Justin+Stals

Naplan Story June 17th 1939 This was it. The end. There was no way out. Joseph was going to die, here, in this barn. And his children were going with him. The shouts of the Nazi soldiers from outside were getting louder, sharper...closer. There was no place to hide. After all they’d been through, travelling for days across the Polish countryside with German’s in pursuit it all came down to this. No more running, Joseph could almost feel the cold metal MG42 pressed against his head, a Nazi ready to fire it. They were stuck, and the enemy was surrounding, ready to consume and destroy them like giant waves in the ocean. He sat there shivering with fear, praying to God to make it all go away. “Adonai I beg you, your people are being slaughtered in the millions. Help us Lord! Punish the Nazi’s and their leader!” he whispered, as his teeth clambered together. The barn door flung open. Within ten minutes Joseph and the rest of the Cohen family were merely names on a list of 6 million. Exterminated.

5 days earlier. “Grab your family and run, the Nazi’s are sending troops all around the countryside. Any Jews found will be killed on the spot! Don’t try to make a deal with the devil because rest assured, he has no mercy.” The crackling voice of the Jewish Patrol leader Aaron Levy delivered the long-awaited news to the Jews listening throughout the Polish countryside. Rumours had been emerging, accusing even young children of no more than five to be Nazi spies, betraying their people and even their families in a dire act of self-preservation. Joseph looked at his two sons. It angered him to even think of his children in this way, but the country was falling crippled to its knees, and the widespread suffering was no longer a radio bulletin, it was real, it was close. Paranoia had swept the community. For weeks the rumours amongst the people had suggested attacks which hadn’t come, stories of soldiers in the thousands massacring all in their way, but it had never been fact until two days ago Levy passed on news from the capital. Hundreds of thousands dead. Nazi’s on the hunt. The very next morning the air became eerily still, the farmland normally alive with the sound of animals and machines went deathly silent, and Joseph knew it was time. They left in the morning, he decided. Run for the Ukrainian border, trust in the Allies to win the war. There was no further plan. The next three days were a blur. Monotonous walking during the day. Lying under the stars unable to sleep at night. Stomachs growled with hunger, muscles screamed for rest, hands never stopped shaking for fear that they would never clasp a loved one again. On the 16th Joseph awoke to a bloodcurdling sight. His heart thrashed inside his chest and his mind raced as he saw that at the foot of the mountain he and his sons had walked up the previous day was a Nazi camp. He heard their dogs barking, smelling his tender flesh, aching to tear his limbs apart. The Nazi’s had set up camp in the dead of the night and he hadn’t heard a thing. He prayed that they hadn’t been following his family. He prayed that their vehicles couldn’t make it up the mountain. He prayed that there was still a chance. What he knew for sure was that the running was over. They needed to hide. They had no time, their food had run out, they were at least a hundred kilometres from Ukraine by what he could tell from his outdated maps, and the boys were running out of hope. And they weren’t the only ones. They spent 10 hours on foot looking for a place to hide, finding nothing. They began to hear soldiers shouting behind them and they ran as fast as they could as the stench of death wafted towards them. It wasn’t until the early hours of the next day that they saw a light about a kilometre away. They sprinted towards as their bodies ached and they neared the point of collapse. They approached the lights with the utmost of caution, finding an old farm that appeared to be inhabited by an old Russian man. Joseph had deemed it too risky to ask the man for a place to hide. The barn out the back of the farm was their best option, they decided. They crawled as stealthily as they could, silently opening the doors and trying not to wake the various animals within as the crawled into their hiding spots. Joseph and his sons had nowhere to go. They had to wait and pray the Nazi’s didn’t check the barn. “Father, are we going to die?” whispered the youngest son. Joseph couldn’t believe he had to answer that question. “Just be still, and pray those doors don’t open,” was all he could muster the strength to say. Because lying there, staring into his son’s bright green eyes, he knew it was over.

Feedback: A sophisticated narrative with a diversity of syntax and powerful use of imagery. You are a wonderful storyteller! The only setback is that it must have a more obvious link to the image provided. 90% using Naplan marking criteria.