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I'm writing a short story for school, about the Holocaust from a perspective of something other than a person, and here's what I have so far:

 It was daytime, but the sky was a deathly-gray and sat without a word. The only sound was the whirl of snow, rushing and landing all across my branches. I shivered softly as snowflakes landed on me and sent bursts of chills up my trunk. I watched the snowflakes and followed their path as they flitted and darted; swirled in and around each other. Almost as if they were mocking the prisoners they fell on.

The prisoners were a herd unified by stripes; hunched over and digging. Shivering more than myself, they shrugged off the flakes and continued their work. Shoulders and arms moved in quasi-synchronization, with pale foreheads sculpted with wrinkles, dimmed eyes, and lips that let sneezes slip from them.  It seemed amazing that they could even move; could even lift a finger. Their gaunt limbs were nothing but bone, almost the width of my branches. Some were young and others old, short and awkwardly tall, strong and weakening.

I shifted my roots and noticed what they were digging. A huge pit.  The prisoners stood on one side of it, with a line of guns on the other. Guns clenched between the hands of men who were contrasting against the white, wearing uniforms of black.

Soon, the prisoners stopped from a command. The voice they obeyed was dripping with a German accent. Some prisoners still held their tools and some let them slip from their grasp. From there they stood still. And they waited for what to do next. One of the prisoners, old and wise-eyed, almost seemed to know what he and the others were preparing themselves for. I watched him mouth something; a prayer maybe.

That’s when the guns came alive. They took on life of their own and fired. Bangs and booms shot through the air and knocked the life from every body across from them. Instantly the prisoners fell to their knees, on their faces, clutching their chests, crying, screaming out in pain. Some even bawled out the names of loved ones and asked where God was. Blood erupted from their skeletal bodies, leaving them to fall in the pit they made or to be knocked down wherever they stood. The sky was left even more speechless than before.

An hour passed by. A white quilt had formed over my trunk and over the mass grave, which was filled to the brim with bodies now. They were all stripped of their clothing and were now just a pile of mangled arms, legs and rib cages. I knew I would never forget the sight of the snowflakes continuing to twirl and spin over the corpses.

Author's Note

Please tell me what you think so far and any suggestions would be nice! Please and thank you!