Torn Apart 3

I sat on the ground, curled up into a ball, as the SS men announced the numbers of who would be next to board the dreaded trains. I somewhat hoped they would call my number, 117709, so that I might join my mother, wherever she might be.1

Numbers; how they identified us here in Terezin. They treated us like pigs here, pinning us up in the ghetto surrounded by barbed wire fence, numbering us, and then shipping us off to slaughter houses, or as they call them, concentration camps. They make us work in the fields like mules, and keep us in barracks, our own barns, when the sun goes down. We are nothing but farm animals to the Nazis.2

I rolled down my sleeve to look at my number. The red dashes and marks tattooed onto my pale skin. I remember the pain and agony when they tattooed my arm, I wanted to scream and yell for them to stop, but I was too scared.3

When the SS men had stopped calling out numbers, the whole room was quiet at first, as it always was after announcements like these. Then an older girl called out “Was anyone called?” 4

We all looked around in hope that none of our friend’s numbers had been called, that everyone in our barracks would stay for at least for another few days. But all hopes were dashed, for a small girl stood up, crying.5

She had blonde curly hair, a faded pink ribbon tied into one of her bunches of curls. Her eyes were pale blue and were wet with tears. She couldn’t have been more than four or five years old.6

“T-they called my- my, number” she choked out. I was absolutely horrified that such a small, young girl was to die, and all because of her religion! That was the only reason that we were treated like pigs and killed by list, even the little ones being shipped off to their death on the trains.7

We all hurried over to the child, hugging her and consoling her. Telling her everything would be alright, although we knew that it was for naught. She continued to cry, for her dead mother and father, for home, and for her friends and siblings.8

Our whole group accompanied her to the platform, where she would be taken off to Auschwitz, the death camp. We hugged her and kissed her cheeks and said a final goodbye before she boarded the train. She sobbed that she didn’t want to go, that she would do anything not to go. At this point we were all crying in pity for the child, but the SS guard pushed her onto the train. 9

The windows were boarded so that no one could escape. The metal rusty and gray, holding all of the poor people being carried off to their death. Among them was that poor little girl, probably scared to death.10

Was this to be the end for all of us?11