The Diary of a Holocaust Victim
By Beth Seeley

I lay on my soft bed, my eyelids are lead.
I gaze out the window at the white circle of light that is the moon,
painted on a black sky.
Mama kisses me goodnight.
"I want to hold the moon," I tell her. "It is so pretty."
. . . . . .
Men have taken our family to the other side of a wall.
Everyone here is sad. I am sad.
People are hungry.
I am hungry, but there is still light inside me.
The moon stands alone, surrounded by darkness.
"Sometimes, I feel like the moon," I tell Mama.
. . . . . .
I am jammed inside a small boxcar with people stuffed in around me.
People cry. Some die.
I am very frightened. Will I die, too?
I cannot see the moon through the openings in the wall.
"I miss the moon," I whisper to Mama.
. . . . . .
We are in a concentration camp. Cruel men called "Nazis" are everywhere.
Papa and my brother have been sent away. I miss them.
I must work hard and I am always hungry.
The beautiful moon stands tall and brave in the sky.
Sometimes, I cannot see it because it is covered by smoke.
It seems farther away than ever before.
"We must try to be strong and brave like the moon," I say to Mama that
night.
. . . . . .
They have chosen Mama and I.
We are sick. We cannot work. We march in a line toward two big doors.
I know where we are going. I have heard people talk about it.
I try to be brave, but I am scared and tears spill down my cheeks.
People cry and scream.
When the doors shut behind us, I take Mama's hand and whisper,
"Perhaps now we can finally hold the moon."

The Artist Captive
By Brian Baltis

"Arbeit Macht Frei." Work makes you free.

The adolescent had only heard the phrase above the dread gates to mean that work would set one free of life, be it by the forced labor or brutal mass executions and vile experiments the Nazis had always threatened every single captive with.

He walked under the gates in the line of exhausted, sweating, grimy people. Arbeit Macht Frei was carved into the child's mind then and there, as he entered the extermination camp, the infamous death stronghold, Auschwitz.

He was shaved, branded, and purposely neglected like all the others. The clear indifference of the Nazis of the death camp already dawned on the innocent boy. He had been forced to don a worn, starchy blue and white-striped uniform, that of every captive of the camps.

Every night the boy reflected on his days but a month ago, when the town from whence he came was calm, peaceful, and safe. In nothing short of a flash of human lightning, the town was crumbling, literally and figuratively. In a day, he was jammed into an impossibly small, dark, moldy train car with hundreds of other people he knew around the town before tanks, Nazis, and other Swastika-bearers stormed it and set it to burning ruin.

But he managed to leave with his one last peace of mind: a few small pieces of yellowed paper, and a half-used pencil.

Every so often, in the middle of the night, when the boy was roused by extremely unsettling thoughts, he would think, and remember the paper and pencil which he always had smuggled into the camp by sliding it into the right shoulder of his prisoner's suit.

He did not draw ordinary images, no, not at all. They had deeper meaning, which sometimes even he did not manage to find, much in the way a man would find a cure for cancer and never know.

The boy's drawings, though rather messy due to the boy's incredible lack of light in his cluttered hardwood bunk in the chilly converted warehouse chamber, seemed so random. Yet, they all reflected in deep manners on his past, like his mind was unlocking old drawers of memory folders from long ago. The pictures were happy and carefree, perhaps because the child wanted to forget the gloom and terror of the death camp, or perhaps, just perhaps, even beyond the artist's perception, he wanted to remember the old times, long ago, when he and his healthy family were together in a humble town, not a care in the world of any troubles that could be brewing elsewhere.

He drew for long, long periods of time. Sometimes, in the early morning, while it was still dark, when the wake-up sirens blared, he would still be drawing. He was aware the lack of sleep could be very bad, especially here, the boy found it better to be high in spirit than high in energy. It was a dilemma, as such-if he relinquished his joy in art to gain energy for the following day, he would lose his will to live in spirit. If he relinquished his rest for energy, he would now be able to work to his fullest and as such would perhaps be executed some day soon for lagging behind. Either way, he would have to sacrifice something dear to him. He decided upon the resignation of his energy for the new day.

But that next day, as the alarm did sound to wake, the adolescent artist was still drawing. The guard that entered to rattle everybody awake witnessed the boy drawing. DRAWING! The boy was not even supposed to have such materials in the walls!

The guard seized the prisoner.

He wrested the paper and pencil from the terrified boy's hands, took the items into his own grasp. The boy's bruised wrist in the other, he dragged him aggressively to the commandant's quarters down the row of warehouses.

The boy's drawings were the only signs of him left.

There was, in fact, a single drawing which the boy had unknowingly let flutter down to the bunk below his own in the warehouse. When the army finally came to liberate the camp, an American soldier caught sight of it, crumpled and soggy. It was of a happy little family having lunch. As he saw it, a single tear escapes his eye.