Aviva Oskow is a senior at St. Louis ParkHigh School. She has performed in many plays and musicals at the Minneapolis Jewish Community Center, musicals with USY, and theater at her high school. She loves photography, drawing, painting, and design and is currently working on her portfolio as part of the application process to college. She hopes to combine her creativity with an active role in social justice and awareness. After all, one must understand the world to be a good artist - and to be a good artist one must give back to the world.
PROSE - 2008
Grades 7 - 9
First Place - Asher Mintzer
Third Place - Josh Crandell
Grades 10 - 12
First Place - Aviva Oskow
Third Place - Yehudis Mizrachi
Prose, Grades 10 - 12: First Place
The Journey - Aviva Oskow
The wind whipped around my body as the droplets of rain pelted my face like the tears from millions of souls. Each step I took was a challenge. I forced myself to walk towards something I wasn’t sure I ever wanted to reach. I looked down the railroad track. It seemed to stretch endlessly. But there, in the distance, was a shape – a gated building looming ominously ahead. An entrance without an exit for so many. I thought to myself how fitting that just as I stepped off the coach bus outside of Auschwitz-Birkenau Concentration Camp, the rain started to fall and the wind started to blow with more violence, like in a movie. I felt there should have been a soundtrack in the background of the scene. I imagined the wind whirling the notes of a sad ballad into my ears. Although I knew it was just a tour, just a visit, and soon I would be back on the coach bus, hurtling away, I felt frightened, apprehensive, as I finally reached the end of the tracks and the entrance to the camp. It was all so surreal. I’d heard stories and speakers, read books, seen movies and photographs, visited museums, studied the Holocaust in school, and even acted in Holocaust-themed plays, but…this was different. You never know what it is like until you experience it for yourself, in person. And yet, I knew what I felt, the anxiety and fear of what I was about to experience, was nothing compared to those who entered this camp when it was still in use.
Some people were taking pictures; tokens to help them share the experiences with people back home. But I promised myself I wouldn’t use my camera. I knew the images would be seared into my memory long after my visit.
Walking through the camp, emotions swirled around in my head. Sometimes all I felt was sadness and depression, other moments, just blind and terrible hatred. And the whole time I felt the want and need to cry.
But I never did. Not when I saw the stable-like barracks, or the electric-barbed-wire fences, or the holding and torture cells, the showers, the gas chambers, the crematorium, the soot, the endless piles of human hair and shoes and suitcases, or the names. I couldn’t. I knew crying wouldn’t change anything. I knew crying would not justify how I and millions of others felt. Crying would not bring back anyone or save anyone from suffering. Crying would not reunite families or repair broken lives. Crying would not wash away the abyss of cruelty and insanity that I could not even comprehend. And crying would not make me feel better.
I went to the remains of the storage houses. All that was left were the brick outlines of the rectangular buildings. This was where all the belongings of the prisoners were kept. If I looked hard enough, I could still find forks, spoons, buttons, or broken pieces of dishes, caked with dirt, buried in the ground. It boggled my mind to know that each of these items used to belong to someone. It had a home. It had a family. And now that fork or spoon or broken dish was all that was left.
By this point I felt blind with overwhelming despair. But something caught my eye. There, poking through the dry, ashen earth was a small, defiant, white flower. It quivered slightly in the breeze. This, I did take a picture of. It was the only thing that had given me a sense of joy or hope that day. That little flower represented so much for me. It showed that life and beauty could come out of destruction and pain. That people can persevere. That maybe, once war was over, peace could triumph.
As I got back on the coach bus and sat down, I took out my iPod and pressed “play.” The first song that came on was the Beatles’ “Let It Be.” I looked out the window as the somber, but uplifting ballad poured into my ears.
And finally, I let a single tear drop.
I knew I would never be the same.