and her spleen, ruptured her bladder, and she collapsed both lungs. When she went in for her emergency operation, and had her
Not much has been going on at camp. Every week a group of people get taken away, and they don’t come back. All the adults say that they are taken to the gates of hell. Brother told me that the people were taken away from Auschwitz and reunited with their families in another place far from here. Mama came here with us, but left us to go to another camp. She told us that we would be reunited in the other place. I believed them with all of my heart.
Imagine living in a place where you are referred to as a number and not a name. That is exactly what many people, mostly Jews had to experience during 1933 through 1945. “Approximately 11 million people were killed, including one million Jewish children alone. Of the nine million Jews who had resided in Europe before the Holocaust, approximately two-thirds were killed.” One of the survivors was called Elie Wiesel, he was a young boy at that time but now he is fighting for human rights. Wiesel fought for human rights because people were suffering around him, and their rights were violated.
As stated, “The camps were designed to keep Japanese-Americans isolated from the rest of the world in remote areas.” Miné, along with many other Japanese-American internees, were isolated from the world. Miné was dehumanized. ”’As a result of the interview,’ she wrote, ‘My family name was reduced to No. 13660.’” +This act was dehumanizing. The Americans stripped her of her name, a form of her identity, and she became just a number. Despite this, she resisted. As stated, “Internees were not allowed to have cameras but Miné wanted to document what was happening inside the camps.” Miné knew full well what the repercussions of this could have been, but still did
The Nazis knew the war would be over in a matter of days and wanted to slaughter as many Jews as they could before then. The first truck that left was supposed to return to pick up Gerda and a few other girls, but was strafed by an American plane and never came back. Gerda waited for the truck until all of the remaining girls were herded into a factory that was intended to blow up. Gerda was devastated that she had hoped all those years she would be free again and was now going to die. As Gerda’s luck would have it, Czechs from the town they were in rushed inside and told the girls to run.
I didn’t tell my brother what I saw. At 7 Mr Hecker told us to all get up and get into our work clothes, our work clothes were bright orange. The move was confusing, frustrating and confusing. All the children and adults had to stand in long lines, eating and going to the bathroom. This camp was located in a type of desolated, inhospitable area; the camp was prison, like with barbed wire and guards in watch towers, lots of people not always family members, shared small living spaces and, again, public areas served internment people’s needs.... ... middle of paper ... ...
I was thirteen when my mom was diagnosed with depression. She never told me why she fell victim, but I always knew it was because my dad was a heavy drinker. My mom fell in and out of her depression periodically and I was always there for her as she had always been there for me. My environment growing up was not the best, but it is what molded the determined, focused, and motivated person I am now.
The final piece of her father’s identity as a prison guard is hiding from his past. Concealing past identities is a common practice for people who have committed atrocities. After the Holocaust, thousands of Nazis escaped to the Americas. Seven notorious Nazis fled to South America, and two of them eluded punishment for the remainder of their lives (Klein). However, in order for Nazis to remain undiscovered, their past lives had to remain hidden from society.
Ever since I was a little girl I always wanted my life to be like the ones in movies, but sadly it was not. Having one parent wasn't easy, but my dad did his best to be a great father. My parents separated when I was 7 years old and that was when my childhood changed. Growing up with no mother was difficult, in fact, I felt left out when I would be around my friends because they had both of their parents and did family things together and I didn't. It was very depressing for me because I felt like I was different from everyone else. I also felt like I couldn't do anything or go far with my future goals because I didn't get much support like others did. I never found it easy, but I’m glad I had a father that stood by my side through thick and
"No, I'm sorry your grandfather will never be strong enough to withhold surgery." I heard from a deep voiced man standing across the room from my mom and I. When I was younger I lived with my mom and grandparents. My mom was a young, working, single mother with an alcohol addiction. My grandparents helped her tremendously. They were like a second set of parents just a little bit better because they would give me chocolate milk, the real chocolate milk! My grandma was a little sick but she still did everything for everyone. She taught me how to cook, bake, sew, garden and also how to swim. My grandpa on the other hand was my best buddy! Everywhere he went I went whether it was to the store, down the street to a neighbors house, or even to mow
I knew I didn 't have mother but little mind always felt the scarcity of mother love. I kept on watching my nephew and ices while my sister- in law wrapped them around by her arms, changed their clothes and make them laugh. I was bit older than them and used to be away from them looking and gazing on them and feeling the love of mother. My clothiers were ragged on the right arms. I used to change myself. I hardly remember my age I should be the age of seven years.
Ever wonder what your life would be like if you lost one of your parents? Growing up with a single mother losing my mom was always my biggest fear. Although growing up without a father figure in my life was challenging, overall it made me a stronger, more independent woman.
Shmuel and I talked almost everyday since I met him, the day I climbed over the fence onto the other side was the day after he couldn’t find his dad. All I wanted to do was help him find the only person he had left, but I lost mine life doing so. When I climbed over the fence there were nazis (like my father) everywhere, two of them took me and Shmuel and pushed us towards a crowed of people also in striped pajamas. I had no idea what was going on
In my formative years, I am sad to admit that I was the most critical of my mother. We suffered from what experts would identify as ‘mutual incomprehensibility’, and I believe at times we still do; however, as I grow more and more into woman hood and our bond has been strengthened with experience, I have had the amazing opportunity to gain a true sense of my mother and have come to admire her in many ways ( though she probably doesn 't believe me). For whatever reason, I once found solace in reducing all my problems as some fault of my mother’s inability to prepare me for adulthood. Instead of seeking advice and wisdom, I rebelled! Looking back, I now realize she only wanted to protect me, to help me, but as a teen that felt like control