My 13th
by Emma Randall ‘14
I have been waiting for this day since I was eight years old, and now it’s finally here. Life is slow and painful in the holocaust camp, and the past two years have seemed like an eternity. The men with the big guns don’t care about me not being in the pen anymore. As soon as prisoners turn thirteen, they are expected to take care of themselves and stay out of the way of others. I am able to roam as I please now, as long as I stay clear of the perimeter. I am reminded that Papa’s brother Mishu never returned after he tried to cross over the tall, barbed fence. My older brother Shan would tell me that Uncle Mishu was stupid and selfish, but Mama and Papa would always smack him upside the head for saying such things. I wonder if Shan is stupid like Mishu.
When I wake up this morning Mama, Papa, and Shan have already left for the day, probably letting me sleep in for my special day. I don’t have to get dressed as I have worn the same thing every day since we came here two years ago. Men in police cars had come to our home and made us get into their cars. They burned all of our possessions. My shoes no longer fit, but the soles of my feet are tougher now that I walk barefoot everywhere. As I travel down the long, crowded streets, I feel the dirt grows hotter. Rounding the last corner, the alley is silent and abandoned. This can only mean that the border is close. I turn around, walking swiftly back toward the center of camp.
I make it to the camp’s center within ten minutes and am swallowed into the large group of people waiting outside the watch tower. Every day some are executed to make room for the new arrivals, and by looking at the amount of people around me, I can tell that are a lot of new arrivals.
The pen is a large, blocked off area where children from the ages of three to twelve are kept during the day. Now I look into the pen from the outside; I am no longer part of the inside. The eyes of a little girl no older than the age of seven lock onto mine as she peers through the rusted metal that surrounds her. She has big brown eyes and a black bowl cut hairstyle. A ripped and stained pink dress hangs at her knees and she carries a tattered, slumped over teddy bear. With one hand gripped around the foot of the teddy bear, she waves at me and smiles in the most curious way. I have never seen anyone happy in this place, not even when it rains. During rain we put out anything that can catch the millions of drops that fall, and then we hide the collected water under the floor boards so that intruders can’t find it. Hoarding water during these rare occasions will give us more strength, no matter how low our food privileges run.
The town center has so many people that I feel claustrophobic. Something is happening, something so big that it has every last person’s attention. But it isn’t the usual fight between a camper and a guard; all eyes are focused outside, beyond the boundary line. Before I know it I am in a dead run to where the commotion is.
I stop next to Shan and Mama. They are crying, pleading, and screaming for something to stop.
“Honey, please turn around.” My father’s words are calm. “Please, I don’t want you to see this.”
I don’t know what’s going on. Why are Mama and Shan falling apart? And why are we outside the perimeter?
“Turn around!” a guard came up behind me and held a gun to my father’s head. They are going to kill him. He is just standing there. It takes a moment for me to realize that I am screaming, but no one else seems to notice. Then the gun sounds and my father falls back into a hole that he has dug. I run forward. No one stops me. However, I stop when I see the sight of what a man carries. He carries a dead child with a body that has a face strangely similar to my own.
Another hand clasps around mine, the hand of a small smiling figure wearing a pink dress. That’s when it hits me. She isn’t smiling because of a single happy event; she is smiling because she is free. She is free and so am I. The warmth of happiness, the feeling I have been denied for so long, lead me straight into the bright light of freedom.