He had looked forward to this day all week, but a minute or so after he arrived it was already evident that something had gone wrong. He was to have greeted members of the diplomatic corps and escorted them to their seats—a plum assignment.
In 1970, on one of my visits to Israel, I attended, with my Israeli cousins, a meeting of members from my hometown. As on previous occasions, I was warmly greeted, both as an old acquaintance and as a visitor from America expected to make a donation.
He was only nine years old when Germany invaded Poland. The youngest of three children, he was a skinny little boy on spindly legs, agile body, and a small pale face. The only outstanding features were his two large brown eyes, mischievous and alert. Since Jewish children no longer were allowed to attend school, he became restless and was constantly on the move.
When you handed me over did you hug me, kiss me, give directions to my caretaker, was it someone you or I knew? Could you picture me as an adult? The years have passed, and I am now many years older than the age you were when you died.
I have a photograph of a garden I look at often and longingly. The photo shows several family members sitting and standing around a small garden waterfall, topped by a sculpture of a little girl holding an umbrella. The year was 1938.
Lieutenant Block had never been to a party like it. The gothic, high-ceilinged hall, more than the length of a football field, was full to overflowing with people in costumes and masks, some humorous, others hideous.
In the spring of 1943, three high school classmates and I became part of a work crew that, after air raids, tore down ruined buildings and cleaned the rubble from damaged structures. The members of the crew, Jewish husbands and sons of mixed marriages, came from all walks of life—a truly motley crew. They gave me an early course in human nature. Some of them I remember vividly.
Now you live in Paris. Yes, the city of light and romance. The broad avenues, the gentle river Seine, the bookstalls, the little bistros on the Left Bank, the Louvre, and the hordes of tourists.
I saw before me at my feet a patch of disheveled plants whose long and narrow green leaves drooped as if beaten down by wind and age. Vines of wild ivy had twisted themselves into knots among the plants and dozens of thin, wheat-colored stems, probably lazy and dried verdure, had risen through breathing holes in the ground thatch.
That quaint small town in central Poland, my hometown, Chmielnik, once teemed with Jewish life. There were houses of worship, including the “big synagogue,” and houses of learning. The orthodox young men studied the Torah; others, after attending public school in the morning, attended Hebrew schools.
Listen to or read Holocaust survivors’ experiences, told in their own words through oral histories, written testimony, and public programs.
