Undesirable (ON HOLD)

Chapter Three: Amos

Amos knew he only had so much time before he had to hurry back to the ghetto. The Nazis were becoming more and more arrogant in keeping the curfew for the Jewish people they had confined there. Except for Allison, he felt isolated from the rest of the world. He had heard from others that the SS Nazis were going to start transporting people out of Germany from the ghettos to farms in Eastern and Central Europe. There was more than that: where they, him and his people were headed, was not a farm, nor any kind of sanctuary away from the war and the trouble it was causing thousands of people. It was 1938, and there was no such thing as a safe haven in a war of persecution such as this one. Not one for him and his people that was for sure; nor for anyone who opposed Hitler and the Nazis. Persecution he thought, a strange word to use but nonetheless one that described what was going on right now. The Nazis were convincing people they had their best interests at heart, but Amos and his family knew better. They remained unfazed by the Nazis meaningless words unlike the other majority of friends and loved ones inside the ghetto. But the location of where they would be taken was unknown to everyone inside the ghetto as well: his parents, his brothers, his neighbors, and pretty much everyone he could think of. Some whispered, some talked, but for the most part everyone else kept their mouths shut for fear of being heard by the SS officers inside the ghetto. Anything could happen, and in this case that was not a good thing.

Though his intention was to tell Allison what was going on, what his life was really like, he couldn't compel himself to bring his concerns upon her. She was going to marry one of them, an SS officer (but Allison didn't know that); one that beat a woman inside the ghetto because she came too close to him and kicked a child after he tripped on his own foot and fell down. She needed to know the truth, didn't she? She deserved that much, but who's to say she would even believe him, friends or not? Would she believe the man she loved and would marry soon was brutal and arrogant enough to harm innocent people? He wasn't sure. Allison came from a different world than him. She had expectations, people to please, and her parents could afford to make her ignorant enough to not question them, ever. Amos didn't know what Allison would think, or if she could handle the truth. Better to protect her for now than expose secrets that she couldn't deal with; the time would come hopefully.

Not that he was very sure. Amos wasn't sure about anything right now. Everything had gone awry: his life, his future, and even his family. His brother Caleb had already escaped from the Berlin ghetto and was being hunted. With him on the outside, they had been able to discover from him what the Germans were planning by secret letters that a messenger came by for them. The Nazis were relentless in finding him though, and that only made things all the worse.

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"No one knew where Caleb had gone," my mother told us, "Your father told me later 'it was as if he had disappeared like a magician. Not a trace of him anywhere in or around the ghetto. No smells, no tracks, nothing.' This stupefied me too Mariana," she said eyeing the look of pure shock I gave her, "He had done it all in secret though. Not a soul had known he was planning to escape. Of course, the SS didn't believe that. They grilled Amos and his family for information about Caleb's escape, where he was planning to go, and how he'd left the premises without a trace. When no one knew, they believed them to be lying. Mrs. Marin, Amos' mother, suffered the worst I fear. Her oldest son, gone, and all these men asking her where he was and threatening her other two sons if she did not cooperate."

Though I knew Mrs. Marin as my grandmother, she was a stranger to me, because I had never met her, "Did Grandmother Marin die in the war?" I asked hesitantly.

My mother shook her head, "She passed away the year before you were born from a heart attack. She and Amos' father were imprisoned in a camp too, but only she survived. Though a quiet woman, she had an iron will of strength. No German or soldier could break her." All of a sudden my mothers eyes seemed crestfallen, "I wish I could say the same about myself and others though. I think without your father, I would have never survived myself."