Chapter One

 

 

The rolling of what appears to be a train wakes me up. The first thing I do is ponder, where am I? It, for one, smells awful here, and I have no sense of time or what year it is. I see other small beings in here, looking sort of like my composure, status and pose. They look depressed, sickened and queasy. They look like farm animals in a disgusting barn. I sit up and rub my eyes and see a person next to me, just thinking of what the future may bring. I ask her, “Where am I?”

 She responds, “This group of people is in a boxcar, I’m sure of that. I just have no clue where we are headed.” Odd. This just makes me feel like everyone woke up at the same time I did. I probably just had to sit and wait.

 

-------

Days and weeks go on in the sick and disgusting boxcar. We have been hungry for so long; I just want to eat someone in our boxcar. I need to eat. But then the train stops. The door opens. We are free! As we get out, we step on this dewy grass plain with huge, stone and steel buildings in the distance. There are flags with this weird, black shape in a white circle on these red banners, and I wonder where we are. Buildings with smoke rising from the chimneys, soft coughs and screams are coming from behind the gate that is in front of us. On top of this gate, I see words. It says, “Arbeit Macht Frei.” I don’t understand what this means, and I spend a couple of seconds on what it means before a soldier comes towards our group.

“Stay in the line!” the soldier shouts in an angry tone. He has an arm patch that has the same thing on the flag that we saw coming in from the train, and he points his gun at where the commotion is; the beings that are there go back in the line.

“You. Name, age, date of birth, ethnicity, and where you are from,” another soldier says to a being to the right of us. He gives his name, ethnicity, age, date of birth, and where he is from to the soldier who then writes it down on a chalkboard. The soldier asks more people, and then he comes up to me.

“You. Name, age, date of birth, ethnicity and where you are from,” the soldier yells. I realize I don’t know where I was born, my date of birth, age, ethnicity and name. But then it comes crawling back to me.

Jenny Lindstromm, March 14th, 1927, Kiev, Ukraine.

“Say it now,” the soldier says.

“Jenny Lindstromm, March 14th, 1927, Kiev, Ukraine.

“Ukraine doesn’t exist,” says the soldier. “It is an Eastern Unidentified Territory.”

          “Ukraine is a country that exists!” I reply back.

“Are you sure?” says the soldier.

          “Y-yes,” I reply back. He writes down OST on the clipboard. He then goes to the next person in line.

-Anthony B.