I’ve lived in this Ghetto for about a year now and life gotten worse for us Jews. Everyday i see more Jews leaving the camps with the soldiers and never coming back. I get more and more worried about my family as everyday passes thinking we will be next. A couple days went by until german soldiers woke us up and made us all line up in the boiling heat outside. They told us that we would be moving to this new place called a concentration camp. We couldn’t take anything with us or they would take it. We took box car’s to the place and had to sit 100 people per car and barely any food. I felt so bad for my brother he kept crying because all he wanted was to go home and everyone on the train was yelling at us to shut him up. We tried the best we could to make good out of what we could but it felt impossible with this kind of living. We had no idea how long we’d been in here and were we’re heading. Eventually, after days of travelling in the most cramped conditions, the railway carriages arrived at a camp. The doors of the carriages would be pulled open to give us the first glimpse of daylight in awhile, at a place we have never seen before. Seeing the light gave me the slightest of hope for what would happen next. As i got out i saw that men and women were separated, children staying with their mothers. We had to get our hair shaved, i was terrified. They gave us a special outfit to wear while we were there. After an early wake-up, daily concentration camp routines would begin with the Appell, the daily roll call. During the Appell prisoners had to stand in rows, completely still, for hours at a time, and in all weathers. I couldn’t stand the heat burning on my bare neck that my hair once covered. My little brother with my mother away from me kept an ace in my heart that would never go away. Life in the camps only got worse for us. We would only get meagre ration of watery soup, a piece of bread and some imitation coffee, and then my day would follow with work details.
-Sofia
