In my relatively short life, I’ve come across many stories about the Holocaust. I heard some of them from people and others I read in books. The hardest story for me to hear is the story of my grandfather, who died a year ago. This is the first time I’m writing about him since then.
My grandfather was born in 1933 in Shtefanesht, Romania, to a mother with 4 children. His mother had to raise her kids alone, because the Nazis had sent her husband to a labor camp, where he died from tuberculosis he got because of the difficult working conditions. I remember that when he told me this story he cried, and as I’m telling it now I’m crying too.
When he was 8 years old, he saw the Nazis shooting people next to the river. The people fell into it, dead. Now, as a 15 year-old, I ask myself why an 8 year-old child should see such terrible things.
I don’t think there is a one sane person who could really answer me.
After these horrors that he saw, the Nazis sent him to a labor camp. The only good thing out of the hard work was that this was the place where my grandfather met my grandmother, his future wife.
After hearing a story of someone who was close to me, I realize people should remember and know what happened during the Holocaust. When I hear about people who deny it, it doesn’t look real. There were 6,000,000 Jews that had been killed by the Nazis, and hundreds of thousands were wounded and injured. There are many evidences and proofs for the Holocaust, so I think it’s very sad that there are still people who deny it.
The lesson I took from this is to remember the Holocaust, tell everyone about it – and to make sure it would never happen again.
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