She hid in the attic of a Belgian family that robbed her of everything she had. Her and her mother, scared, alone, the family wanting more, more, threatening to tell the Nazis, a Moloch devouring souls in its Auschwitz teeth. I can’t begin to imagine the tears in her eyes when she learned her little brother had survived, when she learned that everyone else was dead. I could never learn to know it. I pray no one else will.
Liberation. She wanders home to the ruins of Antwerp, the first Rosh Hashanah service in years. A new year, a new beginning. A young air mechanic winks at her from the pews, and two months later she’s on a boat to meet him in Canada.
It wasn’t what she expected.
Small house. Husband selling door to door. No more glamour, servants, familiar faces—nothing. She cries about the world she has lost and my grandfather says, “Do you want me to send you back?”
Copyright © 2010 by Daniel Shawn Otis
