Yours Truly, Ella

January 21st, 1942 / Run

"Isn't this great? We all haven't been eating together like this in ages! Happy birthday dear!" Maria gazed at Margaret, full of joy. Even if Margaret's birthday was on the 19th, we still wanted to celebrate her turning 19. Her parents allowed her to walk over and stay the night at my apartment, though if she were my daughter I wouldn't dare allow her considering how dangerous it is.

"I remember when I turned 19, it was just a month or so after I had Joanna." My grandma added. I don't know if you can tell but, she's quite old. She was born in 1870 making her 72 now. God bless her soul for making it through this crazy situation. I'm terrified that the soldiers outside will shoot her. They've done it to a few elderly people before.

Everyone continued eating their small bowl of soup and 1/4 of a piece of bread when we were interrupted by the sounds of gunshots and yelling coming from the street below. It was quite late and dark out already so we just quickly turned all the lights off and closed the blinds.

At the back of my mind, I knew I was forgetting about something that was going on today.

January 21st... January 21st...

As the sound of gunshots continued piercing through the air, I remembered it was Josef's birthday. He and other guards must've been drunk and parading the streets. I poked my head through the bottom of the curtain as they moved their way up into an apartment.

We all crowded into windows from the sides to watch as they took people out of their apartment and brought them out to the streets. One of the guards told them to run down the street, so as the people were running they all began shooting them until no one was left. Some of them were still alive, moaning from pain as they laid on the floor. So the soldiers just continued to walk and shot anyone who had any signs of life left right in the head.

I saw Josef turn around and glare back at our apartment where everyone quickly moved back from the windows. He shrugged and continued stumbling around with his friends as they sang patriotic songs about Germany.

We waited for there to be no sign of them whatsoever before we all continued eating and conserving between ourselves. Once everyone was finished with their dinner, I led Margaret to the bathroom where she would sleep next to me tonight. I turned the light off and held Margaret's hand as we both fell asleep.

It must've been 3 AM when we were all abruptly woken up by loud yelling and knocking coming from the door. I quickly got up and put a coat on as Margaret and Irena followed me out of the bathroom. We all quietly moved over to where Helena and Salomon were standing.

Mr. Hładki opened the door to find 5 soldiers including Josef drunk as can be. "Heil Hitler!" They all exclaimed as one went, "You heal him!" They pushed Jakob out of the way as he stumbled back to lean on the kitchen counter. "Let's sing a song, shall we?" Josef exclaimed to the other soldiers as he raised the bottle of alcohol and they raised there's. "How about Hort-Wessel-Lied?" The other soldiers smiled at the one soldier's suggestion, "Fantastic idea! Let's have the Jews sing along."

Barely anyone in this apartment could speak German, let alone know the second national anthem of Germany. My father was the only one who knew the lyrics as he had heard it shortly before we left for Poland. The soldiers raised their arms to salute as they loudly sang with their slurred voices, "Die Fahne hoch! Die Reihen fest geschlossen!"

I looked over at my father who was singing the lyrics with him, while everyone else was mouthing the lyrics. I joined in with my father who was singing in an attempt to have them not shoot us for singing. I didn't know the lyrics but I knew German so I tried my best to follow along.

As we all continued to sing, everyone had fear in their eyes. We knew if we did anything wrong they'd kill any of us they'd like for whatever reason they saw fit. The song was finally over but no one had a sigh of relief.

"Happy birthday to me!" Josef cheered with the other soldiers as the song finished but another voice came from the other side of the room. "Long live Poland!" exclaimed Mr. Brózda as everyone looked over to the corner and stared in shock.

"What did you say?" Josef stared in disgust, grabbing his gun, pushing it onto his head. "Niech żyje Polska!" (Long live Poland) was yelled as Josef pulled the trigger and shot him in the head. His wife Freida and daughters were screaming. The soldiers closed the door and left as Freida held her husband's face and wept. It felt as if whenever something went right something would go wrong.

I quietly moved back to my bathroom before laying down and going to sleep. I no longer felt like any of us would survive this war. We were all going to be shot at some point.