Idea: to write a short story/prolouge to my existing story about a jewish settler in Israel in the 1940s before the state was formed, and his role fighting in the underground. I have about a paragraph and a half done for this. I'll write that up, and see if it inspires me further. I would like some crits, and ideas/help in expanding it.
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My name is Baruch Goldstein. Or, it was, before the war. I was born in Warsaw, Poland, in 1930. My father was a decently successful businessman, and a prominent member of the synogouge. My mother, cared for all the neighborhood children, both Catholic and Jewish. We lived in a mixed neighborhood, and had decent relations with our catholic neighbors. My best freind was a Catholic Pole named Wladislaw. But that all changed in 1939, when Hitler invaded Poland.
My parents never trusted the Germans, and particularly, Hitler. In the summer of 1939, he invaded Poland, without warning. Within two weeks, his army had defeated the Polish Armja Krajowa, or Home Army, and had set up ghettos for the Jews to live in "for our own protection". For five years we lived like that, in the ghetto, with occasional deportations of "undesireables". We didn't realize until later what was happening after the deportations.
My older brother Mendel, fought in the ghetto uprising, but was later captured and shot by the nazis. I was too young to fight, but I helped the uprising by running supplies from the reserves to the "front". Its funny, the Polish Army couldn't beat the Germans, but a bunch of loosely organized Jews could fight the nazis off for two months. Ironic, no? Then, the deportations started. We lasted a long time, because my father was a member of the ghetto governing council, and the nazis wanted to appear as if they were only taking the "bad" ones away.
When I turned 13, in 1943, I was Bar Mitzvahed. But it wasn't a normal Bar Mitzvah. I read the torah, yes, but the ceremony was held in a butcher shop's basement, next to pig carcasses. On my brother's bar mitzvahs, before the war, they swore to live as Jews and uphold the commandments. On my Bar Mitzvah, I swore on God and his commandments to die a Jew. On their Bar Mitzvahs, they learned how to wrap tefillin, on mine, I learned to make Molotov cocktails. On their Bar Mitzvahs, they learned how to wear a tallis (prayer shawl). On mine, I learned how to throw a grenade. Oh, how the times had changed.
Also in that year, my freind Wladislaw joined the Polish Partisans. But, despite my being Bar Mitzvahed, and technically being a man, my father forbade me to join him in the partisans. I still don't know if that was a good or a bad thing. Thats also the year we were deported to Auschwitz-Berkenau.
When we got there, it was cold, and we hadn't eaten anything all day. Some sick twisted bastard had fellow prisoners playing a symphony, barefooted in the snow while we were "processed".
It was that day that I ceased to be Baruch Goldstein. They took that name away from me. I was now prisoner number 563270145-629B. That was my identity in that horrid place. Then, they sorted us. They had us parade naked, in the freezing december weather in front of camp doctors, who would decide our fate. If we were healthy, and able to work, we went to the right. If we weren't healthy enough to work, or were too weak, or too young, or too old, you were sent to the left--to the gas chambers.
My mother and two sisters, Chava and Batya were sent immediately to the left. My father, my brother Ruven, and I were sent to the right, to work. We worked from sun up to sundown, building roads and bridges, stiching uniforms, building boots, and manufacturing weapons to continue the war machine. We were worked so hard, that some members of the work group we were assigned to died of exhaustion, rather than stop working, for fear of bieng beaten to death.
Eventually, me, Ruven, and three other younger workers decided to sabotage the work for their war machine we were doing. When we made weapons, we mounted the sights slightly to the right or left. We also sabotaged the bolts to spring loose occasionally, causing the release of all the bullets. When we were making boots, we would make them so that the soles fell out after only a few miles worth of wear. When we made uniforms, we made small incisions in key places to make larger holes in short amounts of time.
Unfortunately, my father and one other person was caught in the act, and were shot on sight. The rest of us had to stop the plan. We had to get out, we knew we had to, but there was no way for us to escape. Or so we thought. Everyday, after work, we would discuss ways of escaping, and finally, we were able to do it.
We spent months tunnelling under the ground to bring us outside the outer fence, with only the guard towers to spot us. We planned on tunnelling into the woods, but we miscalculated, and our tunnel ended up in the middle of an open field. We couldn't turn back, however, and we went ahead with the plan anyway. The night we broke out, Ruven, and the remaining three were either caught, or shot on sight. I was the only survivor of our group. I survived by sleeping during the day, and moving at night, eating things I never would have eaten before.
Slowly, I made my way south, to Czeckoslovakia, to Hungary, to Greece, and finally into Italy, where I was found by the Aliyah Bet group, and placed on a ship bound for Palestine. Because, while the war was practically over at this point, and while God died in Poland, I knew my only future was in the Holy Land, in Palestine, in a national Jewish homeland.
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This is all I have so far. I was thinking about making this like the main charactters "interview" to join the underground forces (a la Exodus, if you've seen that movie, like the interview with Dov and the Irgun) or, maybe writing the whole story as a flashback tale. But I'm not sure. Please help. Thanks.
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