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This story is dedicated to my great grandfather, who I never got a chance to meet, but his story amazes me every time in a different way when it is told. He lived through the Holocaust, and I greatly appreciate him.


By Mayan (last name withdrawn)



Glaring into the night… “I won’t survive,” I thought to myself. The night air was so freezing my arm hairs stuck up, the night wind so bitter and cruel, it was slowly gaving me frostbite. My lips were blue, my teeth were chattering, and I started to miss home…
“What in the world are you doing David?” I asked my older brother, panting.
“We will be late for Sabbath dinner! Be careful! Don’t talk to anyone either of you.” David replied, while trying to drag my best friend and I, trying to make us run.
“Why?” my best friend, Rachel, and I asked in unison.
“We are in Germany after all! Nazi officers are everywhere! You girls are defenseless and weak!” We rolled our eyes, expecting ourselves to be strongly than lanky little David.
We stopped running for a second, just to catch our breath, and an officer grabbed David’s shoulder. Neither of us understood what he said, because he was talking in German, which made us all the more frightened. Then the officer hollered something, and David, once again, grabbed our wrists and ran, tugging us along. I didn’t think that David understood what he said either.
When we got home, our mothers and Rachel’s little brother were all sitting at the Shabbat dinner table as still as stone. David quickly whispered to us not to say a word to our mothers, because it would only worry them. I knew that David was right. Mama was very overprotective of us those days, and I couldn’t blame her for that.
“I am very sorry we are late… it is all my fault.” I took the blame, being responsible, as usual. Sometimes I felt like I was the older sibling, not David.
“Well then, I am glad to see you are still alive.” Mama said sternly. Rachel and I rolled our eyes at each other, trying not to be too obvious.
“Hi Rachel! What took you so long?” said Rachel’s younger brother, Benny, who awkwardly waddled over to her.
“Hi Benny.” Rachel said, picking him up, and placing him on her hip.
“Mommy was worried sick!” Benny said, glaring at her in disappointment.
Suddenly, our fathers walked through the door. Chattering loudly, they sat down at the table, we said the prayer, lit the candles, sang songs, and began eating the beautiful Sabbath meal.
When the Sabbath dinner was over, all the children went into my room to play. About two hours later, there was a knock at the front door. Benny was asleep, but the rest of us were playing a board game in my room. Mama rushed upstairs and told us not to wake up Benny so we could all hide silently under the bed. Rachel and I were so nervous, we could barely move, and aside of all our troubles, Benny woke up.
Once we were all under the bed, we heard loud footsteps climbing up the stairs it’s gait, heavy. We heard mama say, “We don’t have any children.”
Then I heard a rough voice say, “I am checking. Hitler’s orders. No acceptions.”
I saw shiny, black shoes. Benny was about to start crying, but David noticed quickly enough and covered his mouth and silently stroked his hair. Benny calmed down quickly, to our luck. But all of a sudden I noticed fierce, growling, brown eyes glaring at us. Benny started crying.
“Get out from under the bed. NOW!” the eyes disappeared. The black shoes clicked together like someone just snapped their fingers.
We rushed from under the bed. Benny refused to, but for his own good, David pulled him to get him out. Mama was sobbing in the back of the room. Papa was trying to get the officer to take him away instead of us. How I admired my father.
“I’ll take care of you later.” Said the officer, referring to the adults. “As for the children, line up…NOW!” The officer growled harshly. I didn’t know what he was going to do with us, and by the looks of our parent’s faces, they were terrified of what would happen also.
You could see the fear in Rachel’s eyes. Her eyes, that were usually a deep, intense, blue, were now like gray, dirty puddles filled with fear and worry. And she was shaking; her black, thick, curls were vibrating rapidly, but they had gone unnoticed.
“You are coming with me.” The officer rudely remarked.
All of the parents were trying to grab us, keep us with them. David hugged all three of us, and for the first time in my life, he was pulling us close, and he hollered to mama and papa,
“I will take care of them. I will, if it is the last thing I do! I promise, I promise, I promise!” David’s face was pale, and fat, juicy, teardrops plopped off of his face onto my head. Was this my brother? Was this David? He was so protective and strong. Who was this? I clutched on to his thin jacket that smelled of his schoolbooks and peppermints, knowing that we weren’t coming back to our home any time soon.
Our mothers shrieked and hollered in anguish and despair. I yelled and screamed and kicked, but there was nothing I could do. Nothing any of us could do.
Rachel scooped Benny up and he was sobbing uncontrollably. He was screaming “mama, papa, mama, papa,” over and over again, we realized there was very little chance he would remember them if we didn’t see them again. But, we always seemed to manage to believe we would see them again. No matter the circumstances.
The officer led us to a police car and Benny would not stop screaming. The officer slapped him in the face, and that just made him cry more. The poor child barely knew what was going on. We were driven to a train station that would eventually take us to a “camp.” David held on to us the whole time, with every ounce of strength he had, he clutched our shoulders. Rachel, Benny, and I would be dropped off separately than David, this was our stop, and David wouldn’t let go, and we wouldn’t leave, until the Nazi Officer from the camp came onto the bus and looked at where our stop was. Here. He grabbed us all by the wrists, but didn’t pull just yet. Before the officer pulled our wrists, David slipped a locket into my free hand. It was the shape of a heart; my name was engraved in it delicatley. The officer started pulling as I screamed on the top of my lungs, with tears flooding down my face,
“I love you David and I will see you soon! No matter what we will be reunited! I will make sure of it!”
The officer had already pulled me out of the bus, and shut the doors. I waved to David, and he waved back. The swarm of children who had been packed in the train rushed to every direction, scared horribly. The concentration camp was overflowing. It was like the water in the ocean had suddenly been dumped in a little pond. The train started pulling away, and I grabbed Rachel’s hand, and Rachel grabbed Benny’s hand, and we chased the train. We chased it until the strong fence of the camp showed up in front of our faces. I kicked the fence frantically, hoping that it would break, but obviously, it didn’t, so I held Rachel’s hand again, and she hugged me.
An officer came up to us, he said we had better get to our “house” because it was bedtime. There was a strict curfew of seven thirty PM.
We realized Benny couldn’t sleep in the same room as us, so we went crazy. We had to find somebody we knew to watch him. We went to his “home” and I recognized one of the boys there. His name was Jacob Cohen. He had been in my fifth grade class that year.
“Jacob!”
“Are you in this house?” I asked, staring at the old, crooked, rusted number on the door, “B 8563”
“Yes.” He dried some of the obviously shed tears across his face.
“You have to keep an eye out for Rachel’s little brother, Benny. Whenever he asks to see us, you MUST find a way to get him to us. Okay?”
“Sure, no problem.” He sighed, “Rebecca?”
“Yes Jacob?”
“Are you scared?”
“Very much so.”
“That makes two of us.”
I stared at him for a while, deep into his eyes.
“Goodbye then.” I broke the silence.
“Goodbye.” Jacob’s face got teary, and he waved in silence. He started sobbing, but he was trying to hide it. Then I ran back to Rachel with a heavy stream of tears running down my face.
I walked into my house and there were at least fifty girls walking around. But, there were only about twenty beds. Rachel came up to me and said that she dropped off Benny at his cabin. She said every girl had to share a bed with either one or two girls. I quickly made sure that I was with Rachel.
Nighttime was horrible. All the girls cried, while Eva, the oldest girl, who was sixteen, and her best friend, Marta, who was fifteen, tried to calm us down. They would stroke our hair and make up wonderful stories about mystical lands far away that no one would ever know for sure existed, but we believed. We always believed. I couldn’t help but think about David, where he was, and whom he was with. But the girls had done quite a good job also. My eyelids felt heavy all of a sudden, it took too much strength to keep them up, and so I let them down. Rachel’s body was squishing me. And then I felt something a little pointy in my pocket. I reached my hand into my pocket, and felt my locket. I had forgotten all about it. As I opened it, I saw a picture of my parents on one side, and David on the other. I sighed as I tied it around my neck, and drifted to a light sleep…
That night I dreamt about David. I was in his arms, and he wouldn’t let go of me. I smiled and giggled into his same thin jacket that smelled of his schoolbooks and peppermint. He laughed with me and said, “The war will bring some nasty things that you won’t expect, so hold on to every one dear to your heart. You will need them later.”
“Wake up Hun!” Marta gently said as shook me awake.
As I opened my eyes, I saw Rachel in the corner of the room, crying.
I nodded my head to Marta. She smiled and walked away. I ran over to Rachel, and gave her a big hug. She told me she missed home terribly. I then, also started to cry. I missed mama, papa, and David. I clutched my locket to my chest, underneath my shirt. I was making sure it was still there, and it was. I took it out of my shirt and opened it up. I saw mama and papa’s faces, and I saw David’s smiling face. I only noticed right then, that on the top of the locket, engraved, “To my sister, on her twelfth birthday” I read it over and over again. It never got old. Today was my birthday and I had forgotten! I was now twelve years old!
EEEEK!
A whistle was blowing. I put the locket under my shirt again.
“All the new girls,” Eva yelled, “Just line up in height!!! Hurry up now! Come on, hurry up!”
I figured out we would be “inspected” every morning around 2:00 AM. The Nazi officer growled a couple words in German, and Eva mumbled the translation in Hebrew for Rachel and I. All he really told us was that we start working now. He took Lila, one of the girls that lived with us, by the hair, and pulled. Lila wasn’t in line correctly. She was supposed to be on the other side of Danielle. A couple seconds later we hear a scream of pure torture and terror. We waited for a long time. Lila never came back. I was devastated beyond words. But, I had to get on with life like every other girl did. The girls that were here before were used to these things. Although Lila never did anything bad to anyone.
We had to clean the officers’ bathrooms, and then we had to go and wash all their dishes. They had a feast for every meal of the day. And after the dishes, we had “drink time.” The work was pure torture, we had to do all the officers’ work for them, and they hit some of the girls, very hard. They had marks on their backs that night; they were bleeding, swollen, and some even almost dying. During “drink time” they put us in old rusty wagons, with a small 2 by 2 foot window with one-inch wide bars on the window. The officers, some of the cruelest ones, sprayed a hose into the wagon, barely reaching anyone. I didn’t get one drop. Rachel was next to Benny who wanted water, so she pushed the people against the window away from her and cupped her hands, got three drips, and poured them into Benny’s mouth. Benny wanted more, but she said she couldn’t. He started crying. Rachel whispered to me,
“What have we done to them?”
“Nothing. Nothing at all.” I answered, deep in thought.
The next morning, when the whistle blew, the officer said something in German, and Eva said we would be put in showers tomorrow, we would finally get to take showers! Rachel got excited, but I felt that something wasn’t right. I decided to tell Rachel. She agreed, and said we should run away, and take Benny. So we did, at midnight.
Before we left, Marta and Eva each gave Rachel and I two pieces of bread. They gathered enough water for perhaps two days, in a camp condition, which was barely any water, but we were still very glad. We hugged Marta and Eva and they wished us good luck. Marta gave us her extra sheet on her bed that she said would come in handy. Then they handed us two warm sweaters that they had knitted themselves back at their homes. I wondered what for, but I guessed I would figure out. We ran over to boy’s house 8,563. We opened the door and Benny was sleeping in the same bed as Jacob Cohen. I shook him awake and he wouldn’t budge. Rachel stepped up near him and whispered something in his ear. His eyes popped open and he got up slowly, and stretched his arms upward, hoping for Rachel to pick him up.
I said my farewells to Jacob, and he said,
“Rebecca, all along, you really have been my hero. Good luck.” This time he hugged me. I asked him if he wanted to come with us, and he said no. He said he couldn’t pass up an opportunity to get a shower, and I thanked him for watching Benny. Lastly, we left.
All of the guards had gone to the other side of the camp, because other children had tried to escape, that was my guess anyway. Benny started digging and we helped, and after about three hours we got under the heavy fence. Rachel and I crawled under the fence; we were both bleeding from the fence’s metal that was old and prickly. Right then, Rachel scooped Benny off the ground, kissed him on the cheek, and off we ran.
We hid in the woods for quite a while. When we first got there and decided to explore, we walked about 15 miles into the woods, and we found a tiny stream. I started crying. God had given us a miracle.
The first night was the worst. It was the middle of the night; I got out of the makeshift lopsided tent we had made out of the bed sheet Marta gave us. It didn’t protect us from anything; just the mere fact of us thinking it protected us, made us feel better. I stepped out of the tent.
Glaring into the night… “I won’t survive,” I thought to myself. The night air was so freezing my arm hairs stuck up, the night wind so bitter and cruel, I felt it gaving me frostbite. My lips were blue, my teeth were chattering, and I started to miss home… I wanted to cry, but I couldn’t, I realized that crying wouldn’t help. No matter what I did, I still was not home, I still wasn’t with my family, and I still wasn’t near Marta and Eva, and their kind ways. I would have to survive many nights like these I guessed.
Rachel had just stepped out of the tent, with a light sweater that Eva had knit for her. I also had one, except Benny was sleeping with it on. Rachel sat down next to me, took off her sweater and handed it to me. I gratefully slipped it on. The itchy yarn felt sort of nice, just because there was the feeling that I had something long-sleeved on me. Rachel said, in a weak voice,
“Will we make it Rebecca? Will we survive? Will Benny?”
“Of course, if we have to fight to survive it, we will fight. If we have to make sacrifices, we will. We just have to show those evil Nazis that we are stronger and wiser than them.” I was starting to get annoyed at Rachel’s question. “Yes. All of us will survive Rachel.”
I motioned for her to come back into the tent. She followed me, and we slowly got tired, and went to sleep.
I woke up to a small meow from a kitten. Rachel must have heard it too and she ran out of the tent, and saw the small kitten. It was almost starved, it could barely walk, and it actually fell down when it reached our tent. Rachel wailed,
“Oh! Such a poor baby! Are you okay?”
She picked up the kitten and cradled it in her arms. Rachel cooed,
“I will name you Yaeli, that’s my mother’s name!” It was silent for a second, but Rachel calmed herself and started cooing again, “You are so adorable! Except, we have to fatten you up first!”
All that day, Rachel went about, fishing, with a handmade pole that broke after two minutes. And whenever she caught something, she would throw it to me, and I would cook it in a fire. Then, I would give it to Benny, and he would feed it to Yaeli, the orange and white cat. She would gratefully eat it, and lick Benny a lot. She didn’t even know that Benny did none of the REAL work; he just fed it to her, and got all of the credit. By the time we were too tired to work anymore, Yaeli had looked much better. She was licking Benny’s face nonstop, and he was giggling. So, finding the river made it a whole lot easier to survive. We had it easy compared to other people.
Rachel brought Yaeli and Benny into our petite tent, and they both took a long nap. Rachel and I were talking about how much we missed our homes, our warm beds, our comforters, and most of all our family. I missed them so much. I especially missed David.
After a trip to the stream with our kitten and Benny, we were all tired once again. I sat on the ground with Rachel. We were talking about all of our old friends, and how much they used to tease us good-naturedly. That was the first time we laughed. Once we realized that it was the first time we laughed, we laughed more and more, not wanting it to stop.
I felt a tap on my shoulder, and thought it was Benny; I picked up my head and saw David! I screamed as loud as I possibly could. My throat already felt sore, but I would scream until my lungs burst, run out of air, and I would faint! David picked Rachel and me up at the same time. He stared at me with a sparkle in his eye, and his mouth smiling all the way, you could see his huge dimples.
“How are you sweetie?”
“I’m doing fine! Were did you go for so long? I thought I would never see you agai…” I fainted. Since I could barely talk before, it took all my strength away…
I woke up with David right above me, and I was under a blanket, and had a wet cloth on my forehead. Were did the cloth come from? Did the water come from the creek? David hugged me very tightly. I suddenly felt very homesick. It overcame me. I started crying, but not a horrid cry, I was already too used to crying to make it dramatic.
Then I lay down for quite a while. Every couple minutes, Rachel, Benny, David, or Yaeli came and checked on me. After I felt better, all of us went fishing.
I didn’t catch anything, but David caught us three fish, and surprisingly enough, Benny caught a huge fish. That night, we had a big supper. All thanks to David and Benny. Rachel and I stayed up all night, next to Yaeli, the kitten, talking about when we would see our parents again. We imagined, that after the war, we would own huge mansions, with six floors, and I would have four children, and Rachel would have two. They kids would be the best of friends, and we would still be best friends. I would name my children, Talli, Libby, Nellie and the boy, who would be the youngest, would be named Ari. Rachel’s children would be named Yaeli, like her kitten, and her mother, and Nathan. We were laughing, and planning, and teasing each other. When we finally got too tired to talk anymore, it was so dark, that even my already-adjusted-to-the-dark eyes couldn’t see her anymore.
We fell asleep, and when we woke up it was very bright out, Yaeli was licking our faces, telling us in her own language that she wanted us to wake up. I sat up and saw that Rachel was still closing her eyes, so I shook her, still nothing. I shook her harder, and her eyes cracked open. She mumbled something, and she closed her eyes again. I left the tent to have breakfast, knowing that when she wanted to wake up, she would. About twenty minutes later, she woke up. She dragged herself out of the tent. Her eyes were gray, just like the day when the officer took us from my home. They were lifeless. And her hair, was gray, but not vibrating this time. She could barely walk, she was stumbling, and then, she vomited. She fell to the ground, and started coughing. The three of us ran to her, Benny was crying wildly. David picked her up, and took the bucket of water we had next to our tent, cupped his hands and gathered water, and splashed her face.
She coughed uncontrollably and, I will never forget, she fell on the floor and fainted. I picked up Benny as quickly as I could, we were both sobbing, and I ran as far as I could away from our tent. When I came back with Benny, he was sleeping in my arms. Rachel was in the tent, and David was resting near the big, hollow tree. Yaeli was resting her head on Rachel’s shoulder, and she was purring.
Rachel opened her eyes once again. I screamed for David. David came running, he sat next to Rachel and whispered, “I said you and me are going to make it, and we are.”
Rachel tried to smile, but she couldn’t. I ran out of the tent so she wouldn’t see me get weak. When I felt ready to come back, Rachel was sitting up. She smiled the hugest smile I have ever seen. And she quietly whispered, “I will be okay.” It was my turn to smile. How dare I even think that Rachel would get hurt? She was too strong for that. Even though her eyes and hair were gray, I knew she would get the brilliant color she once had in her hair and eyes back.
That night, I caught the big fish. It wasn’t huge, but that was all we had. Even though I was starving 24/7, I was glad for all of the food we managed to have. The stream was a miracle, a miracle from God. Those things were the things that helped me believe in God during these tough times.
About three months later, it was Benny’s birthday. Every one knew that we would all have to get him a present. The problem was, what could we buy as a present for a four year-old in the middle of the woods? So, when Benny was sleeping, we all went on a hunt through the woods. I decided to make him a crown of twigs, flowers, and leaves. I was planning to make a 5 out of the twigs, and sew it onto the top of the crown with grass. Rachel was going to make him a slingshot from bendy twigs and little things that she made herself from berries. But David had the greatest present of all. He made Benny a tree-hideout, from a hollow tree. He also made a bunch of knick-knacks for him to play with inside of it.
The next day, it was Benny’s birthday. He woke up and yawned. Poor Benny, he didn’t even know what a birthday was, or when his was. Once we explained the present part, he shrieked of delight! I smiled. Then a frown appeared on his shiny little face.
“I WANT MY MAMMA AND PAPA! AND I WANT THEM NOW!”
Yes, it was a weird outbreak, but I knew why he wanted them. He remembered on his fourth birthday, his latest one, mamma and papa had hugged him, and spoiled him even more. And he wanted that. He wanted his parents, and how could we blame a five-year-old for that? How could you blame anyone for that?
Other than that little outburst, Benny’s birthday was cheerful. He loved David’s present so much! Him and David went into the tree hideout together after we ate lunch. So, Rachel and I went for a walk in the woods, maybe if we were lucky, we could find some berries. When we were walking, we saw an injured little blue jay on the dirt path we had made. His wing was broken. Rachel was determined to fix the little bird’s wing. I understood why, she was such a caring person. So we walked back to our tent, and she put the bird next to our tent. She named it Berry.
The next day, Benny still wanted it to be his birthday, but we explained to him why he couldn’t have one every day. We saw how upset he was, so David offered to take him to the tree hideout. Benny agreed to it quickly and happily.
So when the two boys left, Rachel was feeding Berry. I asked her if his wing was fixed, and she happily said it was going to be okay. I smiled at her, and she smiled back. She said she was going to let Berry go. I nodded my head yes, and she walked slowly away into the forest.
She didn’t want me to follow her, so I sneaked behind her without her knowing it. She sat on a tree stump, and she stroked her dear blue jay’s head. It sang it’s beautiful song for her. She giggled almost silently. I was glad she had some form of happiness in her life. She opened her hands, and she whispered into Berry’s body silently, “Go, go free yourself. Live life the way you want. Go back to your family, and your bird friends. Go now.” Slowly, and cautiously, the bird flapped its wings, and softly flew out of Rachel’s hands. When it departed from her, she sensitively cried, she sat there for a long time, trying to follow her dear friend in the sky. After what felt like hours, she got up, and started walking.
“Becky, I know you are there. It’s okay to come out.” Rachel delicately said.
I stepped out from behind the bushes. I giggled at her cleverness. But when I saw Rachel’s eyes, a pang of sorrow came over me. I hugged her for a long time. I then suggested that we should go back to our tent. Rachel agreed. We walked all the way back, talking about our life. I was being strong, she was being strong, all of us were being strong.
When we got back to the tent, we fell into a hushed sleep. Little did we know what was going to happen to us next…
About three months later, David told us that where we were hiding, was a very popular spot for all of the people that escaped from the camps. He said we have to build a secret shelter. Maybe a hole in the ground… We had to find a way to make an escape route. So that day we dug the deepest hole I had ever seen in my life! David put containers with water in it inside of it, and some fish, already cooked. Lastly, we covered the hole with a thin coating of grass. So it looked like it was solid ground.
After that, Rachel and I found a great little bush that grew non-poisonous berries on it. We picked them all, and put them in a handmade bowl made out of leaves with beautiful colors. That night we had a lot of berries.
Since Benny was five, and he had never gone to school, Rachel and I decided to teach him his ABC’s. He was a very bright child. He memorized his ABC’s and spelling basics in less than a week. I knew that if this war would be over soon enough, Benny would become very successful in life. I just realized, that he was so much like Rachel it was frightening! If only I had realized it before! He and Rachel read at the same pace, and even knew the same math facts at the same rate.
Every day from then on we would teach Benny one new thing and he would get excited and practice very hard. Rachel, David, and I would take turns giving him a clever quote or saying for the day. Benny would take a rock and scratch on the spelling of words on boulders. We had a very specific time we taught him, and then we played for the rest of the day.
Of course, that’s how Benny saw it. When he was spelling, us older kids would take turns with him, just so he wouldn’t be alone. The other two of us would be talking about something serious, important, and confidential to Benny. We were trying our bests to stay positive for him, but we just couldn’t do that 24/7 we would talk to each other about, if we died, who would take on responsibilities of ours, what would we do? We were already old enough to realize there were slim chances we would all survive.
Since fishing was David’s job, we had to make sure David was always well fed and healthy, for he had the most important job of all of us. My job was cooking the fish, which was less important; Rachel could do that easily also. Lastly, Rachel’s job was to remove the internal organs and insides of the fish, and skinning it for us to eat. Benny did nothing but feed on our work, but we couldn’t give him less attention. He was the youngest of us. It was the most important for him to get through the war almost not remembering it, so he could live a somewhat carefree life.
I woke up to the alarming sound of Benny’s howling. David shook Rebecca and me awake. Both of us were very groggy and disagreeable. He pulled us hard, and pushed us into the big ditch we dug earlier. I clutched on to David’s arm, as he pulled me all the way to the deep ditch. I heard loud whistles coming from the back of the forest. Benny screamed again. David tore the tent down, and put the cloth in my hands. I clutched it with all of my strength. Once we were under the hole, we heard hard, tough, scary footsteps on the ground above us. Hopefully they wouldn’t step on our hole…
We heard whispering, but I couldn’t understand what was being said.
“Don’t you think we should get going? No one is here…”
We then heard footsteps going farther and farther. All of a sudden, Benny screeched. We heard the footsteps running towards us again. David covered Benny’s mouth, and stroked his hair. I covered us with the blanket for warmth and to keep us somehow a little extra hidden.
We waited there for hours, perhaps days, I don’t remember. All I remember is that we finished all of our food and water in only a fraction of the time. We were hungry and thirsty quickly.
When the officers finally left, we were in a hurry to get out of the cramped and uncomfortable hole. At one point, all of us were so crowded, we couldn’t breathe. When David removed the grass layer over our heads, I leaped out of the hole and filled my lungs with all of the fresh air that I could handle without coughing. Rachel became less cheery, she was depressed very easily, and she was negative. She wasn’t Rachel. And I definitely realized that right away.
After Rachel got a little cheerier, she and I went on long traditional walk in the woods. We talked quite a bit. We didn’t talk about things we used to. We only talked about if we were going to make it alive to the end of the war, if we were going to live long enough to see the war end. Would we? We were worried about our parents, and our whole family.
When we went back to our tent, it wasn’t much of a tent anymore. David and Benny were trying to figure out how to make another tent from the sheet we took down so the officers couldn’t see any signs of us. We had to help them build it. So we did. Yes, many times it fell down, but that was okay, I was with people that would try their best to take care of me, and that was all I wanted to be doing.
Once we finally got the tent up we all got some well-deserved sleep. I fell asleep looking at the countless stars in the sky. I tried to count every one, faintly shining through the thin white sheet. I had counted three thousand and twenty two, until I just couldn’t stay up any longer. Right when I was about to close my eyes, I thought I saw the stars kind of smiling down upon me. The stars being like great authority figures, however countless they were. Suddenly my eyes just shut. I fell asleep.
I woke to the sun shining warmly on my face. I yawned and stretched silently, for I was the first one up. I leaned over to check on Benny, but he was missing. I frantically whipped everything off of David and Rachel. When they woke up we searched for so many hours… possibly a day or two…and there were still no signs of Benny. Rachel became depressed and wouldn’t talk or interact with David or me. Once again. She stopped talking to me. All I knew was that I had to get Benny back. If I ever wanted all of us to be happy again I had to find him.
Benny had been gone for three days. Rachel was in depression. She would not eat. That night I decided to go searching for him again. I searched for hours, walking in circles helplessly. I spotted Benny’s tree hideout, the one David had found for his birthday. I walked towards it, and sat in the hollow hole in the bark.
“OW!” I heard a tiny voice squeak from inside of the tree. I gasped, in shock.
“Benny!” I screamed, “How could you do this to us? But you are okay! What a relief! Should I scold you? Oh Benny you’re okay!”
“I’m, I’m, I’m sorry… I really am” Benny stuttered, his voice shaky from crying.
Once we got to the tent, I shook David awake, and when he saw Benny at my side, he grinned like a schoolboy. He ordered me that we shouldn’t wake up Rachel because she wouldn’t get enough sleep if she saw Benny was back. Once David went back to sleep, after the hugging and scolding and crying, I woke up Rachel, defying my brother’s orders. She opened her eyes slowly and made a worried and surprised look at me. I picked up Benny, and placed him near Rachel, she smiled for the first time in what seemed like a long while, and then she hugged Benny and stroked his hair. I told her how I found him, and she hugged me, she grinned, and whispered “Thank you.”
Benny then yelled, “Rachel! I missed you so much!”
“I missed you too Benny!”
Rachel fell asleep with a smile on her face. I was happy I could finally restore Rachel’s happiness. I slept peacefully the rest of the night.
Before I knew it, we were three years into the war… I was fourteen, Rachel was thirteen, Benny was eight, believe it or not, David was sixteen, and Yaeli was already an adult cat. My life had been completely ruined, and it all started on that first day… I was eleven, and Rachel was ten, it felt like it was such a long time ago.
Rachel was my best friend and even more like a sister than before. Benny had turned into quite a genius! And David, how happy I was that we had him around, he was the one who helped all of us survive and deal with each other when we fought. He was the mature “adult” who solved our problems just like a parent.
One day when Rachel and I went walking in the woods, we mostly talked about our future husband’s traits. We had lived in this forest for three years, if it weren’t for God; we would probably all be murdered, or tortured in some concentration camp.
This time, when we went for the walk, we heard twigs and leaves rustling behind us. We heard heavy breathing, and then a quick and unsure gait. I saw a young man’s face from behind the tree. I struggled for breath.
“If any one is out there, come forward now.” Rachel bravely ordered. Yaeli, who lately followed Rachel around, hid in between her legs cowardly.
More leaves rustling behind us. I saw the face again. It seemed oddly familiar. It looked like…
“Jacob!” I screamed on the top of my lungs.
“Rebecca?” He quietly asked, shivering with worry.
I giggled and pulled him out from behind the tree. He was still nervous, and I didn’t really know why. I asked him why he was there, and he said that the morning we were supposed to get on the trains, to take showers, he decided something wasn’t right, and he jumped off. He stayed in a different part of the woods for a while, but Nazi officers built a camp there, so he had to leave. He ran away to our part of the woods, without him knowing we lived here. Then we luckily found him.
When he got to our tent, he was so filthy, Rachel and I had to take him down to the stream, and wash him off. When we left the stream, he went to take a bath.
“Rachel? Who is this guy? I think I remember him from somewhere.” Benny questioned unsurely.
“He is Jacob, he was the boy who had to share a bed with you in the concentra… the cabins. Do you remember those?” Rachel said.
Rachel, David, and I agreed to each other we wouldn’t tell Benny anything that was going on outside of the world, the real world in which people were being slaughtered for no good reason.
“What kind of cabin?” Benny asked curiously.
Rachel pretended that she didn’t hear him.
When every one was sleeping, I decided to go out to sit outside of the crowded, overheated, messy tent. I had to breathe fresh air. I walked all the way over to where Rachel had let Berry go. It was a very comfortable stump. I sat on the stump and closed my eyes. I imagined everything that happened to us along this ghastly war. I didn’t like what I saw, so I opened my eyes right away, and I looked into the night sky. It was pitch black, but I had sat there on many nights like these, and I could see some things. I saw a bird flapping its wings high above my head. I thought about how animals were so clueless about what was happening around them in our world. All of a sudden, I saw Jacob’s face appear from behind the bush that I sat behind three years ago, spying on Rachel. I smiled, and motioned for him to come over.
He whispered, “Rebecca, how did you… how did you survive three years here?”
I wiped my eyes; a couple of tears were inching their way down my cheekbones. “The same way you did. I struggled to stay alive.” I whispered back.
Jacob nodded. He seemed to understand what I was going through.
Rachel walked from behind me. She whispered delicately, “I knew I would find you here.” We talked for a little bit longer.
After a while Jacob left, and Rachel and I sat together and talked for a while. There were many things we didn’t quite understand about our life, like when we would get out of this war, and see our parents, who we hadn’t seen in about four years. We wondered what they would look like, where they would’ve been, and if they were even still alive. I was sure that my parents were alive. They were too strong; no moronic officer could take that away from them.
After a long talk, we decided to go back to the tent; I could start to see some light coming out of the horizon. Once we got to the tent, we were both really tired and slept the whole next day. When we woke up it was suppertime, and we had to go fishing. It was just what I needed, slimy and boring fish.
Now I was about fifteen and a half and Rachel was about fourteen and a half. Benny was nine and a half; he was almost as old as me when the war started. How he had grown. David was almost eighteen now and I desperately didn’t want him to grow up, or leave me. In some ways I preferred to stay here forever. I wished to never grow up. Although the common sense part of my brain told me otherwise. I was to find my family as soon as the war had finished.
Rachel got sick again, but it was twenty times worse than the last time she got sick. She was so sick that she could barely breathe. She was constantly vomiting. Then, she coughed up blood. I was very frightened when David announced that it would be her last day, unless God gave us another miracle.
All day she coughed and vomited and coughed and coughed. Benny was so worried. He was no longer a baby. He was almost ten years old. He knew what was going on, and he wanted to stop it. Of course, he couldn’t help much.
We all went to sleep that night, but before we did, we prayed. We tried to remember the actual words of the songs, but we ended up just mumbling the tunes of the prayers we remembered. I ended in tears as I watched Rachel’s cold and pale face rest. All we could do was hope for the best. All we could do was pray for the best. Even David had tried his hardest not to cry, even though he barely knew her at the time.
God did not give us a miracle, Rachel died the next morning. Her eyes were closed, for she died in her sleep. They were heavily shut, and they were slightly purple. I brushed my finger along her cheek as a teardrop fell. She was ice cold. Benny took the news the hardest. After his sister’s death, he was never the same old cheerful Benny. Never again would any of us be completely cheerful. I was devastated, I could not pay my respects to her, and I couldn’t even look at her without wanting to run away in tears.
Later that day, David came to me and softly said, “Rebecca, we will keep Rachel’s body and bury it when the war is over. I know you are taking this very hard, we all are, but we will get through this together.”
I hollered, “I do not need for us to get through it together, and SHE is not an IT! Just leave me alone! NOW!” I started blubbering. Tears were flooding out of my eyes uncontrollably. I couldn’t stop. I couldn’t help that I missed Rachel.
Benny came to me, his face red and puffy from crying, “She’s gone for good, isn’t she Rebecca?”
“I’m afraid so Benny.” I said in a hushed voice, I had to be strong for Benny. I had to.
I grabbed Benny’s hand and led him to the river. I ordered him to wash his face. He did as I told him too. Jacob was there, crying also. All three of us, Benny, Jacob, and I hugged for a long time. I didn’t know what else to do, or say.
I suddenly remembered how rude I had been to David, so when we finished hugging, I told Jacob to watch Benny at the stream, I had to do something. I ran up to the tent and hugged David. He nodded, as if saying he understood why I was being so emotional. I stepped into the tent and saw Rachel’s lifeless body. I quietly whispered,
“Rachel, you and I are still best friends, no matter what. No matter where we are or who we are with. Best friends forever. I have no doubt I will meet you up in heaven.”
As I saw Rachel’s eyes, my heart sank. I thought Rachel and I would be neighbors, and we would visit our families every weekend. And our kids were supposed to be the best of friends…just like us…
Months went by, all of us were depressed, and we couldn’t really help it. We put Rachel’s body in the hole. I made sure she was very comfortable there. Just as if she were alive, she wouldn’t have minded sitting there.
It was five months since Rachel had died, and I still wasn’t completely over it. I had to get on with my life, for the good of every one around me. I had already survived four years and about eleven months into the war. I could wait until the war finished, if it ever would.
One month later, I heard a loud voice screaming in Hebrew. I thought it was a dream… I had had many dreams like this, when some one came to save us from the woods. I opened my eyes and stepped out of the tent. It was a man with a uniform on. But it wasn’t a Nazi uniform.
“The war is over!” the man said with huge dimples in each cheek.
I couldn’t speak. I slapped myself, pinched myself, just to make sure it wasn’t a dream. All I could do was scream, “Really?” I started crying as my heart skipped a beat.
“Yes ma’am!”
I woke up every one, and we all hugged each other for a long time. Tears of joy were flooding down our cheeks. We had survived the longest and most dangerous journey I had ever been on. But all I wanted to do at that point was go home. I really wanted to go back to everything as usual. We followed the man out of the woods and into open space. Then, that night we took a train back home to our little town in Germany. We were home. All four of us were overwhelmed with excitement; we couldn’t talk, move, or even scream. But how badly I wanted to! The only thing David could do was carry Rachel out of the hole and onto the train.
Rachel. If Rachel had survived only a couple more months, she would have lived to be free. She would finally be free, after all of those plans of our future, they would’ve worked out. But God always has the final decision. If her parents were still alive, I wouldn’t want to feel and see their anguish all over again.
Where were my parents? Where they dead? Alive? Well? Sick? A lot of questions came to my head at once. I was so confused. Where would Jacob and Benny go? Where would David and I go if we couldn’t find our parents? What would happen to us? All I wanted to think of was that we were alive and well. Even though many more things could’ve happened to us during our journey, David protected us, and Rachel, was always by my side and ready to talk. I missed her so much.
When we got off of the train, all of us walked our way through our familiar streets of our little town. When we reached my house, I was very scared of what I would see. And I was right to be scared. It was nothing but little remains of planks of wood. My house was now some lonely black ashes in a heap. I walked onto the pile that I used to call home. I found a piece of a picture frame that was gold with silver decorations. It was my mothers most prized possession.
David told me to get up; we had to get Rachel to her family. So I did. We ran to Rachel’s house, it wasn’t burned, it wasn’t destroyed, but it was abandoned. No trace of any one ever living in it. We put Rachel in her old bed, and I made sure she was tucked under the covers, so she wouldn’t be too cold. I touched her cheek gently and whispered into her frozen ear, “Best friends forever.”
After that, we all went walking in the streets, trying to find any one we knew that could help us find our parents. I saw Mr. And Mrs. Gold that used to own a butchery down the street, I saw Annie and Benjamin Cohen, two elderly people who where our neighbors, and I also saw Sarah Rosenfield, a nice girl from my class. They were all crying. None of us found any of our parents, so we decided to just sit and rest for a while.
We sat on a bench that was about to fall apart, for a very long time, until I two older people, a man and a woman, who reminded me of my parents.
“MAMMA PAPA!” I screamed and ran towards them. I hugged them. When they turned around, I realized it wasn’t them. It was just two older people, who looked a little like my parents.
“I am so sorry, I really am.” I felt embarrassed for my over-excitement.
“It’s okay little girl. We have a favor. Do you know who Sarah Rosenfield is?” the woman quietly asked.
“Yes, I just saw her. She went to the old synagogue I think.”
“Bless you, child.” The couple smiled at me, with tears running down their faces.
I went back to where the others were sitting. Then Jacob asked how my parents looked like, I gave him a brief description. I felt hopeless. There was no use of us ever finding them.
That evening we stayed with the elderly couple and Sarah to go to sleep. We needed some form of shelter, and theirs was probably the most inviting. I tried to sleep, but I simply couldn’t I tried to close my eyes and relax myself as best as possible, but my nerves got the best of me. Now that the war was over and I had survived, it was only fair that I could be reunited with my parents!
David sensed my anxiety and inched towards me almost silently. “We will, without a doubt, find our parents.” I put on a fake smile and gently calmed myself into a convincingly peaceful sleep.
All the rest of the next day, we sat by the Rosenfeld’s radio, trying to listen to the lost family member announcements. No hope. We didn’t even recognize any of the names that were announced. I smacked the radio and shut it off while and storming outside. David calmly turned it back on while nodding his head disapprovingly. He knew I would have to get some emotions out. So I frantically sprinted back to our house, I sat on the ash pile, and wept.
After what felt like hours, the others footsteps came near me. I stuffed my face into my arms and tried to clear the tears. They sat with me, while David rubbed my back soothingly.
A middle-aged couple came up to us and saw me crying. The man swooped me up and started kissing me. David grabbed me and scolded the old man, “Excuse me old man are you delirious?” I was horrified.
“It’s us! Rebecca it’s us! Mama and Papa!”
I screamed out of joy and ran to my Papa and Mama once more.
“And who are these three young men Becca?” my father asked with a wink.
“This is David, Benny and Jacob!”
“Oh David! Oh Jacob! How much you two have grown!” Papa and Mama said.
Jacob and David hugged them tightly with tears in their eyes. After a handshake to Jacob and a firm hug from my mother, they remembered what was missing. They asked where Rachel was, I turned my head around, and bit my lip. David explained the whole story. My mother picked Benny and kissed him on the forehead. Both of my parents had tears in their eyes.
When we were walking back to Rachel’s house, to find her body and bury it, we saw her parents at the doorway. Benny didn’t recognize them, so he stayed close to my side. As we walked closer to them, they recognized my parents and David, so they rushed to hug them. Once I told her parents who I was, who Jacob was, and who Benny was, they cried. Rachel’s dad scooped up Benny and suddenly remembered his other child.
“Where’s Rachel? Have you lost her? Is she…She couldn’t have passed away?”
I nodded my head slowly as they began to weep. They asked how, and I told David to tell them. I couldn’t face my best friend’s parents and tell them how their daughter had died. I buried my face into my arms, and didn’t talk for a very long time. I sat there until David finished explaining, and her parents had a clear look of anguish on their faces. I couldn’t imagine the pain they would go through. Benny probably wouldn’t remember much of his wonderful sister. I was her best friend, but they were family.
After I brought them up to Rachel’s room and showed her to them, her mother started howling with tears. I was afraid she would flood the small room. Her father’s face was pale, and his lips were tightly sealed against one another. The thin lip line was turning white. He closed his eyes, there was a couple seconds of tension and silence, and then he screamed. He screamed a deep, frightening scream, it was more like a holler, and tears started rolling down his cheeks, he grasped Rachel’s mother’s arm, and they cried for a long time. I eyed Jacob and showed him a weak smile that was definitely not believable. He smiled the best he could and walked up to me. We stood together.
After Rachel’s parents had slightly calmed down, we went to my house and sat on the pile of burnt wood. I sat next to David and Jacob. I asked Mama if I could be excused for a moment, and she approved. I gratefully left the depressed, lonely place. I sat on the gray, cold, ashy ground. I put my face in my hands, and stayed like that, curled up in a ball. All of a sudden I felt a comforting hand on my back. This hand rubbed my back, until all of the tension was gone. I looked up, and I saw Jacob. I smiled at him, and he smiled back. He crouched in near me and whispered softly into my ear,
“I love you Rebecca”