We Burned Our Stars

C.C.O image

I wrote this ten years ago, not knowing that this project would have several name changes, Title changes, and complete Rewrites in that time becoming what today is turning into Broken Beginnings…

We were normal girls, watching picture shows, wanting to wear our hair like the American movie star Shirley Temple, but in our country we were suddenly criminals.

Our crime, we were born to Jewish Parents, we practiced the Jewish way of life, and even if we didn’t we were punished for having Jewish Names. Hitler was out to destroy everyone who was just not like him.

Before we wore the yellow stars, before we were forced out of our homes and into Ghetto’s, and then many of us either into hiding or into the concentration camps where everyone feared the gas showers, we heard whispers of Hitler and his idea of an Aryan race, a supreme race.

We wondered even the youngest of us, how one person could carry so much hate, so much evil. It wasn’t something we could wrap our minds around.

We wore yellow stars, stars of David that said Jude on them, the star of David was once something we had been proud of now it was a symbol of shame.

Jewish schools were closed, and then those of us who were Jewish in other schools were forced to stop going, and we were not allowed to have our own bicycles, radios, jewelry, we were not even allowed to use public baths, or the trolleys, we could not be out after dark, we could not be seen with a non Jewish man.

Innocent children were slaughtered for disobeying the rules, men and women were beaten, while the Gestapo laughed as blood splattered on the ground.

Something we were once proud of Being Jewish, God’s chosen people now was a symbol of shame and a crime. We could not have our own lives, we could not buy food.

Many died of starvation, others prayed for the day when they died, nothing could be worse than being captured by the Gestapo and sent to the concentration camps no one came out of.

It was a time when children were not allowed to be children, and Mothers watched helplessly as there children were taken away from them, by murder, by disease, by starvation. If you were a Jew, or if you helped a Jew, you would likely…