Formative Writing piece

The dim yellowy lights of the compound barely had the power to pierce through the dark that engulfed the huge area of the concentration camp. Each cold wooden cabin had no illumination and no happiness just cold pain emanating from them; it seemed that the luminosities were reserved for guards and the warden. The sound of barking hounds and yelling men flooded into my frozen and stinging ears. With no sense of where I was going I had already been dragged from my cabin to the court yard in the centre of the huge compound before I actually knew what was happening.

It makes me feel strange right now after seeing so many people going in the same direction and never returning over the years. It makes me feel like I was cast out of society years ago when the Nazi's took over Berlin, but no one cares really.

The food stricken Jews lined the barb wire fences that loomed over them as they silently mourned another loss, a deathly gloom seeped into every corner of the compound. It was clinging to every thread and fibre of my stick like body, with agony wrenching at my body like iron chains I could feel nothing but the constant thump thump of my heart as it hammered away at my rib cage, This burning coming from my heart felt like something was about to tear through my flesh and scream until its little lungs ran out of air.

The fear that I should have been feeling seemed to be ebbing away slowly, as I approached the looming building that had towered over the miniscule cabin that I was forced to share with my brothers and sisters. The skin on my body felt as if it was no longer there. The freezing German winter tore at my body with aggravating intensity as it attempted to suck my own soul out of my body.

The sense of panic I felt only minutes ago, when I was dragged from my cabin had subsided when I had seen so many people coming to mourn my own death. Though it was as if I was already dead I still fought, I thrashed and kicked, I tore and clawed at the plump guards. My own efforts seemed futile. Now a sense of profound sorrow had swept through my body pulling the strings of my heart as warm tears slid down my hollow cheeks. Everything I had done in the four years I was here never seemed to have a profound effect on my captors as they just kept killing and killing and torturing. The Nazi's were convinced that I had something of importance to say. But now… I can't even remember what it was I knew that they wanted. I think it was about an escape; no it was about help, you see, my memories are hazy. I struggle to see the faces of my parents now.

If I can remember correctly I am sixteen and I could have sworn that a few weeks ago I had fallen in love; her oak brown hair made me remember a small hint of what my mother and father's hair looked like, but I was different. Most would have thought me to be albino. They were right though, my hair is as white as the snow I am being dragged across, my eyes seemed colourless to most, but some saw life in them. My eyebrows were the same as my hair and no different could be said about my skin. For that the Nazi's wanted something from me. They had always thought because I wasn't the traditional Jewish teenager I would know something that no one else did. Not telling the Nazi's though gave me some happiness.

The hate I felt for the Nazi's was like a raging torrent of water that would sweep aside everything in its path if it meant destroying the source of so much worldwide hurt. Revenge was all I could hold onto in this world of agony, I tried what I could when I could. That's the only reason why I have my hair. The soldiers that had attempted to shave my hair. They had died for trying to rid me of my hair. The guards found a trail of blood in the shaving shed where they had done most tortures, but they knew it wasn't my blood from the sight.

It's strange how these kinds of things end up in certain ways. The stinging of the frozen air began to pierce my skin harder as what felt like shards of glass collided with my bare skin. New tears started to well up in my eyes as the line of Jewish people faded from my peripherals.

The warden's office overlooked the lane between the courtyard and the warehouse where no Jewish prisoner gets to see light again after that.

Time had seemed to have stopped altogether as my head lolled forward and hung there as the clouds stopped moving and all that has and has not happened in my short life span flashed before me. A rainbow of memories lit its way across my conscience. My head dropped at that moment and I could hear my feet being dragged behind me as the guards did not care to stop for me to recover. They just kept trundling along the lane into my oncoming fate. The fate which I then knew I could not escape.

My heart began to pump blood twice as fast, I felt like I had more blood flowing through me than anything else, my breathing became laboured and I thought I saw red flash through my eyes, a hallucination no doubt.

After seconds of not knowing what was going on around me, I fell face first towards the snow. I finally had figured out what the objects that felt like they were stabbing through my skin was, it was rain, cold rain.

It was then that I felt warm blood dripping from my brow; I reached towards the source of the warm liquid only to find that it was not my own blood that was trickling down my forehead. It was actually the blood of one of the guards holding me. Then with a loud bang I felt the grip of the other guard let go.

I didn't care to look back at the source of the sound but a smile lit its way across my pale white face as I trounced myself from my visceral world of pain. Then I bolted, I ran and kept running with tears streaking down my cheeks. Instincts had taken over and I cared not for what was in front of me as I saw a gaping hole in the five meter tall fence. Blood now soaked the exit as I ran through.

I ran for what felt like miles and miles, I ran until my legs burnt, my lungs were empty and my feet ached from continuously pounding the ground again and again.

My smile was the last thing I remembered before a loud bang sounded through the air similar to the sound from inside the compound and the world went black with nothing but emptiness following.

Nicholas Brasier

Primo Levi, "If this is a Man"

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