“Say ‘mercy’, then I’ll stop.”

“Fine! Mercy,” Allie said in a small voice. Allie hated to give up. Allie was an 8-year-old Jewish girl, but really she called herself German because she never celebrated Jewish holidays. The war had just started so the Jacklen’s family had nothing to worry about right? Wrong!

“Get out of bed,” said Jack in a trembling voice.

“What? Why?” said half asleep Sue and Allie.

“Because the Nazis are coming to all the Jew’s houses and telling them to get out. If you don’t, then you will be sent to camps.”

“Let’s go before they get mad and send us to camps,” yelled their mother grabbing their coats with the yellow stars sewn to them.

“Don’t forget to get a bag packed.” Said Jack trembling with terror. So the Jacklen family went out the door maybe never to see it again. “Mutti, what is happening? I want to go back to bed and sleep in my warm bed. I don’t want to go into the cold night,” whimpered Sue. The sky was dark only the moon gave a shimmer to the streets below.

So the Jacklen family scurried to follow the Nazi’s orders and soon they got to the square of the town where Sue, Allie, and Jack took their school lessons from a Jewish woman named Nana, but they didn’t think her real name was Nana. She had no money but she had her mind, the Jewish women would always say. On Monday and Fridays they went to learn writing, reading, subtraction, and adding and lots more from her. When they passed her on the street, she was crying Why are you crying?” asked Allie with a tear running down her own cheek. From a distance she called back, “They took my daughter out of my arms and took her away!” Soon Allie saw her crumple to the ground crying. Allie could see her heart break every second she was away from her daughter.

“Mutti, where are we going, Mutti?” Sue said being held by her muscular father.

“We are going to the ghetto,” said Cara or Mutti.

“What is a ghetto?” said Sue.

“It is a Jewish hotel,” said their father answering his lovely daughter’s question But everyone knew that was a lie. Soon they got to the place were the Nazi were lining all of the Jews into rows of fives and ordered the front row to march and the second row followed and so on and so on. So they marched to the end of town where the ghetto was behind a concrete wall about fifty feet tall. When the metal gates were opened they all stood inside of the cold gleaming gates where women, children and men were all stood together with luggage filling up the gaps between them. The ghetto was a few small buildings and a lot of old sheds. All the families started for their new home.

The Jacklen family was getting pushed and smashed into other people and Allie was swept away by the crowd, but Jack grabbed her hand before she was taken. Soon the only houses left were the old sheds in the back of the Ghetto gates.

Allie could peek out and see the other world behind the gates the world of the free, the world with friendship and love but she was in the other world behind the dark gleaming gates where hardship and abuse was their new life. The Jacklen family tried to make the best of it, and so they walked slowly to their new home. They were going to be living there for the next four months. When they got there all the Jacklen family started to cry because the only things in the shed were a straw filled mat, a bucket of water, a small pail for their bathroom, and a few blankets. Soon they were sent to the Ghetto gate where a guard sat with about 30 loaves of bread. He was passing them out.

“Only one per family!” yelled the guard. The guard looked to be about thirty. He had blond hair, blue eyes and a blue uniform. He looked at Allie and smiled. Allie knew him. He was the German baker that lived in her apartment building. He lived on the top and they lived on the bottom. Allie and Jack helped him in the summers when they didn’t have school lessons.

“Hi, hi, hi!” yelled Allie at the top of her lungs waving her hands at the guard. He walked over and handed her three loaves of bread and nodded at Allie’s parents. The Jacklen family ran back to the shed before they got tackled for their food. Three loaves meant survival, and survival was good. They ran back to the shed, ate a piece of bread, and took a sip from the bucket of water. Then they went to sleep with an angry stomach, but that’s better than a hungry stomach.

They woke up and the guard was in the doorway. There was no door so the guards could see what was happening. They had to sleep in the shed with no privacy. Most days the snow, sleet, and the rain could get in if it blew sideways, which it did of course. They would wake up almost drenched, but the blanket helped a little. When they woke up, they had to dry themselves with wet blankets. They were going to roll call when the guard just walked in.

“Hello, are you doing okay here?” The guard asked. He was a Nazi, but he was against Hitler. The guard job paid a lot, and being a Nazi meant your family would be safer.

“No, how can you live in a shed?” screamed Allie and Sue’s mother “Sorry, I’m only a guard,” said Mr. Vibrat. That was the guard’s name but he said, “Just call me Sam when the other guards aren’t around.” Every night he would come and give them bread and cheese. Once there was a piece of lettuce, but soon the other guards knew where the family was getting extra food. They told Sam if he did not stop this he could not work there any more.

They stopped getting extra food on weekends. They got food during the week but only one piece of bread, and a very slim slice of cheese. Every day except Sunday the parents had to go to the shed in the back of the ghetto to work. They shined shoes and cooked food for the guards. The cooking was good because sometimes the parents would bring back food for their children.

While they were at work Jack, Allie and Sue’s older brother had to watch his little sisters. They played tag and tic-tac-toe in the sand.

One day Sue asked, “Are we bad? Is that why we have to live here?” Jack was so shocked at the question; he didn’t answer the question right away. After a moment of thinking, he hugged his little sister and said, “Don’t you think that one second! You are not bad. The Nazis are bad. You are perfect and nice. You, I, Mom, Dad and Allie are not bad at all. The Nazis are bad. Do you understand?”

Sue smiled and said, “I understand, Jack,” and gave him a hug.

Soon Allie walked in and saw them hugging and said, “Hi, I was walking by the new guards office and saw Sam. He looked at me and gave me a loaf of bread. I was really hungry so I took a couple bites is that okay?” Asked Allie still chewing softly on the little chunk of soggy bread Jack smiled and said, “That’s fine Allie.” Soon after dark the parents walked in looking very weak.

“Are you okay?” said Sue and Allie together.

“Yes, I’m fine, dears. Just a little too much work that is all.” said Cara with a smile.

“Hey, I was working in the kitchen and I got a couple grapes and a slice of cheese,” said Cara with a small smile Mutti, I got bread from Sam and I found a potato peel.” said Allie. Allie, Sue, Jack, Cara, and Joe did not know what was going to happen that night. They had only been in the ghetto for four months. All the people in the Ghetto were only skin and bones. The only thing Allie liked about the Ghetto was that all the Jews were one big family living together working together and even playing together. That night, at the time the parents got home and laid down, the guards stomped in with their shiny black boots and the white armband with a swastika, and dragged them out of the little shed and shoved them into the crowd. Even Sam was with them but he looked like he was crying. He pushed a bag filled with food in their direction but some fell out and the crowed trampled it. Some people saw the food and tried to grab it but Joe pushed them back. Soon they were in a small cattle cart with about a hundred people.

“Mutti, I’m scared,” said Sue with a tremble in her voice. All the family was shaking with fear when the doors shut. They were exposed to total darkness but at least they had the food. Joe looked in the bag Even though the cart was dark he could see a tint of coin in the bag and some bread and a big thick slice of cheese. He smiled and whispered, “Thank you Sam”. The crammed ride took two hours. They were so crammed that they could barely breathe. After they got there, they got pushed onto the ground and they saw the camp. It was called Bergen-Belsen. It had brick barracks and a work field. There was no grass. If there were a blade of grass anywhere, the prisoners would eat it.

Some of the prisoners weren’t so lucky, most died of sickness or they lost their piece of bread that they needed for the week. And some just died of broken hearts or sorrow. Soon the family was pushed into the small barracks and Jack and Joe had to go to the work camp that they had down the road. Cara was so scared. On Sundays they got to see each other. The next day was Sunday, the only day they could look forward to. In just one week they looked like they had been there for a year. Their uniforms were dirty and soggy. They were so hungry that they ate wood and dirt.

On Sunday Allie ran to her brother and father and hugged them but she was so skinny they had to help her fit her arms around one little person. They all cried and cried and didn’t know why. Maybe it was the hunger or maybe it was the horrible things they saw in the camp. Maybe they knew that Joe was getting weaker every day. If he couldn’t work, then they knew what that meant.

At night Sue and Allie would sleep in their mother’s arms for three reasons. One: they needed body heat; two: they were so scared it made shivers go up their spines; and three: Cara didn’t want her children to fall and break a leg or an arm. So they all huddled in the bunk in complete darkness. At night you could hear whimpers and crying from the women’s barracks and from the men’s.

The next Sunday they went to the family meeting place and only Jack showed up. They looked into Jack’s red and puffy eyes and they could see that Joe had died over the week. They all started to cry, not just cry, they all started to weep and bawl. Soon they thought they would be out of tears. After they all stopped crying they sat in the dirt and looked into each other’s eyes. After visiting about an hour, they walked way horrified not knowing who would die next.

Allie knew she had to survive to tell their family’s story about the ghetto and the camp. She had to survive! She started to look around the camp for blades of grass or potato peels that the guards dropped on the way to the kitchen, peel that still had a big chunk of potato on it. Soon she walked back to the barracks and shared her treasure with her sister and mom. When she got there only Sue was there. Sue told her that the Nazis needed help and they took Cara away to the dirt field to help chop wood.

When Cara came back to the barracks, she looked very tired and hungry. Her face was pale and what used to be brown hair was now gray. She was so skinny that she weighed about sixty-seven pounds. Sue looked even skinnier than Allie. She was thirty-two pounds and Sue’s brown hair was very dull and turning gray. Allie who only weighed thirty-six pounds used to have curly red hair and now it was flat and gray.

That night Sue said, “Mutti, when will I have brown hair again?” Cara said, “You will have the brownest hair in the world after the war.” As she looked down at the dull gray hair, and combed through it with her long bony fingers, she smiled and her dried lips cracked, then they all drifted into a long cold sleep. It now was January, and a cold one too.

They didn’t know in June they would get liberated. That would of have cheered them up. As the days went by, they got weaker and weaker. In the month of June they started to smile. They knew the Nazis were getting beat. On a Sunday in 1945 the Russians broke open the barbed wire fence and said “you are free”. It took a few minutes for the news to sink into the survivors. They said that they could take what ever they wanted from houses and stores if no one was in them. With all the energy they had left they walked to the town.

It was about a mile and a half. They were so weak that they had to stop and rest. They got there after a couple of hours. They were all very sad because if Joe was here he could have seen the pretty flowers and the nice air and the freedom. The family was so happy when they got to the town. There was lot of food and so the family left a lot behind so that other survivors could have a full stomach. The Jacklens went to bed with a full stomach the fullest in many, many years. They knew not to eat too much food or they would maybe get sick. They had made it this far. They had to survive! When they got to the boys camp, past the town, Jack was gone.

“Mutti, where is Jack? I want to see him.” said Sue with a tear running down her cheek.

“Sue, Jack is gone.” They cried and cried but kept going and soon they came to another town. They went into an abandoned store and got bread and cheese to eat. They ate meat for the first time in two years. Soon Jack was in the same store looking at the people to see if his mother or sisters were there.

“Wait a minute! Is that Allie?” he said to himself. He walked up to the gray haired girl and pulled on her arm and yelled “Mercy!” happily, like he did before the war.