"After the Holocaust" by Shoshana Braverman

Creative Non-Fiction: "Surviving After the Holocaust" by Shoshana Braverman

1945. Your stomach aches for food. You’ve long lost the desire to see yourself, to see anyone. It all looks the same. Skeletons walking around a cemetery, digging their own graves. Your bones stick out through your skin, your scalp itches and burns. The tall German soldiers stand at attention in watchtowers located 50 feet apart in the electric fence. You hate them. You HATE them.

January. A loud siren breaks through the silence. Everyone looks up, startled. The few children left begin to cry. Everyone starts to scream and stumble around. The Nazi soldiers are nowhere to be seen.  All of a sudden, hoards of Soviet soldiers stream into the camp, much to your confusion.

“What’s going on? What’s happening?”

“Nazi Germany has collapsed. You’re free.”

You’re free. The words sound strange in your ears. Free? What does that mean? It doesn’t feel real. Everyone around you stands confused, unsure of what to do. The Soviet soldiers walk around, surveying the damage done to the land, the bodies, the minds. You grab someone’s hand for support. You don’t know who it is, but they hold on.

April. You sit on a bus. The soft cushion feels almost uncomfortable after all that time sitting on hard stone and splintering wood. You see the sign of your city and your stomach sinks. You know that your life will never again be as it was. Germany is not where you belong anymore.

You call up your aunt in London. Ask for advice. Should you stay in Germany? Should you come to London? Should you go to Palestine? So many choices and yet so few....and what to do with the rest of your family? Did they even survive?

September. Your train leaves in one hour. You sit on a bench self-consciously. You finger the hole in your jacket where a yellow star once sat. The faces around you all look the same. Like enemies. You board the train, grateful to finally leave Germany behind, yet devastated to leave your home.

Where to go?

This was the question on every survivor’s mind after the Holocaust ended in 1945. The few people left after devastation and horror had no home. They had no lives. They had no families. They had no future.

Imagine you lived during the time of the Holocaust. You had a family, a husband, three children. You lived through the concentration camps. What do you do after?

The parents who managed to elude death looked for their children. The children looked for their parents. Very few families were pieced back together, and the unlucky ones were left to find distant relatives who would take them in.

The horrors that the Jewish people faced inside the concentration camps are unimaginable. Yet many forget that the Jews also faced hardships when they were freed. Their battle was not over when the concentration camps were overrun.

The survivors of the Holocaust still managed to move on. They lived as wanderers when the war ended, but it did not stop them. They were not discouraged by their lack of a home, they were not discouraged by their lack of family. They remained hopeful and resilient. They came out in the end as victors, not only of the concentration camps, but of the struggle to begin a normal life after the end of the war. For this, they shall always be seen as heroes.