Last Thoughts

• Savannah Culverwell, Grade 10
• Short Story
• 2015

I can’t believe they’re doing this, it’s completely unfair trapping us in this small, smelly space with no idea as to what we’re doing here. This room is so crowded. I’m so close to the people next to me that I can feel the warmth and sweat of them and their heartbeats, I hear anxious calls from people in the room screeching and screaming. I see the faint images of naked bodies scrambling in this room because they had taken the clothes they made us wear, I wonder why.
Going back a couple of days I remember it being a cold winter’s afternoon. I was in the living room with my mum, dad, brother and sister laughing at our day, enjoying the presence of each other. But two loud knocks on the door came and everything in the room went silent. Before anyone could get up to answer the door it came flying open close followed by three fully equipped soldiers. They began yelling at the top of their lungs for us to get up against the wall, but my mother moving faster than I've ever seen pushed me my sister and I behind her. We knew what this meant. The German army had come to take us away. But to where?
My first instinct was to protect my sister like my father had always told me so I clenched onto her arm and pulled her with me as I ran up the wooden stairs. I could hear them close behind me. I knew that this was the last time I would be in this house for a while. The sudden smell of a toxic gas had pulled me back to realisation that something bad was going to happen. I could just feel it.
It became harder to breathe not only because of the horrendous smell but the fact that my body was in total shock of this whole situation. We knew they would be knocking on my door to get my family to this camp. I overheard one of the SS soldiers saying something about a concentration camp. From what I've been told, they aren't good places.
The soldiers broke the silence as they began projecting things down at us like, ‘ You deserve every part of this, you've brought this on yourself, none of this would've happen if you just did what we said’. Now I think I know what was going on, Hitler was controlling this because he wanted us Jews dead. I guess there’s nothing we can do now, were all trapped in this enclosed space, incapable of fighting back. All I can say is I hope we’re the last lot.
I was struggling to take anymore breaths. Fresh air was getting thinner and thinner, the smell got thicker and thicker, I slowly lost all consciousness. My last thoughts were about my family, that’s all I could think about through the faint cries, I just want them to know that I love them.