The Story of Christian Simon
"Grandma! Grandma? What's this?"
"Shut up Sophie! I swear you have got to be the most annoying little sister ever. Can't you ever just be quiet when we come here?"
Christian Simon, at the age of 65, mother of one, grandmother of two and currently being given the job of watching her grandkids; 9 year old Sophie and 13 year old Jennifer, who currently seems to be in a foul mood.
"Now now Jennifer, don't be so mean, Sophie is just asking a question, what's the matter?"
"Oh, she's just mad that her boyfriend Eric might breakup with her because she's Jewish."
"SHUT UP! And I'm not Jewish! People say Jews are pigs and are stupid liars and that they don't belong anywhere, so I'm not going to be Jewish anymore!"
"Now Jennifer! How dare you say such a thing? Come here, I want to tell you a story that will change your mind right quick."
Christian walked over and took her old sash off the mantel and brought it into the living room. She sat down in her favorite chair, ready to tell her long story, one in witch she has never told.
"Yeah grandma, what is that? I asked already but Jennifer got so mean!"
"Shut up!"
"Now now girls, calm down. This is a long story, so try and get comfortable." After they sat down Christian remembered her past as she told her story, one in which should never have been true, should never be relived, but because this story was as true as her love for her family, it's better that the younger generations could know of this piece of history and learn from it. As she sat back in her chair and closed her eyes, trying to find the start of her story, she found herself becoming a young girl again, back in a time when she could barely understand the events around her.
"I was 9 years old, same as you Sophie, mother ran a beautiful flower shop that my brother Charlie helped take care of, and father was always out looking for work to help support the family, I in the mean time took care of the baby. We were all very happy with our lives, but at the time the world was at war with itself again and so we all had to worry about our safety. But through the war there was one man, I'll never forget, Hitler was his name,"
"You mean Adolph Hitler? The guy that took over Germany? That Hitler?"
"Yes the same Hitler. Any how, he had taken over Germany, just as you said Jennifer. Some people say he was the best thing to happen to Germany after WW1, but there are others that know better, they can tell you that Hitler was nothing short of a monster, which is the truth.
"Any how, he thought that Germany should over throw the Berlin government, and nullify the treaty of Versailles, and people just ate that up. Before you could ask what was happening, he had already gained all the power he needed. His followers, Nazis as we called them, were in large numbers and were ready to do any thing they were told. Once he had free rain over Germany, my life, as well as the lives of my family and millions of others suddenly turned into a nightmare you could just not wake up from."
"What happened Grandma?"
"Well Sophie, it first started with the Nuremberg Laws,"
"That was when the Jews were segregated from the rest of Germany right? They were treated like they were less than human, the people of Germany didn't even except them as citizens."
"Not only that but the Germans wanted to try and keep their bloodlines pure and thought that if they did business with Jews they would lose their honor, so they also boycott us."
"What's that mean?"
"It means that Jews couldn't enter or do dealings with any non-Jewish businesses and if you were not Jewish, then you couldn't do dealings with Jews. Jewish children couldn't even go to public schools. Now stop asking questions."
"But Grandma, why did they do that?"
"Well sweetie, Hitler at the time thought that Germany was being tainted because there were too many different races in the same country. He thought everyone should be apart of the old Aryan race, the people that were supposed to be pure German and have blond hair and blue eyes.
"Soon what was called the Kristallnacht, where that night the Nazis would come and if you were a Jew, they would tear through your house and kill any Jew in sight. It was terrible… possessions taken… family killed… property destroyed. I remember coming home one night… and all that was left of the flower shop that mother ran was a pile of ashes. My father ran the shop that night. Looking back I used to think that he got away easy, thinking of all the things I had to experience, but then I realize that no victim had it easy. I remember mother breaking down, crying like heaven had lost all light, which is what it seemed to be when father was gone. A week or so later, Jews were required to wear these,"
Christian held up her small blue sash with the Star of David imprinted on it for her grandkids to see. "They were a symbol to the Jews, of the brutal cruelty that we were forced to endure, to the Nazi, it was nothing more than a marking, indicating that we were beings no better than cattle."
"Things got better after that right? Grandma they can't do those kinds of things to us. Why were they so mean to you? It's not fair; you didn't do any thing wrong!"
"I know Sophie, but that's just how it was at the time. People were suffering and needed someone to blame, so they blamed the Jews. Also there was a lot of propaganda about Jews." "What's propa-propaganda?"
"That's when people spread all kinds of really bad rumors about someone or something so that people will hate that person or thing. Understand?"
"I think so."
"Anyway no, I'm sad to say that it didn't get any better, but only got worse. Soon every Jew in Germany was forced from their homes to go live in horrible run down little buildings called ghettos. By this time, mother no longer spoke unless it was necessary of her to and the baby was slowly starving to death. My brother was trying to act as the head of the family, the way father did, to the best of his ability but could not hide his sadness, and I could do nothing but watch, as my family was slowly dieing around me and know that I could do nothing to help.
"Once we got there, we didn't know what to do. There were rats running in all directions when we opened the door. The kitchen had no food; there was only one bedroom that was too small for even me and the baby. There was no indoor pluming, electricity, light or hope to be found in the building we were now forced to live in. That night my mother slept in the bedroom with the baby, I slept in the living room, and my brother slept in the kitchen. When we awoke that morning, I left to try and get food for the baby, in the mean time mother and brother tried their best to try and clean up the house. All I could find too eat was a nearly spoiled banana, I thought that we could at least smash it for the baby to eat. But when I got back, it was to the sound of my mother crying as hard as she did when father died, and my brother was choking back a sob. When I look at what was wrong, I was horrified… the baby had died."
Christian looked down at her grandchildren to find Sophie crying and Jennifer trying to hold her tears back the way her brother did on that day so many years ago.
"I'm sorry; I shouldn't have tried to tell you this story at such a young age. I'll tell you what, we can stop and I can make you two some cookies, I'll just wait to tell you the rest of the story when you are older, ok?" At that the girls wiped their eyes and caught their breath.
"No keep going grandma, you said you were telling us this story for a reason, I want to hear what happened."
"Jennifer's right, I want to hear the rest of the story."
Christian let out a deep sigh and continued her story. "After the baby died, we were very quiet and to ourselves. Mother did nothing more than continuously cry every day, and my brother went out looking for work even though we all knew that it wouldn't help.
"One day I went out to try and pick up few things if I could, but I had to try and make it past the Nazi. You see the ghettos were fenced off from the rest of the world, and there were Nazis every few feet within the fence. That day I accidentally ran into one of the Nazi officers. I guess I don't need to tell you that he was not very happy about that!"
The girls gave a small chuckle each, making Christian smile and continue. "Well he proceeded with the yelling and name calling, after that he slapped me with the end of his riffle and he and the rest of the officers in the area kicked and beat me while I lay on the ground hardly able to move. They had been using deportation, shipping Jews to far off countries such as Africa and Madagascar, and preceded with threatening to do the same to me if I didn't kiss his feet and 'squeal like the swine I was' he said.
"My brother was passing by when he noticed me and begged the Nazi to let me go. The officer beat him as he had beaten me and said that if he could manage to slap some sense into me right there he would let us go."
"He didn't really slap you did he?"
"There was no choice Jennifer, he tried to find another way out of it, but I ended up taking his hand and forcing him to slap me as hard as I could get him too. After that the officers just laughed and walked away. My brother couldn't face me after that."
"Things still proceeded to get worse. We learned that Hitler was now running a program where he was drafting young children, even young girls, into his ranks. And to top it off, the Nazis now moved to a plan they called Final Solution, where we were all killed by the hundreds instead of being sent elsewhere. We were all taken from the ghettos only to be sent to concentration camps. But though they were called camps, they were really nothing more than small patches of hell placed on earth to torture people Hitler thought not fit to live among his humans. He had not only Jews, but homosexuals, some of the Germans he thought weren't fit to live in his new Germany, and even gypsies, people that did nothing more than drift from place to place, pacing through and not asking anything of anyone. But sure enough they were to die in the wasted and horrific way did.
"When we got there, the officer in charge of assigning people to their tents wanted to separate us from my brother. The moment we were given our tents, my mother was in a frenzy, she begged and pleaded for my brother to camp with us. The Nazi officer would not listen, but beat her for not keeping quiet when she was told. My brother tried to get her to calm down, but to no avail; she wouldn't give it up. The officer shot her repeatedly until nearly all of her blood was spilt on the ground at our feet. It was all I could do to try and hold my brother back from trying to kill the officer for the crime he committed.
"After that we went to our tents, only to see each other when we got the chance to walk in the yard at the same time or when the whole camp was called for a line up. The camp was like I said, nothing more than a prison, a graveyard, a hell. Ours was only one of hundreds of camps all across the country. You would hear stories of other camps where you were a test subject for medical studies, or you were worked to death, I had even heard of a camp where women of all ages were raped to death, so the Nazis could raise their next generation of soldiers from birth."
"Those were just rumors after all right? They didn't really torture innocent people like that did they?"
"Yes they did Jennifer, every one of those rumors were true. It was a complete genocide."
"A what?"
"A genocide, that's where people are killed on such a massive scale that countries or even populations can become extinct."
"But…but that's insane, they couldn't possibly…"
"Yeah grandma, that's impossible, how could you kill that many people? That's just too mean!"
"Well what kind of camp were you in, did they make you work all day, did they run all kinds of crazy tests? What happened?"
"Stop asking questions Jennifer, let Grandma tell the story. So what happened Grandma?"
"Well I was placed at one of the work camps. The conditions there worse than you could even imagine, we were worked till our back broke, we couldn't lift our arms, some of us couldn't even speak our bodies were so existed. There was absolutely no food for us. The Nazi watch and laughed as they filled their stomachs while people died every day from starvation. One day I watch as they took my brother's body and dumped it into one of the death piles. His body was so skinny that I didn't even know it was him at the time; it wasn't until a few days later when I heard that he was already dead that I realized. After that, all I could think to do was pry for death.
"Finally we were liberated. The Nazis retreated and the remaining survivors, including myself were released from the camps. Over 6 million Jews alone were killed in those 3 years of the holocaust. In almost an instant my life, and the lives of my family and those 6 million other Jewish people was changed forever.
"So don't you dare tell me, young lady that you want to give up your religion, give up who you are, because you think some boy might brake up with you, or because others are ignorant enough to think that you are no better than they are! Saying such a thing, especially to someone like me, is like a slap in the face. Now you remember this story, and you be proud that you are a member of a great religion that goes through such a gruesome fate and still manages to come out of it, and still stand tall! You hold on to that story, and tell it your children and grandchildren, and have them tell their children. Do you understand me young lady?"
"Yeah grandma… I understand… I'm sorry I said I didn't want to be Jewish because of other people's opinion. And I'll be sure to tell my kids, grandkids, even my great-grandkids about your story, so that they can remember it too."
"Me too I'll tell all my kids about my awesome Grandma!"
"Hmm… good…"
Shortly after that Sophie and Jennifer's mother came and took the girls home.
That night Christian died in her sleep at approximately 2:03am that night from a great deal of mental stress which she was never able to release, that is, until that day, when she was able to tell her story and her legacy unto her two grandchildren who kept their promises and told their children of Christian's tale, which in turn was carried down through the decades. Christian now rests in the cemetery of David where she lies with the family she had lost through the horrific events of the holocaust; and is still visited to this day.