A Country Not Your Own

Part 1

Chapter 1 De Ja Vu

"Everyone on the train!" the guard yells.

We are heading to the Holocaust; there is a crowd of Germans gathered together, watching us like natives watch intruders leave their land. But we have lived here, and we belong here just as much as they do. We have lived here our whole lives just like them, and Germany is ours as well as theirs, Jews or no. But they don't care about that. They see us as pests and intruders in "their" land, parasites stealing all their wealth.

I look over and see a boy...he has blonde hair and blue eyes, a typical German boy. His hair is golden blonde, and he is about ten. His face is so familiar as I step up unto the train and sit where a Nazi soldier tells me to sit. I look at him one more time because he reminds me of the one German I actually have compassion for and want to know.

I hugged my old robe to me, the hood almost completely covering my eyes. My stomach growled as the smell of the bread wafted into my nose.

"Hey Miss!" came a sudden voice behind me.

I turned and stared into the green eyes of a boy with golden blonde hair. He was jogging toward me, and he was a German. I did the sensible thing any Jew would do when approached by a German; I ran like my life depended on it because it probably did. I turned into an alley, and I heard his determined footsteps continue behind me. I had to lose him.

I ran through the alley and arrived at the side of a building. It was a ghetto cut off from the rest of the city with a giant wall all around it.

"Get down!" the familiar voice yelled.

I looked back and saw the boy launching himself at me. I was falling to the ground before I knew it, and I grappled for something to hang on to. I felt the boy's chain snap in my hand as I skidded across the concrete sidewalk. There was a giant explosion and a bunch of frantic screams cut off by deathly silence. I saw the boy fly back before I was blinded by smoke and ashes. I heard a baby crying, and I think my heart must have skipped a beat. I wanted to run in and grab the child, but the crying stopped soon after it had began.

I looked down;crimson blood dripped from my hand where I had been gripping the dog tag so tight. It stained the sidewalk red.

German soldiers came to the boy's aid. They saw me and immediately assumed that I had something to do with the boy's accident. I wiped my hand on my dress, shoved the dog tag of my rescuer in my pocket, and began running. The Nazis did pursue me, but I got away. When I had reached another alley, I slipped the dog tag out of my pocket and read it.

Jason, it read.

He had saved my life, and the bad thing about it is that I did not know he was dead.

That had been when I was thirteen, and I have not seen him since that brief moment which had had the world of a difference because I often wonder what would have happened if he had not followed me and been there that day. Would I have died? I would say it was God, but I stopped believing in God a long time ago when my own father abandoned me. I stopped believing in God because if He truly loves us, then He would protect us, His people. We are supposed to be His people, and He is supposed to be our Jehovah. A part of me wants to run to Him, but that bitter part of me keeps me back. I find it easier just to ignore. Just like I find it easier not to think about the boy from that day unless it is in a flashback from times like these. I find it easier not to focus on the fact that I could be responsible for a boy's death and that I had not even thanked him. It was the Germans' fault just like everything else. Yet they blame us, my people.