Last Stork Summer Read Online Free PDF

our chests that had survived starvation, beatings, kidnapping, and desolation. You wouldn’t see the determination to survive in our eyes, because our downward gaze kept that knowledge from our captors. You wouldn’t see the thoughts we clung to every day:
Soon this war will end and we will go home…soon
.
    Circumstances had taught us that not all children in the world get to experience life through the joy of childhood. We learned that being Polish at this moment in time meant living a life that was out of our control, the life of an inmate in a labor camp. It was the opposite of a joy-filled childhood.
    * * *
    I could hear some finches singing outside the window. It wassteadily growing lighter and the beautiful songs of the birds were a bitter contrast to the life we were living. We were Polish, we were Catholic, we were children, and we were slaves. We were the brown haired, brown eyed children who didn’t resemble the German race enough in hair and eye color to be considered for Germanization. By Hitler’s orders, all others were to become slave laborers or exterminated.
    Our first camp was a youth labor camp that had once been a boarding school.
    It was almost completely surrounded by high walls so it was difficult to look out, except on one side. From there, despite the barbed wire fencing, we had a clear view of the area surrounding us. There was farmland with patches of trees; fields of beets, potatoes, grasses, nature, and in the distance was a town. Work details gave us a limited view of the ghetto, but the scenery surrounding the ghetto was open to us and provided my soul the view of nature it desperately hungered for.
    I’d always been aware of how much I valued nature and scenery, perhaps because it reminded me of my family’s farm. Though I never could have guessed that its view would be withheld from me at any point in my life. Now it was such a treat to look at nature, and understand that its beauty held a deeper meaning; it was symbolic of life, sustenance, and creation. I wondered what had lived here before the ghetto and the labor camp. The ghetto couldn’t have possibly looked like it did now. No one would have wanted to live there.
    The run-down section of town, known as the Lodz ghetto, was particularly unsettling. It had the appearance of a living ghost town. There was no color. People lived there, but it appeared lifeless. It was comprised of buildings instead of barracks, but everything from the buildings, to the inhabitants’ clothes, to the faces of the people, was dirty, drab and malnourished…ash-like, as if its fire had burned out and gray embers were all that remained in front of us. It was always so oddlyquiet too, like the sounds of living had been sucked out of the air; just breathing was hard enough. Even though we only walked on its border streets, it terrified me to walk near it. Occasionally, on my way to the factory, I would witness the blank stares of the inhabitants. Ignoring their looks of desperation and their struggle to stay alive was impossible. Those feelings would stay with me long after leaving the area. In my heart, it was impossible to understand how one hate-filled mind could create so much misery and destroy so many lives.
    Thousands of Polish children had been ripped away from their families and sent to orphanages and private homes in Germany to “learn” to be German. As Hitler ordered, their Polish culture and heritage was to be completely wiped out of their hearts and memories. These children were considered suitable for Germanization only if they met the physical qualifications, learned the German language, and disregarded their Polish culture and memories.
    When Germany invaded Poland, their intent was to completely destroy our country; families, homes, businesses, and churches. They believed the Polish people were inferior to the German race. They waged war on our government, our people and our culture. Those who were old or sick would be killed and all