I watched the gentle snow falling in swirls around me, but it seemed to go right through my pale hands. The winters in Germany are always so harsh. I thought, smiling at the memory of my father scooping me up into his strong arms when I fell into the bitter snow. Sadly, Papa was gone. I didn’t know where he went. They took him before they took Mother and I. The merciless winter was here to stay.  Distant wails of grief and sorrow flooded my ears as I searched desperately for Mother.  Mother should’ve been easy to find. She had just gotten out of the showers. Mother had promised to wait; I let out a gasp of excitement when I found her. “Mother!!” I cried out, yet Mother did not turn around; as if she was deaf to me. Once I saw her sunken face, I exhaled sharply. “Mother, why are you crying?” My voice was soft, like the snow.  Mother was deaf to my questions, and her tears never stopped flowing. “Please tell me…” I begged.
             “Get back to work!” an angry man clothed in vile green barked at her.
             Without a word of complaint Mother continued working. Her sallow skin stretched dangerously over her bones that stuck out along her body while she loaded caps for the guns that were used to slay us. Something was different about Mother. The look in her eyes was empty; it showed that she had just given up on everything. The dark sockets around her hollow eyes sunk further than I thought possible. I stared at Mother, perplexed by the vacant stare. Mother was the one who promised me that we would get out of this with hope, yet the hope that always shined in her blood shot eyes was gone.  “Mother…” I pleaded with her to tell me why she was so sad. She always told me that I was her joy. “Please mother… I’m right here.’’ I reached out to touch Mother’s skin, but my hand went through her.
             My mother got up slowly as the men in putrid green ordered her to. “It is time to shower!” They yelled at all of the frail women in the artillery factory, blows rained down from their batons, unaimed. Chills ran down my spine as I watched her get up slowly and walk with an awful limp. A harsh crack of a baton sent Mother stumbling, clutching her side, but she kept up with the other women. I  scurried after her, but stopped short when I saw the heap of bodies in a pile next to the shower house. Their faces bore terror, and their bodies were so thin, I could see every bone in their abandoned bodies. On top of the sickening pile, my lifeless and broken body was displayed for everyone to see. My throat tightened once I realized I was dead. “That’s why mother can’t hear me…” I whispered. Mother and I froze at the sight. “I’m… dead…” I realized.
             “Mother! Wait for me!” I pushed against the officers, but they shoved me back into the line going the opposite way of Mother.
             “Monika! Be strong!” My mother’s voice was soft in the sea of mothers crying and Nazis screaming.
With silent tears streaming down my cheeks, she walked with the other young girls and old women. Ash fell from the sky, like burning snowflakes. A smell of burning flesh wreathed around us in the form of tenebrous smoke. In the bitter cold, they ordered us to undress. In fear, we  did. “Get in the showers!” The officers demanded, detached from their words. We all walked into a stone room with faucets above our heads. We were bare. Naked. Stripped of our humanity and life. I huddled against the floor as a feral animal would in the brumal frost. Suddenly, instead of water, toxic gas poured from the spouts. Screams of agony ripped through the room. Old women gasped and pounded on the door in desperation for oxygen, but the officers did not open the door. Tearing at my throat in torment, I gasped for air desperately. It burns. It burns! Screams ruptured from my jaws. I’m dying My last thought as I slashed at my throat in distress was They’re going to kill us all… even Mother…
My mother let out an earsplitting shriek, cutting my memory off, and hurled herself at my corpse. With a one loud shot, Mother fell to the frozen earth. Her eyes clouded over as her life sustaining blood flowed from the shot in her neck. “Monika…” she whispered before her lungs shut down. I stared in shell shock “Mother…” I knelt down at her head and tried to touch her again, but it was all in vain. Grief shook my form and I pounded the air, for my hands connected with nothing
I turned around at the touch of a hand and saw her, with her bright shining brown eyes and her plump form from before the Nazis took us away. “Come on my sunshine, let’s go home.”