Smoke In The Sky
"Darcy, would you please tell the class where we're going today?" Ms. Stark asked me. I looked up from the piece of paper I had been writing on. Marie passed me a note and I was trying to reply. Ms. Stark probably noticed me not paying attention.
"Um, could you repeat the question please?" I said, trying to be funny. A couple girls in the class laughed.
"Darcy," Ms. Stark said, sighing, "could you please tell the class where we are going today?"
"Oh, uh, sure Ms. Stark. We're going straight to the cafeteria. Is anyone besides me hungry?" This time the entire class laughed.
"Darcy, be serious." I could tell she was starting to get flustered. So, the big and bad History teacher couldn't handle a young 14-year-old girl and her friends?
I sighed and said, "We are going to the Holocaust Memorial Museum."
"Thank you. Now, I told you all about the machines they have there that register a card for someone in the war. Each of you are going to be given a card when you walk in. You will place the card into the machine and it will give you information about that specific person and if they made it through the war or not." She reached with her arm for her desk and grabbed a pack of index cards. Passing them out to the class she said, "These index cards are for you to write the name of your person, any major information you found out about them, and if they made it through or not."
"Ms. Stark, your busses have arrived." The voice came over the loud speaker in our room.
"Thank you," Ms. Stark said.
"Uh huh."
"Alright class, let's line up at the door single file." Everyone got up, including me, to line up. "Darcy, can I talk to you for a moment?"
"Sure Ms. Stark," I said, walking up to her at the front of the class.
"Darcy, you need to start paying attention in class. I catch you writing a note at least twice every day in the 45 minutes of a class we have. Your grades have been slipping…"
"What do you mean slipping?"
"I mean, you came into this class with a 97.76 percent and you now have a 77.58 percent. That's a C, Darcy."
"Oh geez."
"This assignment should help bring your grade up to a B, but only if you get at least a 90 percent on it. So you have to really pay attention and try your hardest today."
"Okay, Ms. Stark. I will, I promise."
"Alright class," Ms. Stark turned away from me and to the class. "You can start going out toward the main entrance of the school. That's where our busses are."
The class started walking out of the room and got onto the busses. The drive to Washington, DC was a long one from Maryland. When we got there everyone practically ran out of the bus to stretch our legs. Including Ms. Stark!
"Alright class, it's just through this entrance," Ms. Stark said, walking into the huge museum and waving with her hand for us to follow her.
"Hey Darcy," Hank and Pete said, walking up to me.
"Hey Pete," I said. "Hey Hank."
"Alright so, what crazy prank are you planning this time?" Hank asked with a wide grin on his face.
I sighed and said, "Nothing."
"What?" Pete said, almost yelling. "But you always pull a prank on field trips."
"I know, but this time it's different. My grades are slipping and I really need this assignment to bring them up before the end of the year."
Hank sighed and said, "Okay. But make sure you do something wild when we're leaving, even if it's a wild but small thing."
"Okay, I guess I can handle that."
"Darcy!" I looked behind me and there was Smitty, holding a buttercup for me in his hand.
"Hey Smitty," I said, taking the little flower.
"What did they want?" he asked, looking after Hank and Pete as they walked away.
"They just wanted to see what kind of crazy prank I'm going to pull this time. That's all. So what are you up to?"
"Going into the museum, just like you."
I looked around and noticed that the museum was really big inside. Even bigger than it looked on the outside.
We found Ms. Stark and the others in a room that had little white machines in it that looked like those look-through things you'd find on a bridge that you could look out into the water with. The only difference was these had a small screen to look at instead of moving waves on the beach.
"There you are Darcy," Ms. Stark said. "Here." She gave Smitty and I our cards and we walked over to one of the machines.
I found out more that day than I did in a life time.
Over 6 million Jewish people were tortured and killed in the war, almost all of them in concentration camps. Adolf Hitler, the German dictator during this time period, made Jews the targeted people because he thought all of them were un pure. Only the people who had blonde hair and blue eyes were pure in his opinion.
Hitler didn't just kill Jewish people though. He also killed Gypsies and other races. Well, not him personally, but his army did. The Nazis were originally called the National Socialist German Workers' Party. In the war, Hitler played on anger about the Versailles Treaty, a treaty which happened after World War 1 that gave Germany the short end of the stick. In Hitler's Nazi Germany, the government controlled the press, schools, and religion.
World War 2 lasted for exactly 6 years and 1 day. In that time period, historians estimate that between 30 million and 60 million people were killed…