Waking up to gunshots and the echoes of distress were not abnormal in the Krakow Ghetto, but Rosa startled when she saw the terror etched on her father's face as he rushed her out of bed with trembling hands.Her family was huddled together in the dining room.
Rosa's mother wrapped her in a red coat, resting her hands gingerly on Rosa's shoulders to keep her close.
They seemed to stand in anxious suspense, but Rosa was not aware what they held on for.
Once the officers had strung out instructions for us, the liquidation began.
I had been given orders for the first street; vacate every Jewish person from their dilapidated home and exterminate any who resisted.
Each soldat that paraded alongside me wore a stony expression, but their eyes gleamed with anticipation and pride while I stumbled along with shaky breaths.
My whole body shivered involuntarily as I saw a mob of Jews being manoeuvered out of the ghetto.
Children clung to their parents' legs, being buffeted along by the current of soldat and snarling sentry dogs.
Our group approached the building in a smooth march, bursting through the doors, flowing in and dispersing throughout the rooms as though it was an average task to be evicting all these people.
The footsteps outside were loud.
They reverberated through the whole building.
They rattled the heirloom china that Rosa's mother had carefully arranged after her sister had managed to smuggle it into the ghetto.
Rosa's eyes darted from the trembling porcelain to the door where footsteps had ceased.
The atmosphere in the room suddenly vaporised.
Rosa let out a small whimper, the door swung open.
A young man in a green uniform stood in the door.
He shakily ordered them out of the room, a pale hand resting against the gleaming rifle over his shoulder.
Rosa glimpsed the other families being torn from their homes, hostile men beating some of the people as they filed out with their heads down.
She could barely move her legs as fear grabbed her whole body.
She couldn't comprehend why these horrible men in green were chasing everybody out and why her father had let them be thrown from their own apartment.
Rosa's mother drove her along, without looking down from the chaos to comfort her anxious daughter.
Drafting the Jews was a blur, people stampeded down the street in clusters.
In the midst of this, I caught an image of a young girl in a red coat.
I recognised her from the first building we had evicted.
As people continued to spew down the street, chased by gun-bearing Germans, the girl carefully traced her mother's steps.
The woman charged ahead, threatened continuously by the man behind her.
I saw the girl fade backwards into the crowd, her red coat still showing in fragments through the gaps between people.
My steps faltered as I moved on with the other soldat, we headed in the opposite direction to locate any Jewish people hiding among the ghetto buildings.
Receiving glares from those marching behind me, I watched the red coat disintegrate into the writhing string of people.
Tears obscured Rosa's view as she stumbled desperately in the direction she had last seen her mother.
A wall of trudging legs boxed her into the stream of movement.
The air was hot and Rosa's lungs felt constricted.
As she struggled along, gunshots rang out and the crowd began to thin.
Gaps appeared in the crowd, allowing Rosa to slip out on to the bare path.
She could see people lying in the middle of the road, some slumped at the doors of buildings.
She wondered why they slept out in the midst of the chaos, but she couldn't afford to stop walking and wake them.
Squinting her eyes, Rosa could not recognise any of the worn coats stumbling down the street.
Her whole body turned cold as she glanced around the street, where only a few people rushed along after the larger groups.
A chorus of footsteps and barking dogs echoed around the corner.
Rosa darted into the nearest building. She had always been terrified of the men in dark jackets; they didn't look like the police officers from her home.
Stepping inside the empty hall, Rosa immediately scanned for somewhere to conceal herself.
Ducking into the closest door way, she crept in and slipped under the frame of a huge rusted bed.
It must have been the bed of a rich family previously, draped in feather stuffed blankets and plush pillows with its proud iron frame. But now the rust had grown over it like a disease.
Much like everything in Rosa's short life, it had been tainted by the hideous war.
Rosa's thudding heart and quivery breath sounded amplified in the abandoned building.
She curled herself up and tried to shrink back into the floorboards, deciding she would wait here until her parents returned to find her.
Approaching the final house, I was numb.
The evening had crawled over the ghetto, casting a shadow on the massacre that littered the streets.
Combing through the run down apartment buildings, I had followed instructions from my commander; dispose of the Jews that had attempted to exempt themselves from the liquidation.
I had stopped counting the death toll.
I had no choice but to pursue the orders of the army.
Since the sunlight only filtered lazily through the trees at this time of night, I had been issued a torch to direct the others into the final building.
I tried to conceal the relief that surged through me when I saw no faces peering back at us from the living room of the first apartment.
I was shoved forwards despite the eerily quiet room and ordered to look around the other rooms.
The first door on my right held two ancient bed frames and an armchair that sagged pitifully in the seat.
I moved on to the next room, the beam of the torch sliding over all of the shadows within the room until I saw the most minute reflection of red in front of me.
Rosa's body was like ice as the man in the dark uniform searched around the room.
Her reactions had not been smooth enough to shrink back towards the wall and she felt the beam flicker over her.
From the floor, she could see a pair of mud encrusted boots that still managed to look menacing.
In agonisingly slow steps, they moved closer until Rosa could see tiny clods breaking off the caked-on boots.
There was a pause in Rosa's breath as the man knelt down by the bed.
Rosa bit her lip to keep in the screams bubbling in her chest.
The light glared in her face but Rosa squinted to see a wide-eyed face, his breath ragged as he froze before her.
She was an image of innocence with warm brown eyes peering up from her pale face.
Deep, dark hair curled around her shoulders.
I imagined her like my younger sister, playing outside in the garden and being over excitable about everything, not hiding in an abandoned ghetto from Nazi murderers.
The footsteps of the other soldiers echoed around the hallway but no shots broke the already sinister atmosphere.
The girl hadn't stopped gazing up at me, visibly shaking and stunned all at once.
My breath caught in my throat; I hadn't ever imagined myself here.
I felt so responsible for her but I knew that it was myself against the whole army if I attempted to defend her.
My mind reeled, thinking in desperation.
I had been ordered to exterminate all Jews; Jews were not people; Jews were ruining our country.
All the things that had been imprinted in our brains were hard to consider when I was watching a girl no older than 6, cowering on the filthy ground.
I knew I had made a mistake in even looking twice at her.
• By Autumn Forbes, Year 12, Lawrence Area School
