Echoes of Memory

My Journey to America

Once, when I was a very young girl in Poland, I got lost walking with my aunt in the forest. “Are we in America?” I asked her. America was the farthest place on earth for a child my age.

The Klikk

After almost a year’s absence from my hometown of Miskolc, I arrived in Budapest with Shosha, my sister, and Rozalia, my mother. We stayed at the home of my aunt, Bozsi, and her daughter, Magda. My uncle, Moka, Bozsi’s husband, unfortunately did not return from forced labor.

Dini

Dini Polak is a lively Dutch woman in her mid-80s who has a debilitating muscle and balance disorder that has kept her in a wheelchair and homebound for ten years, but whose social media presence alone testifies to her avid interest in world affairs, politics, and literature.

My Street

Christmas in Belgrade, 1947

We live in a rented apartment shared with an obligatory additional person. My mother works, and my grandmother takes care of me. My father is absent from home. He has been on a business trip during this particular December. I am eight years old. Tito is our adored and undisputed Communist leader.

Mima

Sadly, I have no personal memories of Mima. All I know about her comes from countless photographs of an always serious looking dark-skinned woman with her sleek black hair almost always combed back into a bun, of a few words of Mima’s native languages, Maleis, of a taste for Indonesian cooking, and, of course from the many stories about her that my foster siblings, Dewie, Wille, and Robby, shared with me.

A Fateful Letter

Long, long ago, it was sensational to receive a letter. We used to wait for the mailman impatiently. A letter could change plans, change lives, and fates.

The Little Red Hat

I have a falling apart album of black-and-white photos. Among the pictures of me as a radiant baby is a small paper print of a photo negative. On it you can see three adults and a little girl. I am the little girl, and I am holding my mom’s hand. Next to her is my father and a person who is unknown to me. My mother has a scarf on her head, and she holds a little hat in her spare hand. I remember the scarf and I remember the hat. 

Reflections on Pope Francis’s Visit

An article by Washington Post columnist E. J. Dionne Jr. during the pope’s visit to Washington, DC, in 2015 touched me deeply and brought back some old memories. During World War II I was a child in Poland. I am Jewish, and I wanted to live—which was contrary to what the German occupiers had in mind. After a few close calls where we had to hide to avoid being caught and killed or transported to a concentration camp, my brave mother purchased false identity papers from a Catholic priest for my baby sister, me, and herself. She then took us to a town where we were not known and where we would go by our new assumed names and religion. My part was to go to school, attend church, and act like a Catholic child. I was eight years old and had no knowledge of this religion.

A Blissful Event

The year was 1963, and I was serving in the Israeli air force. I worked as a programmer on that famous huge Philco computer that filled a whole floor.