Social+Studies

Silent Witness My name is Sophie Weisz. I’m a survivor of the horrific slaughter that history remembers as the Holocaust. But two of my friends that I made in the ghetto didn’t make it. I don’t want their names forgotten so I’m hoping to immortalize them in this memoir. Marcus Fass of Poland, and Gideon Boissevain of the Netherland’s. We met in the ghetto and bonded quickly, staying up late into the night talking, we were afraid to sleep because of the nightmares we knew were waiting for us. We were in the ghetto for about two months before they loaded us onto the cattle train and moved us to the concentration camp Birkenau, where the nightmares we were so scared of would become a reality. They sorted us; we were all orphans. We didn’t have anyone but each other. The Nazis were yelling at us to form a line. We filed past the Nazis slowly. They sent me to the right, and Gideon and Marcus to the left. We looked at each other, panicked looks on our stricken faces. “Quick, do something!” I whispered to them. Marcus bent, picked up a rock, and threw it at the metal on the train. The Nazi guard jumped and hurried to turn and look for where the noise was coming from. I slipped into the left line, terror almost freezing my legs to the spot. The Nazi saw a movement, he whirled around, but saw nothing. Our line started moving and I kept my head low. I thought at the moment that the risk was for nothing because we were assigned different barracks. But I learned later that the people in the other line were gassed. At least Gideon and Marcus had each other, they had ended up in the same barrack. But I was on my own. A few weeks passed, and the horrors, and pure brutality that I saw during that time I will carry with me the rest of my days. One day when I was outside Marcus came up to me for the first time since we had been sorted. He told me that Gideon had been bribed. He was now part of the Kapo, the people who helped make our lives a living hell. I would hardly believe it. Marcus said “Come back here in an hour, I’m going to try to talk to him, maybe he can help us escape, and seeing you might help me snap him out of the brainwash crap the Nazis have over him.” “Of course I’ll come,” I said, “I’d do anything to escape this place together.” He nodded and walked briskly away. About 45 minutes later, I saw him talking to Gideon in an alley where I was collecting wood for the crematorium. They were speaking loudly. Marcus was gesturing like he was trying to get Gideon to talk softer, or to reason with him. I saw a flash of metal in a hand. It was pointed. There was a flash, and a loud pop. I screamed, Marcus crumpled. Gideon turned to me with a cold expression. His sunken bloodshot eyes settled on mine. “He said he was going to escape. My orders were to shoot… they were my orders… my orders…” He raised the gun up, I stood, frozen. It discharged for a second time. I looked up, he fell. Blood gushing out from a jagged hole in his temple. I fainted, the sounds of the shots ringing dully in the ears, the smell of my two best friend’s blood and gun smoke, slowly mixing together in the air, sharp and stinging in my nose. It went black… When I came to, I was in my barrack. A woman, who had treated me like a daughter from the very beginning, from my barrack was sitting by me. I was back in my block. She said she had seen me in the alley and carried me back. God knows what she thought of the situation, or what could’ve happened had the Nazis found me there. Time lost all meaning after that. Days, weeks, hours passed by. I felt hollow, a shell. Hatred for the Nazis was the only thing keeping me going. Then, the war was over. The Nazis just abandoned the camp. And we were free. I started to heal, inside and out. I wanted to make each day of living on this earth count. For Gideon, and Marcus. I’d never forget the horrors that I had been silent witness to, but the war was over. And I had survived.