Noah

Thanks for reading. If you have any suggestions please comment them whether they are posetive or negative. 

When I wake up, for a second I think that it's Sunday, but as soon as I glance at the homemade calendar on my nightstand, my spirits fall. Instead of the last row of the calendar columns, today's date falls into the third one. I hate Wednesday because they mean that I still have to endure 3 days of the torture that some people call school. The only person who talks to me there is Shmuel, who is not only my best friend, but my only friend.

After rolling out of bed, I grab a pair of brown trousers and a dress shirt, which I slip on before grabbing my messenger bag and heading over towards our living room. As soon as I walk into it, I can hear the familiar sound of my father's radio, which is tuned to it's usual Social-Democratic station. The radio is almost never off, so sometimes I wonder if my father listens to it in his sleep.

As I walk into the room, I'm surprised to see my brother Abraham sitting at the dining table, enjoying a fried egg. Since he no lounger attends grade-school, my brother is usually out the door no later than seven, but today he seems to be in no hurry. I pour myself a glass of milk from the clear vase that we keep it in and take a sip. "Shouldn't you be in school?" I ask my brother.

After a long pause, my mother finally responds. "Abe's not going to be attending school any more," she says in a cautious voice, as though she's trying to keep something away from me.

"That's not fair. Why does Abe get to not go to school?" I ask through a mouthful of fried potatoes.

This time my father is the one to answer, "We've decided that it would be a better use of Abe's time if he worked at the shop for a little. Money's tight anyway, and we can use all the help we can get." He talks in the same cautious way that my mother did. I wonder what secret my parents are trying to keep away from me.

Seeing the look on my eyes, my mother adds, "I know school is a hard place to be for you, or anyone else of our faith. I would do anything to make it so that you could learn somewhere else, but times are tough with our shop. Right now, it's the only place you could learn to read and write." I can see my mother is on the verge of tears, but before she can start to cry, my father taps her lightly on the shoulder.

"Honey, I need you down at the shop. Abe, you come too." He says in his deep, thick voice. It seems as though he hasn't been fazed at all by my mother's near-tears. Sometimes I feel like my father is a lion, because he never cries.

After my parents and brother leave, I check our family's grandfather clock, which hangs at a slightly tilted angle on top of my mother and father's bed. I have ten minutes left until I need to leave for school, so I plop down on our armchair next to the door and look around. Our room is cozy and compact, subdivided into a our living room, a room I share with Abe, and a small bathroom. Along with my parents' bed, our armchair, and grandfather clock, our room also has a small kitchenette, a table, a couple of paintings hanging on the walls, and our most prized possession, a stained glass window. The window is on the back side of our room, and depicts Moses and the Israelites crossing through the Red Sea. I'm not quite sure how much it is worth, but it is definitely the most expensive thing we own.

With nothing left to do, I listen in to my father's radio. Since the beginning of his party in 1928, Hitler has helped grow the Nazi party into the horror that it is now. His growth from 2.6% of votes in 1928 to 18% of votes in 1930 is just the start of this treacherous man's career. I don't know very much about Hitler, because I usually don't listen when we study him in school. All I know is that Hitler is the one that makes sure that anyone who is Jewish like me feels terrible. At school, the teachers told us to only refer to Hitler as the Fuhrer, but I don't get why. Fuhrer means leader, but all Hitler is doing is making everyone be mean to my family and me.