Growing up, I was routinely criticized for favoring the rain over the sunshine. According to others, this “unnatural behavior” must allude to a state of un-normalcy, which meant, when put in simple terms, I was weird. I for one didn’t understand what was so wrong and obscure about it. The way the rain sounded as it pattered the roof of our old house, the way the moisture collected on my eyelashes as I stood in the rain, my arms stretched out as I let the tears of the sky fall down upon my face simply made me feel at peace, rather than the harsh unforgiving rays of the sun. Rain had the power to wash things away, an ability I wished to endow. This small trait I possessed was only one of many that would be added to the list of my unnatural characteristics which only increased as I aged. However, this list escalated to the point where I was not defined merely as “weird,” but to where I was considered “undesirable,” “inhuman,” and ultimately faced the fate of “extermination.” This list of who I was began with the love for rain and ended with a yellow star. It seems that rain cannot indeed wash everything away.

12 June 1942

It was raining the night my father woke me.

The night my father woke me in the dead of night — his hot breath flushing the surface of my skin, his hands and fingertips cold and brisk on my shoulder — was the night of which began the next three treacherous years that would only begin to define my life. He began shaking my shoulder gently, which escalated to violent agitates when I didn’t respond as quickly as he desired. I woke, my mind swirling from the departure of jumbled dreams swarmed with the presence of my mother who had been taken by God one year ago. I sat up and shook my head, attempting to rid my mind of her somber face as I struggled to bring my conscience to the fate of reality.

My father, his face aged and ragged, muddled with the deprivation of sleep, spoke quietly and succinctly, a trace of fear present under his words. “Get dressed and pack a rucksack, we’re leaving in five minutes. I’m going to wake your brother.” He then leaped from my bedside and exited out my bedroom door, across the hall to my brother’s room, his footsteps pounding lightly on the wooden floor. Millions of thoughts began to race through my mind, colliding violently as they tried to connect.

My father had mentioned to me and my brother the prospect of leaving Poland and fleeing the terrors of the Nazis several months ago, but I never imagined that such actions would ever find themselves necessary. It took only the horrific and bone-chilling sounds of perilous screams to tell why our departure was so needed.

Shocked and bewildered, I jumped from my small, creaking bed and ran across the room to the wardrobe, yanking out an assortment of clothes. I tore my tattered white nightgown, slightly dampened by the sweat of dreams from my body, and pulled a simple green cotton dress over my head. I struggled to find a pair of shoes and socks that matched and threw on my raincoat-branded with a star, yellow and seared with the word Zyd, the Polish word for Jew. My shoulder-length mass of dark curls was a catastrophe, but I couldn’t care less as I stuffed my school rucksack with everything that I found necessary, from a few garments of clothing to my favorite novels.

Thunder boomed and trembled loudly overhead as I opened the door to my bedroom, looking back at the small square bedroom which had seen me face each year of seventeen. I gave the room one last glimpse before exiting and descending the stairs of our rickety town home. There my brother stood waiting, whose youth was ever present on his face of twelve years, his deep brown eyes the same as my mother’s, in contrast to mine and my father’s shocking green. My father stood unevenly, fear laced within his features that he strived to remain strong for us. My father nodded his head, and I gave him a nod in return, and thus began our journey. The three of us walked with heavy trodden steps, our souls and worries seeming to weigh down our bodies unforgivingly as we encountered the back door. My father paused for a moment, took a long, heavy ragged breath, muttering a phrase in Yiddish that my ears failed to catch, and turned the knob.

The wind and rain gushed against my skin as we stepped outside into the dismal night, the sounds of screams still echoing in the sky. My father turned toward my brother and I, his eyes widening in fear as they latched on to the sight of the star on my chest, hovering over my heart. In one swift motion, he tore the star from my chest, the perfect intricate stitches made by my mother breaking and tearing lose. He then threw the star to the ground where it fell in a puddle of rain, the yellow turning a murky brown from the mud. He latched onto my brother’s hand and pulled him away, assuming I would follow them through the dark narrow alleyway that seemed more mysterious and terrifying than ever before with the screams echoing through the misty air.

I stared at the star which had rested over my heart for the past two years soak into the ground, as the rain pounded relentlessly against it. While the color faded, the small three letters remained, despite the rains efforts, unwilling to disappear. I silently watched, finally turning away as I heard my father’s desperate calls of my name. As I traversed across the alley, I glanced back at the star once more, and an eerie silence filled the thick air. The rain, along with the screams, had stopped.