"Work" - English Comp. 1/23/2011

          Work.  My entire life is work.  I remember nothing before the camp, and I'm sure there will be nothing to know after...if I even get an "after".  All day I come out here and dig.  I wake up, go outside, dig.  I go in for a few moments, eat a crust of bread or some cold soup, come back out, dig.  At night, I sleep.  If I dream, I dream that I am back outside digging.  We dig in the heat, in the cold, sometimes in the rain.  Some days, we are even forced to fill the holes.  Those days are the worst.  When it's just the digging, I can pretend that I'm a kid, trying to dig all the way to the other side of the world.  I can pretend that I'm a pirate searching for lost treasure. Sometimes that one isn't so hard to imagine; the feeling of digging and digging, never finding what you are digging for, never feeling that satisfaction or relief.  I can relate.  Some days, I don't think about anything; I just dig.
          The way we dig, you would think this place would run out of bodies, or at least land, for the holes.  But that never happens.  The nazis are never satisfied, and they never stop killing.  I wish that for one day - just for one day - we could trade places.  I could stand and laugh icily while they dig these crude "graves".  Let them fill the holes with charred remains of bodies that used to be people.  I wish they could understand what it is to be forced to do manual labor for the people who want you dead.
          Mostly, I just wish it would stop.  I wish someone could come to take me back home with my family and my bed and no more digging.  I could finally sleep peacefully, not having to worry about blistered hands, sunburnt necks, and worn out backs...I don't remember what any of that feels like.  The only way I can fall asleep is to cry myself out every night.
          There is a girl my age who's sleeping with one of the guards.  He sneaks her good food, and she never has to work.  If I wasn't so exhausted, I would kill her.