identity | reus + lewandowski

2020 UPDATE: i wrote this in 2016. As I look back on this story, I'm realizing that I'm not a huge fan of it. I've matured a lot since the days i wrote this, and in the heat of my obsession with these footballers meshed together with my interest with this period in history, I tried to combine them into one story, however in retrospect I see that all this really is a romanticization of a tragic historical event. i am now re-editing this story in an attempt to make it more realistic, but may just end up taking it down. Regardless I want his here for the record and as a disclaimer.

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1933

When I came to the realization that I was Jewish, I was forced to do so the hard way. It was 1933. I was eleven.

There was a girl, my best friend and neighbor—Marielle—who had brown hair and brown eyes. And in modesty, she was fairly average looking, compared to me. I was a beautiful little girl, with blonde hair and bright blue eyes. I suppose that, from a very young age, I began to understand that this made me different. Different from my mother and brother; with their thick brown hair and their beautiful dark eyes. My father, too, but he'd been killed in a trainwreck before I could even say his name.

It was no big deal, I'd thought (about my looks, not my father's death—that was a huge deal). I mean, it's not like it will turn into some kind of life or death situation. I was wrong. In March of 1933, Hitler came into power.

Suddenly, Marielle would ignore and dodge me at all costs. She would never smile back, never wave, never even spare me a glance. My best friend treated me like a complete stranger.

You must understand how big of a toll it took on my eleven year old heart. It drove me mad; absolutely wild. If I'd never known pain before, then I did after the day I talked to her for the last time, possibly forever.

"Warum hassen sie mich?" I'd asked, sadly. Why do you hate me?

I remembered that day so clearly—the pouring rain, the bitter cold, the harsh air—and still, even harsher were Marielle's words as she turned to glare at me, and then spat. "You're a Jew, Margaret." 

And still, I was dumbfounded. Before I could ask why, or what—what it even meant to be a Jew, because lord knew I wasn't practicing—she turned on her heels and ran away, leaving me yet again in the harsh weather with a shattered heart. I would learn, eventually, that I would have to get used to it. It wasn't the first time, and certainly not the worst, in which I would get persecuted for my religion.

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1936

At fourteen, every single Jewish household in my neighborhood was raided and the individuals were forced into the local ghettos in the dark of the night. There were two officers, one for each sorting lane, and they were counting by fours in order to group the cluster of people into the left side or into the right. These lines would determine where we would stay at the ghetto, until eventually, we would be sent to the camps.

There was an officer that my mother had been close with, maybe even lovers, and he'd muttered under his breath to her that the officer on the left was much kinder than that on the right.

She looked up and counted ahead, trying to see if we would be sent to the left or the right—all the while clutching onto my brother and I's hands, so that she couldn't lose us in the craze of hundreds of other panicked and afraid Jews—and out of the blue, to herself, she whispered. "Oh," she spoke, softly. "It cannot be." She let out a small sigh of despair before speaking, more to herself than anyone else. "We're going to the right."

Slowly, she clutched onto our hands and began to move back as the officers barked for everyone to do the opposite, shoving us all forward. The moment one caught her, he stopped her and stared at her up and down before unhesitatingly beating her—kicking her, punching her—all in the stomach. My mother would double over in pain, but she wouldn't scream. She refused to let go of our hands.

My brother was in shock. He was young, far too young to understand. I was older, wiser, and seeing my mother undergo this torture was unbearable—so I began to scream and shout, stomp my feet, anything I could do to try and get him to stop—and when he wouldn't, another officer came for me, too.

I received a few excruciating kicks in the stomach and a mouthful of my own blood before the second officer stopped beating me and ripped my headscarf off, figuring I may have been hiding something. When he saw my blonde hair and blue eyes along my thin, pointed nose; he paused. He kicked me again, just for good measure. I let out a grunt. He then told the other officer, who had moved to damaging my mother's fragile head, to stop.

"Her daughter is quite the sight to see." He'd spoken, with a sinister laugh. "Who knows? Maybe this old drag can make another if we save her for later." 

The two sauntered off laughing, proud of the way they'd publicly shamed and physically shattered all three of us. My brother was sobbing, tiredly. My mother stood up as tall as she could, her face red with blood and embarrassment, and she then began the counting. Another "Oh," came from her mouth. "It is a miracle," she whispered. "We are now on the left."

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1937

The officer was named Marco Reus and he was not kind. He was nowhere close to kind, but he was not unnecessary, for lack of better word. He sought no entertainment in murdering or chastising us Jews. He ran our division of the ghetto, as the officer had stated he would.

The ghetto in itself was torturous. Starvation, death, anguish; it was nothing more than a legitimate hell on earth. I ate a meal, once every other day or so, if I was lucky. A meal was considered a bowl of watery and tasteless soup, one of which was comparable to the size of our old cat's bowl of meal. Only this time, I shared the bowl with two others.

A circumstance like my own was considered lucky in the ghetto. Walking down the street in the morning, abandoned and orphaned children would beg for anything: a piece of bread, a crumb, maybe even the chance to smell something edible.  Walking back down that street at noon, the child would be dead, covered by a newspaper. There were no burials. There were no clean ups. These bodies, skeletons, would remain in the street, left to be stepped over and avoided like the plague. 

I knew, everyone knew, that it was only a matter of time until we became one ourselves. And if we couldn't become one, then we would be sent away to a camp, where we would also face our deaths. There was no way out for anyone; or so I'd thought.

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author's note:

of course writing stories about real tragic historical occurrences are always hard. i can tell you right now that i may get my facts wrong, or something of the like; if so, I just want to personally apologize right now because i don't want anyone to think i don't care or didn't care to do any research on this.

of course, this story is purely fictitious. it's also unrealistic, and if anything like this actually happened during the holocaust, i would be shocked. any resemblance this has to something else is pure coincidence!

constructive criticism always welcome.

all the love,

jay