literature

The Shoes

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Literature Text

“The Shoes”
Look down. Do you see that there, on your feet? What is there is what I am. I am a shoe, I have followed you all your life, though great triumph, and happy days but I was also there for your defeats and through times a misery. While you were growing, I was growing. No matter what you did, I was there with you, even through you never acknowledge me. Life for you, I have been with other people throughout history: through ancestors and through strangers. I was there through their achievements and their struggles. And for one such race, I was their last link to their old life, one that most would never know again.
There was a little Jewish girl, who cherished me with the heart of one still young and innocent who knew how precious I could be to a poor young girl like herself. She would put me on her tiny, cold feet to go play in the warm earth of her family’s farm. The warm earth would give to water to become cold, squishy mud during the summer rains that she loved to frequently frolic in. On those days, she would take me back inside and clean me up using her burlap rag and cool, clean water. She cared for me like a porcelain doll, more than most children would have for a ratty pair of shoes like me. To most, I was just a ratty piece of leather that had the audacity to call myself a decent pair of shoes, but to her, I was a prized treasure; the glass slipper to complete Cinderella.
On one of these perfect summer days, the scent of wildflowers and the buzz of bees were disturbed by the roar of an engine and the sour stench of gas fumes. A group of army vehicles gathered around their family home. They wore the attire of soldiers, from the clean cut jackets to the black, leather of my kind. Even they, my kin, did nothing to recognize me but to glare with cold indifference. My family was told they were to relocate, to a new town in a new district made specifically for her and other families like hers, to a Ghetto.
Time passed to quickly for my family, who dreaded the time they would need to leave their precious home. The day arrived for their departure. With heavy hearts and only the bare minimum packed, my little family set off to their new home. When they arrived, it was to the sounds of car horns, the taint of sewage, and the intense feeling of unrest. They could feel the tension of their new home, the suffocating knowledge that they were unwanted here.
Their new home was nothing more than a 12ft by 16ft white walled room that held the odor of cigarettes and waste. Each room would house two families, no matter how many was in each. My family of 5 now roomed with a family of 4, leaving such little room that claustrophobia became a norm for them all. Despite this, our families lived peacefully, with the children sleeping on the hard, wooden floors on torn bed sheets and quilts while the adults slept on the two couches that were left in their new home.
This odd arrangement only lasted for a few short months before they were awakened by angry shouts and the chaotic shrill of sirens. Dogs barked threateningly in the streets, muzzles the only thing protecting those who go to close from spilling blood. My family ran through scattered papers, over broken furniture and ducking away from falling suitcases and clothing.
They were corralled like cattle toward rickety red box carts on the old train tracks. Forced into the tiny space, the feeling of claustrophobia settled in, they were locked inside. Peels of light coming through the cracks in the planks and the tiny window in the corner helped little in shedding enough light to see properly in the suffocating dark. Fear began to set in and my little girl clung hopelessly to her mothers’ shirt. The scratchy fabric and the calming words of her mother were her only comfort on their long journey.
Night began to fall, giving small relief to the suffocating heat of the day. My little girl was getting tired, while others began to feel even greater despair until peels of artificial light began to come through the black. Disembodied voices and the barking of dogs assaulted their ears, confusion flowing through the cold night air. A looming archway passed above them, keeping sentry over this new territory. As the train inched to a stop, the lights began to grow brighter while the barks and voices became clearer.
The doors flew open, casting us in white light. My family was ordered off the train and passed a wrought iron gate that lead to a packet of precariously built buildings that housed hundreds of people wearing tattered, gray, and dirty clothes. The people we could see were grim; defeated. My family, wide-eyed and frightened, began moving along with the echoes of mad dogs pushing them forward. They were, for all to see, nothing but cattle, corralled against their wills towards the slaughter.
Shouting, barking, and uncontrollable sobs echoed in the night. Mass confusion and hysteria were beginning to set in until a voice rang out over the din. Calming and authoritative, the voice declared that able bodied men and women were to stay to the right, while the elderly, sick, disabled, and the children were the proceed to the left. Whoever this person was accomplished to set the herd into silence.  
My little girl’s mother leaned down, encompassing her three children into a warm embrace with a kiss on each fearful forehead. She assured them with this gesture that all would be well, they would be safe. The children shuffled to their designated spots before they were directed to a large building, along with the others. The sweat and tears of the tight nit group gave the feeling of being in the box car again. Orders were shouted over the stomping of feet. All were to undress and to neatly fold their clothes and place their shoes on top. They were to be given back after the bath unless their clothes were to worn for wear.
My little girl left me behind with the others. She headed towards a gray door with a small viewing window. If my little girl or her family knew where that door led to, they would have fought tooth-and-nail to leave this place. If any of us knew what was passed this gate, pass this train, pass this country, all would have run as fast as humanly possible in the other direction. I watched, silent as always, as my little girl disappeared behind that door and out of my life.
I was quickly taken away with the other shoes, thrown around without a care, tossed into a growing pile of rotten, stale shoes. Over the next few days, I slowly began to sink into despair, flattening and decaying along with others of my kind. We conversed in our silent way, asking ‘who left them behind’ and ‘have they seen their family since the showers’. Ash and dust began to sink into our “skin”, caking our “souls”, piling higher and higher along with the others who came after us.  
Night fell, day rose, and the cycle continued for what seemed an eternity until, finally, our growing pile stopped growing. Men had come to remove us from this dank prison. It was during this time we discovered what happened to our families, and my little girl.
Those “showers” they were herded to were not of water, but of gas. Poisoned to stop the life in their chests, it came through the shower heads, into their gasping lungs and into their hearts. They suffered in those fumes before peace was sent. The ash that layered our skin was from the crematories that worked day and night.
Years later, in my new home of white walls and silent onlookers, I stare at you in silence. My voice will never reach you, though my appearance now and my scent contaminate this room. I depict the years I have “lived”, the years my little girl should have been given to live. I am one of many, whose voices are forever silenced along with the families we watched grow. Though we cannot speak, we have others to do it for us. Above us, there is one paragraph, showing you what we can’t speak and telling you why we are alive now.
“We are the shoes, We are the last witnesses
We are shoes from grandchildren and grandfathers.
From Prague, Paris, and Amsterdam
And because we are only made of fabric and leather
And not of blood and flesh, Each one of us avoided the Hellfire.
- Yiddish poet Moses Shculstein”
www10.cs.rose-hulman.edu/Paper… <----Poem Reference
This is my English paper that I had to write for my British Literature class. It was supposed to be a descriptive essay but I don't know if I accomplished that or not. This took about 2 weeks with 3-4 hours of work all together.
I picked this topic because of what this month this, Holocaust Remembrance Month but also because I have seen these shoes myself. I went to the Holocaust Museum last year in April and out of everything in that museum, the cattle car and the "Shoe Room" effected me the most.
Let me know what you think of it please ^^
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