#historical | Inside the Mind of Isadora

Last week, I wrote about Bobeshi Rivqah. If you’d like to catch-up click here. This story does stand alone. Ironically, the locked cages in the photograph had the same feel as the ones shown at the Florida Holocaust Museum in Tampa, Florida.

Mama, can I go outside?”

“Go! But, don’t go far.”

From my stoop, I watched Mrs.O’Doherty and Bobeshi Rivqah talking.

“Rivqah, you’re telling me they used the same numbers?”

“Yes, can you believe that?”

Mrs.O’Doherty shook her head from side to side.

“They reused prisoner numbers from the dead; especially, is if they were moved to another camp,” Rivqah said. “Dehumanizing!”

Slowly, I made my way towards them.

They were taking about something I’d wondered about.

“Why do you have numbers on your arm, Bobeshi?”

She hugged me and said, “One day, you’ll know kleyn meydl, one day.”

2019©Isadora DeLaVega

Genre: Historical

Word Count: 100

Photo Prompt:©JHardy

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***** Stoop: a porch with steps in front of a house or other building.

***** Prisoner numbers in the system of German Nazi concentration camps. The prisoner numbers have become a synonym of dehumanization that struck the deportees of the concentration camp. These numbers were to serve efficient “management” of camps, performed by the SS teams. ©http://auschwitz.org/

***** kleyn meydl / קליין מיידל – little girl

We could see the candle flicker from my living room window.

Exhausted, we couldn’t sit by the fire and wait any longer.

Paugua wouldn’t come into the house. She insisted she’d keep her traditions and live in her tepee until she died.

Ravaged from the malaria it was just a matter of time. It had taken her beloved Eduvije months earlier.

The Taino people slowly diminished from diseases after the arrival of European settlers.They had no natural-bodily defenses against them.

Perhaps this small piece, left of her life, would bring her comfort.

At midnight, the flickering flame dimmed.

Genre: Historical

Word Count: 100

To join Rochelle and her Friday Fictioneers challenge

click here

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***** Paugua – Taino Indian name for Paula. My great grandmothers name.

*****Eduvije – Taino Indian name for Vincent. My great grandfathers name.

*****Taino Indians – The original inhabitants of Puerto Rico are the Taíno Indians, who called the island Borikén; however, as in other parts of the Americas, the native people soon diminished in number after the arrival of European settlers. It was estimated that the majority of all the Taino Indian inhabitants of the New World perished due to contact and contamination with Old World diseases, while those that survived were killed by warfare with each other and with Europeans.