Amit & Adam

Chapter 1 - The Clown

I stood before my class of peers; they were all once my friends, now they think differently of me.
"Look at her dark skin and how big her nose is. These are the features of a Jew." My teacher, Mr Shimmler pointed out.

I wasn’t ashamed of who I was or what I was. It was the way I was forced to wear some kind of 'dunce' hat and treated like a clown. Do I look like a have a red nose and big wide feet?

No I didn’t. But they were pretty much ingraining the word to my face, but I guess they've already done that by making my family and many other Jews in Nazi-occupied countries in Europe, wear the Star of David.

My father tells me, my younger brother and I to wear the star proudly, but it’s very hard to when most of my friends are no longer allowed to speak to me because they think I'm a rodent and that I might steal something of theirs. 

I never thought this would have happened to us, we knew that the Nazi political party didn’t like the Jewish community so much, but now that Hitler is in power things have become a lot worse.

They keep adding more and more chains to us, they getting so tight, that next were afraid we may not be allowed to breathe!! We can’t go certain places, can’t own businesses, my father's shop was ruined on the Night of Broken Glass, when all the SA storm troopers destroyed all Jewish shops, buildings, and synagogues.

Just because a French Jewish man shot a German in France! France! Not Germany, not Austria! FRANCE!! But guess who gets the blame! Jews!! It ended up being one idiot, who ends up being Jewish, it’s our fault! So it’s like saying, there is a field of rabbits, one of them eats the fox's food. Just because it was a rabbit that ate his food and there is a field of them, he's going to eat them all anywhere because they're rabbits! It's pathetic!! 

I came home crying that day; this is the first time this has ever happened to me. How could they all believe what the Nazis say? They don’t know me, my family, how we feel! How could everyone just listen to them? How could my own friends whom I've known all my life just turn against me because a man with a moustache tells them so?

Everyone had to listen though, brain washed and if they didn’t. They disappear. Our next door neighbour, he worked in the Reichstag. He didn’t agree with Hitler's conclusions, he phoned my father up, who were good friends, saying he didn’t believe the Nazis, he knew Jews weren’t any different Germans. Also that Hitler's ideas were a load of rubbish and lies. The next day the Gestapo knocked at his door and took him away.

"I want to move schools." I told my father.

He shook his head, "No Amit, that’s what they want they're trying to drive us away!"

"Why don’t we then? No one would care, everyone hates us." Tomas said angrily as he arrived back from school.

He was only nine years old, all his friends went to Hitler Youth last week and have been teasing him ever since.

"It's that silly man on the radio, saying all those horrible things about us. About all Jews!" Tomas yelled.

We watch Tomas march upstairs to his room, I sighed it’s been a horrible atmosphere lately.

It was only three of us, since mother died of an incurable disease when I was only six. Father has been raising us since, but I have to look after Tomas now and then when he has to go to the factory to work. 

I sighed as I sat down taking my shoes off, "I agree with Tomas, everyone hates me now as well."

Father sat beside me, "That’s not true. Not everyone must hate you; there must be other Jews who are feeling the same."

"There’s Joshua but he doesn’t really speak to me...” I grunted, "I don’t think he likes me very much either."

"Make friends with this boy, so if you did fancy him you wouldn’t get shot for it!" He chuckled dryly.

I didn’t break into a smile, I frowned, “Father, that’s not funny and you know it."

He smiled sadly, “I know... I'm sorry."