My name is Emma Schmidt

My name is Emma Schmidt, I am 13 years old and I live in Poland. The year is 1941 and the Germans have taken my friends and family to concentration camps. (1) My mom was sent to Belzec concentration camp. I pray every night that she is ok.
The day Mom got taken was the worst day of my life. I remember hearing a commotion outside and Mom went to see what was going on. Her yellow star was covered by her jacket and when she was talking to the Nazis her jacket blew off because of the wind and they grabbed her and took her away.
(2) That night my Daddy told me we were leaving along with our neighbors, The Schneider family, we found an old farm outside the town of Wroclaw “vrots-waf”. We hid in silence all day everyday. We had no food and very little water. We had to sleep on the ground. It was very cold. We had some German friends that risked their lives bringing us what food they could. The days were very long and the nights were terrifying. We never knew if the Nazi’s would come take us away. Our friends would tell us about people in the ghettos being sealed in freight trains and being sent to extermination camps to be killed in gas chambers.