Dear Journal,
My name is Anna Altmann. My life fell apart on the day I was taken from my home just because I was jewish. A cruel man named Adolf Hitler wanted to “cleanse” Germany by killing almost all mentally and physically ill germans,“inferior”races and certain religions, such as the jewish people. On January 20, 1942, two months after my 12th birthday, Adolf Hitler, the natzi party,and german state officals had begun to organize the deportation of Jews to extermination camps this was called the "Final Solution", a few weeks later I was taken from my home to Auschwitz, a concentration camp.
The night they burst into our house was awful. As they banged on the door, my father told me and my mother, “Stay strong.” He kissed my crying mother and me quickly as they burst through the door and dragged him away. Two officers came in and took me and my mother at gunpoint and loaded us up into a truck. My best friend from school, Abel ended up sitting beside me with his mother, he was 13 years old at the time.He was sitting quietly trying to look older and not scared. “Where do you think they are going to take us? I asked quietly. “Father said,something called a con...concentration camp.”he answered shivering “Be..Before they to...took him.” “Well, what do they do with us there?” I asked. “Probably m..make us work.” We road a long way in the bumpy trucks. It was so bumpy that some of the people heaved over the edge and saw their last meal that they had eaten, it was gross.
It snowed during that cold night and all of us had nasty runny noses. We were all so close to each other that we all caught a cold. After a while we finally stopped at a train station. They told us to get out of the truck we hopped down one at a time, Abel helped his mother down as the guards yelled at us to move faster. They put all of us and one other truck full of people in one train car.I now noticed that some of us from the truck were missing. My stomach hit the floor when I realized the awful truth...they had been shot. I had heard some gunshots a we were put in the small train car and now I knew why. Then all of the sudden, Abel and his mother were shoved into the car and the door was slammed shut. Abel's mother got up and came towards us and set down followed by Abel.
We sat quietly,talking quietly and shushing crying children afraid to make a noise, for fear of the soldiers. Everyone was packed together so much that I could not sleep well. I woke up a few hours later to the train moving. I could see through a crack in the car, that the sun was not completely up yet the sky was a light gray. I watched that sun rise in a cramped train car till it became the most majestically marvelous sunrise I had ever seen. The bright pinks, yellows and blues filled the sky and glinted off the fresh fallen snow.The sun took away the coldness of the night and gave me hope that one day the War would be over and I wanted to see it. I gestured Able to come over and look. When he stood up the train increased in speed and Abel almost fell over.He steadied himself and looked out of the crack and I could have swore that I saw tears form in his eyes before he blinked them way. “It’s wonderful.”he said quietly. Then he reached into his pocket and pulled out a small old note pad and a piece of charcoal. “Write down everything that happens, please you have a better way with words than I do.” he said hopefully. I agreed,set back down and wrote all this down.I hope the future will be better but until then I’ll wait.
Hopefully,
Anna Altmann
The Holocaust was the killing of millions of Jews and other types of people by the Nazis during World War II.The jews and other people were forced to work in horrible concentration camps where they were regularly starved and beat. Many died from starvation and diseases.The others not taken to concentration camps were sent to death camps and were killed by being put in a closed off room called a gas chamber. The germans would put poisonous gas into the chambers and when the people were dead, there bodies were burned. The screams and stench could be heard and smelled by the other soon to be victims. Around 11 million people were killed in the holocaust.It is important that we remember the holocaust so that something like it will never happen again.
Hey guys I wrote this for my English class and thought that maybe someone would enjoy it. Thank you for reading and stay tuned for more random things😊
