We Fought In Silence
Carmel School Association Elsa High School , Alcobi , Shelly - 12
I sat there and I waited for the train to arrive . Tears streaming down my face as if the moon was toppled over me . And I , Chiara didn ’ t want to leave . I didn ’ t want to leave anyone , anybody , anything . Not mamyte . Not tetis . Not Namai . Nothing . I didn ’ t want to change my lifestyle . Not again . But only this time , I would also be changing my identity , dreams getting smashed into tiny bits , you could never even hope of putting them back together like a puzzle . From today onwards , I was never a Christian Lithuanian girl with an imagination that only I could control and whose given name was Chiara Barkus . A girl who lived up until her eleventh birthday with both her tevai in a warm home during the coldest nights of Winter . That was until tetis , got murdered by them . The Natzis . The murderers . I hate them . They ruined my life along with stealing my tetis ’ s and making my mamyte ’ s life miserable .
Tetis fought with the Partisans until his last drop of blood . He was a good man and he ’ s gone now . Mamyte hides four Jews who go by the names Mary , Charlotte , Marina and Alberto . She says I ’ m not allowed to know their real names . She sent me out of fear . Out of terror . She was risking our lives . Things happened fast . Mamyte decided . I was to go to the Japanese embassy as a Jewish girl . I was to be issued a VISA for Japan through the man Chiune Sugihara . I was to board a train from the Western Coast of Russia to the Eastern . I was to take a ship to Japan . I was to live with mamyte ’ s friends . After the war was over mamyte would find me . She made me memorize it , so forgotten it would never be . Just before I left home to the journey that ’ s ahead of me , mamyte took off her locket and put it around my neck . She told me to keep it safe . She then told me that she loved me . That she will always be in my heart and I assured her that I felt the same way . Now , as I ’ m boarding the train , I already miss her . The train ride is a journey of two weeks . Two weeks without sleeping in a proper bed . Without eating proper food . Without being with my mamyte . The atmosphere on the train is blue , much different to the bright yellow I ’ m familiar with .
Every day on the train felt like weeks . There was nothing to do and therefore there is nothing to write about . Hopefully the sail to Japan will be filled with exciting adventures .
Seconds after the ship had started sailing , the captain announced that the ship was sailing towards a city called Shanghai which was in China . I heard stories about the Japanese invading China . About them being hateful just like the Nazis . Partners in crime , some people may say . Right that second , I understood that I was on the wrong ship , heading to a city which was invaded by partners of the Nazis . The Nazis . While I , Chiara , was pretending to be a Jewish girl to survive in my surroundings while being a Christian . Right that second , I had felt what Jews had been feeling for over three years . I felt fear . I felt scared . I felt hunger . From that second I decided that I was not going to hide . I was going to fight even if I had to in silence . It was a sail of ten hours . I had decided during the hours that to beat them I had to stay with Jews . I heard about the Ghetto before . Heard about the awful . About the nasty . The terrible . About death . But if only I could have understood that the ghettos in Shanghai were their biggest hope of living and the best they were asking for . It gave them a glimpse of hope . Something to look forward to . Something to rely on .
When we had reached the Proclamation Concerning Restriction of Residence and Business of Stateless Refugees . It was also called a Ghetto . It was located in the Hongkou District . Small was the area , narrow roads they were . Later I found out , that it was a mile squared and was made to fit some 40,000 people . I was assigned to “ house ” number eighty seven . The house was full of Shanghainese . They said that escaped they had from the Japanese when they invaded . Invaded . The city . The country . They had demolished it . Completely . New world of theirs . Among them . The Shanghainese . Was one girl . My age she looked like . She introduced herself . Li Zhang . Belonged to her the name . Friends we had become . Almost like sisters while differing in endless ways . Silky black hair she had and dark