Miss Osenton’s Year 9 English class did some creative writing during Holocaust Memorial Week and we were so impressed that we wanted to share some of their work with you.
Ella D
The soft footfalls of an emaciated shadow echoed forlornly in the silent air. No one bothered to look as the child spent his 6th birthday in a mournful procession up to the towering pillars of smoke on the horizon. Nameless and faceless, he fixed his wide eyed gaze upon the sky and uttered a silent plea to a god he hardly knew as the sky darkened from his favourite shade of fiery orange into an endless sea of black. Around him, women and children huddled together in wordless prayer, skeletal and pale against the night like angels trapped in hell. The boy’s trembling legs barely carried him ten more steps before they gave in and sent him falling to the ground with nothing but a dull thud. Bolts of pain shot through his weak body as no one stooped down to help. No one even noticed. No one saw as the boy drew his last shuddering breaths before giving in to the darkness and finally escaping the pain.
Samuel E
Acrid smoke that burned my face rose from the train as it pulled into the station. Folk dressed in rags were herded on board, sweat and urine causing my nose to wrinkle. Some were cold and alone, rain dripping off their shoulders, others were red eyed parents holding their children close. All were being persecuted, because of who they were, who they could not be. I had been taught to despise them, their feeble, grey bodies, weak and pathetic, skin covered in burns and scars, a checkerboard of wounds. But how can you hate a man, no matter how low he has been forced to fall, because of who he is. The accused glared daggers at me, their gaze piercing my heart. The abhorred me, wished death upon me and they had every right to. I had been trained to close myself to suffering, but only now; so close that I can taste the rust of the prison train do I see the evil that men can do. As the last prisoners filed onto the train, packed tightly like sardines ready to be cooked, the whistle blows, signalling the descent into hell these people must take. And unlike Dante before them, I fear this will not end in paradise.
Kitty P
I stepped off the train, my sister behind me. It was wet and cold. The stones beneath me scratched against my shoes like the stray cats in the streets back home. All I could hear was shouting while the duplicates of soldiers ushering us left, right and centre. I felt the cold hand of my sister on my shoulder, reminding me of back home from when we would sit by the fire and tell stories, those memories now dissolving. I grabbed her hand and squeezed it tight as we walked together to the women and kids’ line. BANG. I felt the thud of the old man in the corner, his lifeless body fell. What was going on?
Charley E
I could smell the heavenly waves wafting towards me reminding me of the way things used to be; delicious, happy family meals, me and my friends playing in the park, a pack of hyenas cackling away at a joke that we would never hear again. And at the same time that smell reminded me of the beautiful sky bright as the sun on the pale water that we played in and the sweet relief of cold wet lemony liquid sliding down my throat. So many happy memories, so many great times, make me feel guilty about the fire where those smells are coming from. People just like me burning and all I can think of is how happy I used to be.
Hannah B-H
I watched, I watched as the wave of people flooded onto the platform. Women clutching their babies to their chests, men holding their families, trying to shield them from the flood. I saw… soldiers, soldiers adorned with guns, bats, dark green caps, shoving and pushing, trying to throw every person in sight into a train. I felt the cold, the chill, an intangible fear, a panic… a hope. I felt my shoulders shudder as I ran, ran into my ticket booth. Snap! I pulled the blinds. Click! I twisted the lock on my door. I stood in darkness the clatter and shrieks muffled, but still echoing in my head, my empty, silent, horror-stricken, frightened head. I climbed down onto my fragile knees, my hands a ghostly white. People’s wide, brown, blue, grey, green, hazel, black… eyes flicked through my head, a film. Those images, so seemingly innocent. So what? Eh. So everything. I heard the train chug, toot and pull off. I could hear the people, the ones forced to be marked with stars, the ones who prayed, screaming, whimpering… crying. I could hear them fading. I knew, I just knew they would never see their homes again, their families would be torn apart, their lives would vanish. And no one would know they were here. Except me… And that’s when I really knew, I would never see my home again, my wife, my daughter, my grandchildren… because they would kill me too… And in the silence, they did.
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