That Girl
Alberto García
IIM°A
They
got us all Jewish people out of the bus. I was obligated to wait there under
the burning sun until some Nazi would decide to move, but it was an interesting
and different opportunity to know other people. After a while, I could not
avoid looking at a girl that was at the end of the disoriented crowd: a little
girl, I would say seven years old, blond haired and with a light blue dress
ruined by a yellow star in her chest.
She
seemed to be on her own; sadly looking at the ground. I decided to go and talk
to her. As I walked through the crowd, that felt like walking through a night
full of stars, I saw her turning every time sadder. Every second, as I
walked... I first saw her without any kind of smile, her skin was turning pale
white, a tear went out of her blood injected eyes falling towards the ground.
It
was such a horrible thing to see, but I continued my way towards her. As I was
next to her, I said kindly -"Hello there!" She didn't made any
movement, but opened her mouth for less than half a second to answer
-"Hi". I asked her afterwards if everything was all right, and I
received a bigger answer than I expected:
-"If
you really want to know", she said with a beautiful voice, but covered in
melancholy with sorrowful depression, and suffering. "I am alone in this
world now, my parents were murdered a while ago". She paused for a moment.
"I'm not that alone though, misery loves my company" -"Oh my
god!" I said "I'm so sorry to hear that" She looked at me
-"I won't worry for something like that, they were old already, my mother
was 79 and my father 82, but what really affects me was how they died".
I
was there, sure that I will have to wait for hours, and there were no signals
of something going on soon, so I decided to ask this girl her story.
-"My
father, who adopt me three years ago, was one of the most important people in
all Hungry. He... he was too worried about making all of our people in this
country to feel home, and was making plans for equality for everyone and
everything, but everything changed when the Nazi regime attacked."
I
interrupted her a second. -"I'm sorry, I didn't ask your name"
-"Arella" She said. -"Arella! What a beautiful name" I
answered. -"My name used to be Keffhira, but my stepfather decided it was
a horrible name, so I decided to call me Arella." I smiled. "-Well,
my father had a lot of work to do all the time, and few days ago, he was sent
to a labor camp, but he remain hidden, and when Nazis enter our home looking
for him, they took my mother. There was a gunshot, and right after that, he ran
out of his hideout, took a look outside, and he began to cry. The next day, he
started moving a group of people to protest against the Nazis; that group you
see over there!" And she pointed with her finger at a group of people
outside the place we were locked in, with their hands in the wall looking
downwards. We heard a countdown. -"5! 4! 3! 2! 1! Shoot!" and he hear
a lot of explosions and all the "group" falling to the ground.
-"OH JESUS CHRIST!" I said. -"My father ended like them in the
morning, and I was present. the last thing he said was "I will avenge my
town, I swear I wi..." they didn't let him finish, and his body fell to
the ground.
The
Nazis made us begin to move and march though the streets. I got separated from
Arella, couldn't say goodbye, but the
walking gave me time to think, and realize that for the Nazis, all Jews were
all the same, independent of their "society rank", we were just
"Jews" for them. Misery was the company of all Jews now, there was no
doubt about it.
That
made me think about a lot of things. All Jews were treated the same way even
though they were important for society or not. I felt quite identified with the
story of her father and the labor camp, even though mine wasn't that bad. I was
sad, I began to imagine all this people around me killed, crying, hopeless.
Even
though Nazi policemen didn't looked aggressive, and actually, looked as
disoriented as us, another group appeared, some Nazis with a black suit. I was
able to distinguish "GESTAPO" written on their uniforms. They began
to punch their way through Jewish people as if they were trash. -"All
these to Auschwitz" one of them said.
I
wonder that could be the labor camp my father was sent to, but I didn't know if
to be happy for that at all, considering what happened to Arella's parents. I
decided not to be happy nor sad, I'll just see how everything goes, but with
poor hope.
RATIONALE:
I
have chosen to write an extra piece of the third chapter of the book
Fatelessness, by "Imre Kertész". I did this because it is the best
way of showing the actions, following the line of the story and trying to use
the same format and structure. This way also, it can be Georg who tells to the
audience and reflects his feelings in much a deeper way than a letter or a news
report would.
Another
advantage is that the audience is the same of the book (Professional and scholarly
audience) and this is good because the same people can understand the story the
same way. In the case, for example, that it was a police report, the structure
and language used would be different, and that would cause that the reader
would need some investigation to understand some vocabulary and structures
present in the text.
I
tried to use the language as similar to the book as possible, so that is uses
that colloquial, but not offensive language. This is essentially hard because
the author uses different kinds of vocabulary for the different actions of the
character. ("The whole thing was beginning to bore me slightly by the time
he eventually tucked the fountain pen away after all" [page 7] - "Nor
did it escape my attention that he always strove to have a go at this separately,
[...] he first appeared to hesitate, first mistrustfully flashing his
spectacles around...[page 51]), is slightly more complex when referring to
descriptions, and I tried to apply that mainly in the description of Arella at
the beginning.
The
title makes an allusion to the main thought that Georg got finally, this was a Jewish
girl, just "that girl", nothing important for Nazis, as any other Jew.
"That Girl": 853 words
RATIONALE: 295 words
