The buzzer rang as the giant metal gate slid open. In the area behind the gate stood the soldier, waiting for the next step in the admission process. The soldier said with a booming voice to remove our current clothes and to put on the plain grey uniform. Almost in complete sync every person removed their coats and jackets and put on the baggy uniforms that the soldiers had provided. We stood there waiting for what was to come next, the stories of the horrors of the camps ran through everyone’s mind, and the endless screams echoed throughout the camp, as we shuffled to the next area.
“Men to the right, women and children under 14 to the left.” Said the general over the loud speaker. Looking around, I saw hundreds, if not thousands of people awaiting the same fate I was. We separated into the two groups that we were told, and almost instantly soldiers swarmed the women and children, pushing them to another area out of sight. As this was all happening, grown men were collapsing to the ground and crying, calling for their loved ones to come back to them, with no possibility of their cries to be answered. The soldiers were of mixed emotions, some keeping a straight face, and others laughing at the complete insanity that some of the men were feeling having being torn from their families.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a man in a white coat surrounded by soldiers enter the area where the women and children had gone.
“Run!” screamed the soldier, as the mass of men ran back and fourth across the yard.  Within the first ten minutes of running, at least a quarter of the men had collapsed, and the soldiers would come from their posts to drag them to where the man in the white coat had gone, beating them if they tried to resist.
We had been running for at least thirty minutes when I first started smelling smoke. I didn’t dare turn around and look, and risk having the same fate as the men that were dragged out. It wasn’t until I had finished the lap that I saw the giant column of smoke in the sky, and the man in the white coat standing on a platform looking down at something that was out of my view. The man was pointing and screaming orders that I couldn’t understand. Almost instantly, all of the men stopped and covered their faces to block the morbid smell that one could only assume was coming from where everyone else had gone.
“Stop.” Said one of the soldiers, after receiving an order from an unknown source.
“Everyone go to the far right and line up.” He said.
After we had all lined up, I saw that of the at least 200 men that we had started out with, only about 70 were left. Out of nowhere, the man in the white coat came and stood in front of the group.
“Welcome to Auschwitz. I am Doctor Giacomo Rappaccini. I will be in charge of you the rest of the time you are here.” One man sobbed under his breath and in a split second, Dr. Mengele shot a glare at him and he was immediately hit in the back of the head by one of the soldiers’ guns and carried away. “This man is poisonous.” I thought to myself after having just seen what took place. “He has the power to destroy and kill anything just by simply glaring at them.”
As he stood there looking at all the men, I was trying at all costs to avoid eye contact, which at this point was inevitable.
“You. Come with me.” He said pointing in my direction. As I became mentally prepared for getting beaten and dragged away, the man next to me was thrown to the ground and pulled away into the small structure that was to the left of us.
I was relieved that I wasn’t the one that was picked, until I looked back up and saw the man in the white jacket standing in front of me. “Pick a number between one and thirty.” He said, as he glanced up at the soldiers behind me. “t-tten.” I stuttered, trying not to completely fall apart under all of the pressure. The doctor raised his hand and the soldiers brought up their guns. As he brought it down, ten men to both sides of me fell to the ground after the thunder of gunshots had ended. “This guy is insane! What the hell does he want with me!?” I kept saying to myself in my mind, as I lay in the fetal position on the ground.
The man motioned for soldiers, who then came and grabbed me by the arm and took me to the building that the other soldiers had taken the other man to, as the other soldiers pointed the rest of the men in the direction of what I assumed housing. When we entered the building, I saw that there was nothing but medical equipment in the room. The man who had been brought in previously lay unconscious on a table in the center of the room.
“Hand me that one.” He said pointing to the scalpel.
As I handed him the tool he asked for, I could only fear what was going to happen next. Not knowing weather or not the man in front of me was under anesthetics or if he was dead, the doctor slowly opened him up. I gasped in complete horror and refused to look down again, only focusing on the doctorates certificate that hung on the wall behind the doctor.
“From this point on, you are to be my apprentice. Follow my orders and I let you live, but go against my word and I throw you out with the rest of them.”  Said Dr. Rappaccini, without looking up from the open man lying on the table.
“Yes sir.” I said, trying to hold back the tears from accepting that this is most likely what the rest of my life will be like.
“What is your name?” Asked the doctor.
“ I am Giovanni, sir.”
An hour had passed when the doctor finally decided that it was time to close the man up. As I put all of the instruments back where I had got them and started to clean, the doctor explained to me that I was to follow his every order, and that where ever he goes, I was to follow.
It was at least midnight and I was exhausted from everything that had occurred the day before. ‘’Come with me.’’ He said, opening a door I hadn’t noticed before. Once we were through the door, I could see we were in a hallway, lined with pictures of Hitler and pictures of the war around the world. “You are to sleep here and not leave. I will retrieve you in the morning.” Said the doctor. Inside the dimmed room, I could make out a cot off to the left, and a small bucket in the opposite corner. I walked in and sat on the cot, as he closed the door. Once I could tell that the doctor was far enough away, all the tears that I had been holding up all day seemed to pour out of my eyes like a waterfall. “What did I do to deserve this? Is this how I am to live the rest of my life?” I thought out loud. Slowly my tears muffled out the random sounds that would echo in the small room, and eventually I drifted off to sleep.
“Giovanni wake up. Were going on a little trip.” Said Dr. Rappaccini. I was half awake when I finally woke up and realized that I was packing all of the medical supplies into the bags that the doctor had given me. I didn’t utter a word unless I was spoken to for fear that the doctor would throw me in with the rest of the men. We walked out the door to my amazement to see a jeep parked in the yard where I had previously run the day before. I put the bags in the back of the vehicle and crawled into the backseat where I awaited to see where I could possibly be going.
We drove in silence until I could hear a plane starting up in the distance. We pulled up to a small landing strip with a small plane waiting for Dr. Rappaccini. “Come Giovanni. I have been called to the southern region of Italy to help with the Nazi soldiers wounds.” Said Dr. Rappaccini.
“Yes sir.” I said.
As we boarded the plane, I could see that the pilot was in a hurry and that we were the only passengers, which I could only imagine meant that what we were going to Italy for was urgent.
The plane took off and from the lack of sleep from the previous night; I fell asleep to the rhythm the propellers were making.
I awoke to the plane landing in a Nazi military base in the southern region of Italy. “We have a lot of work to do here, and not much time. The rumor floating around is that the Russians have entered Italy and are making there way down to us.” The doctor said, as he was retrieving the bags and exiting the plane. I thought to myself how great it would be if they made it down in time to rescue me, but my daydreaming quickly came to an end when I followed Dr. Rappaccini into the tent where the wounded had been kept.
The tent recued of infection and death, and I couldn’t avoid the sight of limbs going at different angles, and the soldiers unaware of the severity of their wounds. I followed Dr. Rappaccini into a building that was especially marked for the doctor. “Set up everything that we brought and start prepping the operating room while I go and get the first patient.” He said.
Less then a minute after everything was ready, the doctor rolled in the first patient. The soldier was screaming in absolute pain, gripping at his stomach, holding everything in. As the doctor put the soldier under anesthetic, I moved his hand and saw that he had multiple gunshot wounds in his abdomen. After the soldier was asleep, the doctor grabbed the tweezers and started removing the bullets.
He was removing the second to last one when the sirens started going off.
“THE RUSSIANS ARE HERE! GET TO YOUR BUNKERS NOW!” Screamed a soldier that had run in from outside.
Dr. Rappaccini pulled the last bullet and was trying to thread the needle to start stitching up the patient when we could hear the sound of running boots and orders in Russian being shouted from the other side of the base.
“Hurry Giovanni! We don’t have much time!” yelled the doctor as he finished the first stich.
My mind was going a million kilometers an hour. Should I stay? Should I run? The gunshots had to have been a few meters outside the door when the doctor finished the fourth and final stich and covered the patient, when I finally made a break for it. I threw the plate with all the medical equipment at him and I pushed the table with the soldier into him as I made a run for the door. He fell back and screamed ”You stupid Jew! You stupid fuc-“. I didn’t hear the rest because I was already out of the room and running through the hallway to the entrance.
“I made it! I’m almost there!” I kept saying out loud to myself. I burst through the doors and saw Russian planes flying over head, Russian soldiers running around everywhere, and the tank that broke down the gate. “Help! Help! Someone help me!” I screamed, hoping to catch the attention of someone.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw something running towards me. A  Russian soldier had thrown me to the ground with his gun pointed directly at my chest. “I’m a Jew! I’m a Jew!” I screamed, showing him the numbers on my left arm. Once he realized that I wasn’t a Nazi soldier, he helped me up and screamed something at me and pointed in a general direction.
I sprinted at full speed, not letting the wind slow me down, going off of pure adrenaline and the idea that I was free, knowing that the hard part was over and that I was finally safe.
With tears of pure joy running down my face, I franticly ran up to the soldiers from Russia and showed them my arm. It wasn’t until the soldiers wrapped me in the warm blanket and gave me a hot meal that it finally hit me that I was finally out of harms way and that I had escaped the tortures of the Holocaust.