"Mama, no," I whimpered as the blast from the gun thumped against the inside and outside of my chest. I tried to escape the hands pushing me along, but when I saw Mama fall, crumpling to the ground like a rag doll, I froze in place—I felt paralyzed. "Mama, please don't leave me!" It didn’t matter how much I begged. My voice wasn’t heard, and if it was, it was ineffective and too late.
Brokenhearted and shattered, I was shoved into the back of a line of other Jews who were also being shuttled down the cobblestone street.
I stumbled backwards, watching as blood sprayed from the side of Mama's head, painting the old cobblestones burgundy as her life poured out of her and trickled down the street.
I cried silently among the gasps of surrounding bystanders. I thought maybe I had imagined it, but no matter how many times I blinked, the scene was still in front of me.
She was gone and there was nothing left of her.
Tears filled my eyes as agony shuddered through my chest. I just watched Mama die—she was murdered. I tried to swallow but my throat was drier than sandpaper.
She was just trying to protect us, but without mercy or a chance for real goodbyes, they took her from me. There was no sense of humanity among the soldiers. Just as we had heard thousands of times before: as far as Hitler and his army were concerned…Jews were nothing.
As we were herded like sheep, I leaned to the side, looking for Papa and Jakob. I caught Papa’s gaze as he was muttering words to himself. I assumed he was praying and reciting the Mourner’s Kaddish for Mama, but it was only a brief second before he was pushed around the corner. His eyes looked empty as if all the life had been sucked out of him.
Mama and Papa had been married for twenty-two years. They were as happy as two people could be together, and in the timeframe of a few minutes, our family had been torn apart, and Mama was dead. While realization consumed me, a hollow feeling in my chest engulfed my entire body, I pulled at the collar of my dress beneath my coat, tearing the material in an expression of my grief. Since I had never lost someone close to me, I’d never had cause to do so before, but as I felt the threads tear, I immediately understood the purpose and meaning behind the Jewish tradition. It was like a reflection of what was happening inside me—I felt my heart shredding to pieces just like the cloth, as if it were made from nothing more than a thin piece of paper.
Adding to my devastation, the fear of where they were taking us bled through me as I continued to pray it was all a nightmare.
A hand squeezed my shoulder, and a woman's voice whispered into my ear. It was as if that woman were placed in that spot at that moment just to tell me exactly what I needed to hear. "You need to stay alive. You must stop crying. I understand your pain, but your mama would want you to be strong now. Do it for her."
The woman kept her hand on my shoulder as we continued to shuffle behind the line of others. It gave me little comfort, but at least I wasn’t alone.
I knew I wasn't the only one who wanted to know where we were going. Despite being told that there would be shelter for us once the Nazis took over our homes, no one knew where the shelter was.
When the line stopped moving, I was no longer able to see anything happening in front of, or behind me. The sun had set, and the streetlights weren't bright enough to offer much visibility.
I needed to be with Papa and Jakob, and I wanted to stop shaking both from the cold and the utter horror I had witnessed. I couldn't stop thinking about Mama and the fact that she was probably still sprawled out in the middle of the street in front of our family's home, lifeless and alone.
There was a time when we had everything, or so it seemed, but in the blink of an eye, everything changed. Nothing would ever be normal again. Carefree, happy days had already been taken from us several months earlier, but I knew then that the hope of finding those times again were gone forever. I needed Mama; she was my best friend, the closest person in my life, and the one who was always there for me—even during her last moments. I did everything I could to hold back the tears. The pain was unbearable as I kept visualizing that scene of Mama’s murder repeatedly playing out in my mind. What was she thinking right before that man shot her? Did she know she was going to die? Did she suffer, or had she died instantly? I prayed she didn’t live long enough to feel the agonizing pain. I prayed she went to heaven peacefully and quickly. Then, there was a part of me was envious of her because she didn’t have to go on with a broken heart like the rest of us would.
I closed my eyes to block out my surroundings, but all I could see behind my eyelids were blurry pools of blood and splattered red blotches painting a landscape of death. There was no way to escape. I wanted to drop to the ground and scream and cry, but I was too scared. It was so hard to hold it all in, and accompanying my pain was a mortal fear beyond words.
The woman who stood behind me tugged at my shoulder that she was still holding onto, forcing me to turn around and face her. She was young, maybe just a few years older than I was, but she was pregnant and cradling her belly with her free hand. "Are you okay?" the woman asked.
"No," I whispered. No one was okay. We were all freezing, waiting for whatever the soldiers had in store for us.
The only sounds within the narrow alleyway were heavy breaths from the others, along with a light breeze that blurred the line between reality and hell.
"Do you know where we are going or what they have planned for us?" I asked the woman I was facing. She shook her head as she pulled her wool coat tightly over her protruding belly. "No. They came in, raided our house, and forced us out," she said.
"Are you alone?" I asked her, wondering if I was the only unlucky one to be separated from my family.
She twisted her head to the right and took a man's hand—I assumed he was her husband—and pulled him up alongside her. "It’s the two—well, three of us, God willing," she said. "What about you?"
Once again, I looked for any sight of Papa or Jakob, but I didn't see them anywhere. "My Papa and older brother are up ahead in the line," I told her. "But my Mama was—"
The woman placed her hand on my cheek and hushed me. "I know." Her kindness forced a wave of emotion to unravel within me. A lump caught in my throat, but I managed to pull in a bit of air with the hope of maintaining control. I knew I couldn't cry. Along with being terrified that those heartless men would try to make an example of me just as they did with Mama, I also knew I couldn't let them see how much they had taken from me.
The woman lowered her hand to mine and squeezed it tightly. "I'm Leah," she said, peacefully. She was like a brave angel.
"My name is Amelia," I told her in the same soft tone.
"We have to be strong, Amelia. That’s all we can do right now."
The meaning of strong had rapidly changed throughout the previous hour. Before that first day, being strong meant holding in my tears when I scraped my knee as a child, or learning to keep my chin up when a boy at school would tease me. I was strong when Grandmother passed away, knowing she had lived a long, fulfilling life. At that moment in time, though, I didn't know how to be strong—not after watching Mama murdered in cold blood.
The worst part was that I had no idea how much stronger I would need to become in the coming weeks. (Continue Reading Here)