by Pam Sharov In loving memory dedicated to my grandmother God rest her soul.
As I’m being interviewed for the movie “Schindler's List” I’m telling my story of, when I was 9 years old and feeding my family with a piece of thread. It all started when I got taken from my house by the Nazis. They barged in and my heart stopped as a soldier grabbed my arm. I was screaming for him to let go and bit the soldier's arm, but it was as if he felt no pain! He held me tighter than before. This is when I knew I had to be stronger and fight harder than I ever have in my life. I got thrown into the back of a truck, the door closed, it was darker than any night I've ever seen before and it seemed darker with each passing second. We were unloaded into what looked like an abandoned base with an ocean of dead rotting bodies. I looked around to see my family and I saw my father and mother, I ran to them, but before I had the chance to hug them, they separated us into females and males. My mother and I stayed together, but my father was taken from us. My mother was sobbing and screaming, her face flooded with tears. I stood there in shock. They made all of the women go into a building and strip down naked, they took our clothes and gave us rags to wear. They burned us with numbers mine was and still is 1856. Months passed and food was a far thought, I didn’t even remember the taste of bread or the smell of garlic. We were forced to starve and dig our own graves knowing we would need them. One day, when I was digging I saw a little hole in the fence. I wanted to escape, but there were multiple guards around me. I knew that if they saw me I would die, but I was already dying so I had nothing to lose. I timed it just right and ran through. I didn’t know where I was or where I was going but I kept running through the weakness and fatigue. Then, I saw a market, they sold vegetables, bread, and meat. I was in awe; I hadn’t seen that much food in months! Looking at it, I knew that I couldn’t get any of it as I had no money and I wasn’t going to steal. A man selling potatoes came up to me and asked if I had anything to sell so we could trade. I had nothing to offer him, not unless he wanted dirt. So I walked away and started to walk back because the only thing I did have was my family and I couldn’t leave them. On my way, I saw a little boy selling thread. I stopped and took a closer look; the thread wasn’t silk it look more coarse, it was something like the thread from the rags that I was wearing. I looked at myself and wondered, what if I could unstitch my clothes and sell my thread. I didn’t even care about the money, I just wanted food. I went behind a bush and unthreaded my clothes. It took me hours to get one small roll. When I finished, I took my thread and found the man that had the potatoes and asked him if he would give me some potatoes for my thread. I stood there, tired and hopeless, as he thought. When he took one final look at me and my thread, he handed me three small potatoes in exchange. He didn’t say bye, he just walked away and I walked back to the camp. When I got there, I was hiding behind a tree to make sure the guards wouldn’t see me, then when no one was looking, I ran in through the hole in the fence and went to my bed where my mother was. I showed her the potatoes. She stared at me, but I couldn’t tell her how I got them for fear of anyone hearing. We simply exchanged a look and waited until it was the time to go to sleep to eat them. It wasn’t much, but it was something. From then on, I would sneak out of the camp a few times a week with thread to go and get potatoes so I could feed my family. It was the hardest time of my life, but I had to fight for my family.
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