Young Writers Society

It is 1965, and I am now the father of two beautiful children, Sarah and Michael.

“Let’s go Sarah, I don’t want you to be late to school once again. If you’re late, you’ll be punished,” I yell to Sarah. “Michael, Come on! Let’s hurry now!” Suddenly, it hit me.

I flash back to 1935, the time of the dreadful Holocaust. I am walking in lines with many Jewish children, elders, and parents. I remember a boy I had met when we were on the crowded trains. His name was Daniel. I remember what had happened to him as we were walking.

“C’mon let’s go, keep moving, hurry along!” yelled the angry SS officer.

“Mama, Mama!” Daniel cried, “Where are you? You disappeared.”

“Daniel, Daniel. I’m right here!” shouted his mother.

Daniel quickly sprinted over to his mother. He couldn’t stand to be away from her.

“Freeze, young man! Put your hands up where I can see them. Now!” yelled the SS officer.

Daniel put his hands up and stopped moving. He was freaking out by now. He had a horrified look on his face.

“Where do you think you are going?” asked the angry SS officer. He looked as if he was going to kill Daniel.

“To my mommy,” Daniel replied, “I didn’t know where she was! I am only six, terribly weak without her. I can’t be separated from her.”

“No! You must stay here, in your lines. Continue marching. You and your mother and all the other nasty Jews here will be walking in these lines, silently. Too bad if you can’t find her or you are separated. That’s your fault,” explained the SS officer.

“But, but, but. I want to be with…”

“No, Daniel. Stop talking. Shut your mouth and be quiet!” yelled Daniel’s mother.

The SS officer had a mean look on his face. He was walking towards Daniel’s mother. He was furious.

“Don’t say another word or I will shoot you, you filthy Jew!” he screamed. He kicked her hard in the knees. She fell to the ground.

“Mama!” Daniel cried.

The storm trooper quickly grabbed Daniel and threw him back into line about twenty people behind his mother. He reached his hand out to his mom as the officer picked him up. Daniel couldn’t reach her hand. After the officer threw Daniel to the ground, Daniel quickly glanced over to see where she was. She was crying on the ground. A new SS officer was standing over her, kicking her extremely hard and yelling at her, just because she was an old Jewish woman. Daniel started to cry. He couldn’t stand to see her hurt. Daniel turned away. He thought about never seeing her again if she had died, how painful that would be. By now, Daniel was crying hysterically. He turned to talk to the person next to him, which happened to be me.

“What if I never see her again? What will I do?” Daniel asked me.

Suddenly, there was a shot, then a scream, then silence.

“Mommy!” Daniel screamed.

“Don’t worry, son. Life goes on,” I said.

He skulked away, wondering if that was his mother.

Daniel says, “There’s still hope, there’s still hope.” He kept reiterating that phrase out loud many times.

After three hours of walking, his line stopped. They have finally reached their destination, Auschwitz, a death camp.

Sarah and Michael are now yelling at me to get in the car to go to school. I remember the last day I saw poor little Daniel. It was only until three years ago that I found out that Daniel and his mother had been gassed at Auschwitz. Some say they were gassed there because of how they talked back to that SS officer. I say they were gassed there because he was too young and his mother was to frail and old. I will remember that last day with Daniel for the rest of my life. See you and your mother in heaven, Daniel.

So this is for a school assignment?

Well, either way, I'm going to critique it like I would anything else. ^_^ But before that, Welcome to YWS. I realize your urgency, but here at YWS we do have a policy of 2-to-1 reviews-to-posts. Which means that for everyone one thing you post, you should review two. You can make up for it. Also, why not introduce yourself in the welcome section? Also, for easy reading, you should put spaces between your paragraphs, like how mine are.

First I'll hit some grammatical and line errors, then I'll get into the history.

He had this really scared look on my face.

This is easy to catch. If "he" had a look on "your" face, that's weird. ^_~ Change my to his.

Another big problem, comes from this:

I am at a concentration camp. I remember my best friend there, Daniel. I remember his story exactly.

You start the story in first person, so in the flash back, your main character should exist. Instead, we see into Daniel's head, and see his thoughts, and the main character, your speaker, doesn't even exist. Real weird.

You have some tense problems too, for example:

He reiterated that phrase out loud many times. After three hours of walking, his line stops. They have finally reached the showers.

You start in the past tense [reiterated] then move into the present [walking, stops] but then go back into the past [reached]. Be consistent!

As to the history of things! They are not storm troopers, they are SS officers. And I'm sorry, but your whole story is rendered historically inaccurate. Children, especially at this age, would still be with their mothers. I also doubt the officers would tell the child exactly where he is going, where the mother is going, etc. Not to mention they probably didn't speak the language, they tended not to tell the prisoners anything. Ever.

For a school project, I suppose this isn't bad. Try to have better word voice. Instead of saying "very angry" show that he is angry, maybe he hits someone, or fires his gun into the air. Don't say "he is sad" show him cry, and all that. Make your writing vivid. It's your first story though, so I can't say too much. ^_^ I was a bad writer once, too! Not to say you are bad, of course, just that you are beginning.

I won't bore you with anything else, though. If you would like more help or have any questions, feel free to message me! If you would like to know more about the holocaust, I am a bit of an expert on it, and I can help you out in that department. If you didn't have just a day to work on this, I would suggest you read Night by Elie Wiesel.

Also, an amazing book to help with writing is Writing Fiction by Gotham Writers Workshop.

Good luck!

Hello!

Just curious, but what is your scope of researching the Holocaust? Iask because there are quite a few historic mistakes, one being the useage of "storm trooper." Do you mean an SS instead? Also, the way your soldiers are behaving; historicaly if one Jewish person even dared to speak one word, it's was a promise that person would have been killed on the spot or perhaps sent to the burned - alive. If you start researching in depth, I would place a strong bet that you'll notice the amount of mistakes pertaining to history is found in your story.

The piece also seems rushed as well as the dialogue sounding forced and unrealistic. Take your time. There are many wonderful usergroups to assist in working your craft, ranging from a dialogue forum to a character developement one. Have you ever read the Diary of Anne Frank? The book is a good primer into the world of the Holocaust.

This article is also excellent as it is about a man, a survivor of a few concentration camps. He still bears the tattoo.

http://www.jewishpost.com/news/105064-a ... vivor.html

Read, and submerse yourself into the world of outright brutality of it's purest form. That is the Holocaust.

If you like further help on anything, feel free to PM me.

Cheers, and best of luck.

But....it all happens so quickly...

The story is all tell and no show. What's better--if I say, "This pie is quite delicious!" or if I give you a piece of pie? The idea when you're writing is to create some pie, or food of your choice, for your reader to eat. Unless the reader can taste it, he won't believe a word you say. Why should we care about this story if it's just being rattled off like a grocery list? This happened, and then this happened. It was important 'cause of this.

The storm trooper was standing over her, kicking her extremely hard and yelling at her.

Here's an example of how it can happen with even the smallest words. So he was kicking her extremely hard, huh? I don't believe you. Show me proof! I need to see and hear this before I can accept it as a truth.

Suzanne knows more about this than I do, but I second her historical accuracy concerns. And do be careful when writing about the Holocaust--it's an emotionally charged subject, and an unfortunate result of this is that a lot of cliched, repetitive stories are written about it. The point is, we have all read books like The Devil's Arithmetic and we all know about the camps and the showers and the gassing. That's not to dismiss the events of the Holocaust as smaller than they were, only to say that your readers are probably already very familiar with the scenario being presented here, and aren't much likely to appreciate it. If you want to really do something with this topic, you need to present it in a different way.

Good luck on your school assignment, and get to critiquing!
-Colleen

I have to agree, it's a lot of telling rather than showing, and the dialogue was so forced it was actually quite painful to read (especially Daniel's-remember, he's six, and yet he talks like an adult and says things no one would say anyway in normal conversation).

I'd try and do a little more research (1935 is way too early) and avoid saying 'I thought back to the Holocaust...' type things; remember the Holocaust refers to the persecution and eventually genocide of the Jewish people (and others) in Nazi Germany, it isn't a word to be used like a period of time.

I like the perspective though, and how you changed from present day to the past.

I didn't connect to this piece in any way. I quite like learning about WW2, but this, as well as being quite boring and badly-written, was historically unaccurate.

First of all, WW2 didn't start until 1939, so 1935 is too early. Second, I don't think an officer would lower themselves to talking to a Jew (I'm talking as if I was an officer, I have nothing against Jews), unless it was to shout an instrction. Usually the officer would have just shot the mother.

We need to know more about everything and everyone. Description, emotions. Showing, not telling. I liked Cde's pie thing (although I want pie, but have none at my disposal).

I won't go through it all and edit, but when you do your next edit, I would spend a long, long time just working on it, because right now it isn't very interesting to read.

Good luck!

I agree with the above critiques for the most part. How old was the narrator supposed to be in the Holocaust, because -as I think someone above mentioned - children and mothers were sent together to the gas chambers. It was rare in the death camps that a child survived, especially in Auschwitz. So if the narrator was supposed to be the same age as Daniel -who sounds really young - how would he have survived? Maybe you should say somewhere at the beginning something like "he was taken back to his seventeen-year-old self" so that we know his age.

But overall yeah, I would say add more description, show us the scene, the hell that was Auschwitz, and the selection process.

If you're looking for somewhere to research the camps and other aspects of the Holocaust I suggest:

http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/

There's video of Holocaust survivor testimony, and tons of info.

Hope this helps!

Researching is never easy. Those of us who do it often, we grow so accustomed in relying on habits that help us find answers we forget that it's not so simple for the beginner of Historic Fiction.

I wrote a tetorial on researching for this specific purpose. The link can be found here: viewarticlebody.php?t=26311
There, you will find my personal tips since I'm extreamly anal with details and actually research for fun. ; ) Check it out, and hopefully you'll be steared in the correct direction in finding the answers you seek regarding the mass genocide of the period.

Also, while I cannot post photos here because of your age (sorry. ), do go onto Google and type, Holocaust. Better yet, check out Google's photos of the Holocaust. Be warned if you do so, the photos are the real thing and are very graphic. However, those photos will serve as a great visual tool. Look at them with a parent and dicuss. Then use those photos to draw a permenant foundation for your story by making it stronger, visually shake us to the core by showing us - and it can be done - but I think photos of the period will benifit and training your mind as well as setting loose your imagination when the time comes for a second edit.

Cheers!

thanks for your critique, but im only doing this for a timed writing assignment. i know i messed things up. we only got like 20 min. to do it, so i couldnt go into detail. im not an amazing writer, either.

Sounds alot liek that book Daniels story.
Ever read it?

yes i have read it.
and my school assignment was a writing prompt that had to relate to that book.

Daniel's Story, even though im not the reading type person, was an inspiring book. By far my favorite book that i read in school. Before i read it, i didnt even know what the Holocaust was. After reading it a couple weeks ago, I now know so much more about it. In fact, my field trip is a three day stay in Washington D.C., where we are going to see the Holocaust museum.

There is a daniels story section of that musem, In that section I have personally written a note to daniell, and it is being displayed in that museum.

hi all.

no one really needs to critique this anymore.
i can't really do anything to it, because I already handed it in for school.
Thanks for all the advice, I will definitely use it in the future.

--dee.

As a stubborn writer myself, I disagree wholly. ; ) If this piece of writing is still saved to your hardrive, then there's always room for improvement., school project or not.

The question is if you feel like rising to the challenge?

Best of luck in future projects!
Cheers!

true (;