A Brighter Tomorrow

A sliver of light shone though the only gap in the dirty, crowded basement. Up above, the blood-thirsty Germans viciously bombarded the city of Warsaw in the name of an old, grumpy, powerful man – Adolf Hitler.

A bang, a boom, a scream. Another dead body.

The air in the ghetto was smoky and filthy. Dead bodies lay scattered everywhere. Poor beggars sat outside of shops desperately pleading for a single zloty, but sadly there was nothing to give. The sly snatchers hid waiting to pounce at any riches seen.

I was the only member of my family left. Mama and Tateh had both been randomly taken off the street and sent on their way to a concentration camp. My brother had died in the typhus epidemic and my sister succumbed to pneumonia. The last words my father said to me were ‘no matter what happens, live on and tell the world the truth about the Germans.’

As the days dragged on smuggling food into the ghetto became extremely hard. Young, tall, grouchy soldiers crowed along the wall that declared the end of the ghetto – leaving no available holes to crawl through without being immediately shot to death.

It was also hard to go through the sewers because they had been intoxicated with poisonous gases, and they were full to the brim with bombs – like sardines in a jar! Luckily, that had only been done to the major sewers, which left the minor sewers to tightly squeeze through. The sewers let to the Aryan side of Warsaw. It took hours on end to manoeuvre a way out but in the end it was always worth it because I got to eat and drink fresh bread and water.

The smell of smoke filled the ghetto, threatening to suffocate anyone who was too close. The ghetto was deserted. Most of the Jewish had already died. The future at this stage wasn’t near bright, it was dark and cold.

I remembered the minor sewers and set off racing the fire and the smoke. Once I reached the mouth of the sewer I started to doubt myself, but kept going, determined to survive the war. I felt an urge to sprint like I had never sprinted before – so I did, I was weaving and darting this way and that when I finally saw light. As good as it was, it hurt my eyes because over the various amount of years that I had lived in the ghetto it had been dark. After a few quick minutes I could see and smell a difference to the ghetto – outside was a lot brighter and more spacious, while inside the ghetto was extremely sluggish.

The was finally over on 8th May, 1945 and when Adolf Hitler committed suicide the word spread quickly.

I had survived the war, I was only thirteen years old.

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