Meeting the Silence
It was late at night when we arrived at Auschwitz, smoke rose in the air. The gates opened up, we heard screams, and dogs barking.
I was filled with terror.
Everything went so fast: left, right, right, left. Men separated from woman. Children torn from the arms of their mothers. The elderly chased like cattle. The guards had no idea that we to were humans, we had families, and lives. Either they didn’t know,
or they didn’t care.
My mother ran over to me,
and she told me:
“This will be the last time I see you.”
She didn’t say it bitterly, that’s what hurt. She accepted her fate without fighting it. Every bit of her fire was gone, to wherever the rain takes things.
And I discovered that I was trapped, and all I could do now was be brave. For every victim, for every soul. For every survivor,
and for every death.
It was then that I realized that I’d been holding my breath, hoping for a chance, waiting for a miracle.
One that would not come today. Not for me.
Who were these guards, who were these people, to take away innocent lives, in place of a society they preferred.
It was not their right.
It was not them who lived in fear, who cried, who loved, who lost.
It was us.
And so I faced my last day with tears of abhorrence. Instead of tears of,
Fear.
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Thanks. thats what i did, but most of even the recorded stories that i could find were in 3rd person, which isnt very useful for what i was trying to do. i was being careful not to overstep any of the boundries that my teacher warned me about, but its hard to do that and have enough emotion to fully portray the terror, so, i did what i could given the circumstances.
It is well-written, but I have to agree with Trident that it doesn't capture the terror. It does seem to be written too knowingly... as if the narrator isn't actually there, but is more of a person at a time and place some distance from the events being described. It might help to do some more research, and read some first-hand accounts of what went on.
Good luck with it!
I think that you need to delve more into the emotions of the character, not just a chain line of what happened to the men, women, elderly, etc. The Holocaust is a very broad topic, but also very hard to write about. And lastly, please show, don't tell. You say you were filled with terror. Why? Were there guards maliciously beating you? Were you suddenly herded into a line and had no idea where you were going? Clarify things like that, and this piece will be much more poignant.
hehe, sorry, forgot to mention that this was a school project, just to explain the topic.
Yes, I have to agree with Trident on that point. The Holocaust is one of those terrible, unfathomable things that humanity subjected itself to - it almost makes you sick to the stomach, even thinking about it.
I would suggest a topic change. Or, if you truly and deeply feel that this is a topic you'd like to pursue, do a bit of in-depth research on the time (and course of events). The narrative voice seems rather unnatural, I think, because of the distance. As it comes out now, it feels like something written as a short sketch by a teenager. It will take a lot of work, either way, if you chose to continue this; you've got to get deep down into the dark and terror. You didn't do that here, but it was an okay start. As Trident said - once again - we can only imagine the terror these people went through. (So once again, the topic change might be advisable.)
On a purely grammatical note, you have some uneven line breaks throw in there; something you might want to look at, J.
Good luck on the writing. ^_^
Stories about the Holocaust are almost impossible to write. Why? Because we can only imagine the terror that these people went through. And that's what it was, terror.
The victims of the Holocaust knew little of what was happening to them. They were herded like animals (not really "chased" like you said) into trains, into buildings, into rooms where gas was expelled into the air until they suffocated to death.
Therefore, there lies a horrible fault to this piece: consciousness. We would love for the narrator to be brave, to face his/her slaughterers. We would love for them not to be scared or for them to be defiant. We would even love for them to know what was going on... but they didn't. That is what makes the Holocaust so terrifying.
It's a nice attempt, but without taking out the things I mentioned above, this is just a narrow view of someone who forces their hindsight onto the past. Like I said before, it's tough writing about the Holocaust.