Холодный свет дня (Cold Light of Day)
By the thousands they will come,and by the thousands they will die, families, old people, anyone labelled a "Jew".
That was the defining factor to be captured; you had to be a "Jew". What a racist world we live in!
The trucks would rumble, packed with people like sardines in a tin, barely any air to breathe.
The stench from inside the trucks, not only from sweat, but vomit (from those who could not handle the ride), faeces and urine.
We were on one of those trucks, bound for one of Hitler's concentration camps in Siberia. My brother Zivon who is 12, my older sister Calina who is 18 and me, Irina, is 15. Our parents were shot in front of us just 6 hours ago. I am still reeling from the shock and that memory will be burned into my mind, the blood, the screaming and worst of all, the silence. The deafening, ear shattering silence. That was definitely the worst.
We arrived, another 2 or so hours later and were forced out of the truck, the guards not caring whether we got stepped on, squashed by others in their haste to get out or hurled from the truck by the frightened people who were trying to get away as best they could.
We were herded into a large room at gunpoint with only hard beds, one thin blanket per bed and only one basin for the lot of us to wash in. I felt Carina and Zivon next to me, their frightened faces mirroring my own. we quickly found a bed and sat, huddled together, three lost children of a war we could not win.
Questions kept racing around my brain. Why are we here? Because we are Jews? Was it because we were children from Jewish parents? Would we even survive? Was it the fact that the sun never shone? That we were constantly blanketed in the suffocating ice prison known as Siberia to most people but to us, it was Hell.
Was it the stonefaced ogres that passed off as guards, their faces twisted into cruel smirks and their racaous laughter echoed around the barren wasteland of our prison. We were all forced to work in the bone-chilling cold with little more than what we came in on the truck with.
In the cold light of day, we saw death, we heard fear and we smelt pain. In the cold light of day, things are shown for what they really are, we see reality as it is, life for what we live for and somewhere in the midst of the confusion, is hope. But that will never be found.
Carina was taken one day, by the guards, we heard her anguished screams for help as they forced themselves upon her, raping her one after the other, all the time she screamed in pain, fear and despair. We could do nothing but sit and listen with everyone else.
We were put to work in the mines, slaving away with barely a sip of water for the 20 or so hours we all worked.
One day Zivon and I were approached by a young officer who told us his name was Ivan. He was also Russian and was going to get Zivon, Carina and I out of the camp and sent to live with his parents.