It is not about survival

Chava

When I was a young girl, Papa would take me down to a stream that I always wanted travel. I wanted to run away from the hell in which I was living. It wasn't bad then. I was just caged up like an animal being grown for slaughter. I wore my star with pride. For my 11th birthday, my sweet mama gave me a necklace. It was a wood carving of the Star of David. I would never let it leave me. Throughout my early years, me and my friend Efrat wrote books for the local children. I was living a sad life, but compared to my future, it was royalty. I hated myself, I thought there was a reason the Nazis hated me so much, I thought I was doing something wrong. I never thought of killing myself, though now I wish I had. My brother, Betzalel, was the first one taken. They swarmed in like angry bees, they took up all boys first, I didn't know what to do, when I saw him, I saw blood, more than I had ever seen, I think he died then. It was because he tried to resist. My younger sister, around 13, knew he died, she said the voice of God told her and that he was going to protect her. It was awful losing him. Lying in a pool of his blood, I wailed. Innocent young blood, spilled out of hatred. I was given a comforting rub on the back. An embrace from a snake. I looked up to see a gun pointed at me by a nazi telling me I was a coward and an embarrassment to the street. My mom took that bullet for me, she lived somehow, in the already abundant pool of blood, he thought we were both dead, I knew that this would not be the last time. That summer, we hid. In a small opening in the wood of an old house. I lived there for thirty two days before the house erupted in flames. We were out in the open again