Free Unravelled by Anna Scanlon

have been a beautiful and peaceful summer night, the stars shining like beacons of hope above our heads. The stars were ignorant to the scene below and continued showing off their ethereal beauty, blinking every so often.
    "Men to the left, women to the right!" the shout came again in broken Hungarian. Papa put his arms around us so tightly I couldn't breathe, but it didn't matter. I wouldn't allow myself to be separated from him. My mother, her body now broken out in rashes and her knees and hands swollen to the size of oranges, held tightly to my father's sleeve.  
    An SS officer, in full German uniform approached my father. Papa swallowed hard and met his eyes with false confidence, realizing we were now at the mercy of the enemy. There were no longer Hungarians watching over us. There were now only Germans. The officer shouted something to my father in German, a language I knew he understood from his time in the first Great War and speeches he had given in Austria. My father didn't react to the words that had been spit into his face like venom. Instead, he stood erect, holding onto his family even tighter and refusing to let us go. The SS officer pointed a gun at my father for a split second and then fired it in the air, repeating his words. The strong arms that ushered me through my childhood fell lax. Papa was gone, swallowed up by the crowds of men pushing one another in an effort to obey.
    "David!" my mother shouted, extending her engorged hands in front of her. "David!"
    I had never seen her quite so distressed, so panicked. Her despair now surpassed how frantic she had looked when Hajna dove into the Tisza, coming back for air more than a minute later with a grin on her face and announcing that she had set a new record. Then, my mother's face had been stripped of all color and she ran toward the water,  ready to jump into the lake, shoes and all. But Hajna had come back up and Mama's panic had changed to rage as she doled out a punishment for scaring her like that. Now, the panic did not subside and the four of us were ushered with the rest of the women and girls on the convoy to the designated area "for women".
    As we were herded into the mass of scared and confused women, I noticed my mother began to lose her color. Her eyes started to glaze over. She fell to the ground with a sharp thud. A woman next to her, perhaps traumatized by the journey, screamed when my mother's body went limp next to hers. We three girls wasted no time in rushing to her side, grabbing her cold hands and standing her up. Her eyes slowly opened, revealing a small light behind them.
    "If anyone does not feel well, there are trucks that will take you to the camps. Do not worry, you will be reunited with your families soon."
    I craned my neck and saw a truck in the distance with a Red Cross emblem on the side. Old people and children began climbing onto the truck.  There were a few young people with yellow faces, doubled over in pain that were waiting to climb aboard as well. Some were supporting themselves by holding on to the sides of the truck.
    "Mother, the truck will take you over there," the three of us chimed in, throwing her limp arms over our tiny shoulders and half-carrying her toward it. She tried to walk, her legs limp and weak.
    "I'll be okay," she nodded. "Taking the truck is a good….i….dea…."
    Her words came out of her body slowly and painstakingly, as though it hurt to speak. 
    We approached the truck, where an SS guard and several people in striped uniforms stood, helping people onto the green truck. The interior was lined with benches filled with coughing and sickly people, their dirty hands over their mouths as they hacked and cleared their throats.
    "Can my children go with me?" my mother asked, dazed but beginning to come back to life from the haze of her faint. "I know I'll meet them later, I just want them to be with me."
    My face was hidden in her dress, right in one of the oversized roses that hung on her