Daughter of Hope

Taken from the condemned.  I will never forget the smell.

Her name was Yennj.  She was middle-aged with grown children.  She and her husband were business owners.  She liked to garden.  Her universe revolved around her family.  I related to her immediately. 

She and Heinrich, her husband thought often of leaving their small town in France to begin new lives in America.  But for this reason and that they never made it happen.

They died in a gas chamber in Auschwitz.

I gripped the biography card in my hand, handed to each of us at the beginning, as I wound my way through the maze of the Holocaust museum.  At one point I tossed the card into my purse, then fished it back out.  I wanted the tactile reminder that the images and objects before me came from and about real people.  People like Yennj.

Her name was Maya.  She was young, beautiful, and spoke impeccable English with a soft accent.  She stood just behind me as I waited to get into the Holocaust museum for my second visit this week.  My students kept asking if we could find the time to go.  After my initial visit I knew they needed to go.  They needed to experience what I had experienced on my first visit.  I promised them we would find the time. 

“Today is National Holocaust Remembrance Day in Israel, you know.”  I turned to the sound of her voice and stared into the beautiful eyes of the speaker.  “Today, yes,” she replied to my unspoken questions.  Her eyes bored into mine.  I asked if she was from Israel.  She nodded.   “Today we remember that dark time for our people.”  She smiled and I liked her immediately.  She was in America for a visit and had timed her trip to the museum to coincide with her nation’s observance.

The questions began as a trickle and bubbled to a gush.  How was it she happened to be here on such a day?  Did she know anyone who had suffered during the Holocaust?  How do her fellow countrymen feel about the United States?  What are her thoughts on the Iranian nuclear deal?  Each question lead to another question and comprehensive answer.

Maya stayed by my side as we were handed our tickets and began to wind our way through the exhibits.  She commented on each one with perspective few Americans could possibly understand.  Her story began as we waited for tickets and continued to be filled in as we walked together.  I know I stared too much and too often.  I could not help it.  I was stunned. 

Here it is.

Her Polish grandmother was sixteen years old when she and her parents were loaded onto a rail car headed for the Treblinka extermination camp.  Upon arrival she and her parents were chosen for the gas chamber.  Her grandmother was not immediately pushed into line for the “final solution.”  Instead she sat outside for twenty-four agonizing hours waiting for orders.  Waiting for the end. 

A Nazi prison guard approached her at the end of her first full day in Treblinka.  “Yesterday’s arrivals will work!,”  he shouted.  And with that she began six years of forced labor in one of the most brutal concentration camps of WW II.  But she was alive.

Her grandfather, also a teenager at the time, was also loaded onto a cattle car bound for death, or near death.  While the train roared through a forested area, an elder behind him urged him to jump and try to escape whatever lay ahead for them all.  Her grandfather and the friend beside him decided it was worth the risk and leaped from the train in the middle of the forest.  They both survived the jump and escaped detection.  They remained in the remote forest, living off leaves and whatever edible substances they could forage for until the end of the war. His friend did not survive, but Maya’s grandfather did. 

Eventually, her grandparents met, married and immigrated to Israel, where they raised a family.

I stood transfixed as Maya’s tale unraveled before me like a ball of yarn that has escaped clumsy hands and rolled across the floor.  I couldn’t speak.   There is really nothing to say in the face of such raw agony.

“Could it happen again, Maya?  These awful things against your people, could they happen again?  She nodded without hesitation.  “It could happen in an instant,” she replied sadly. 

I sat just to her right and behind as we sat through a short video describing the campaign against the Jewish people of Europe.  I watched her brush tears from her beautiful eyes and felt my own fill with liquid sorrow.  It was agony for me.  How much more so for her?

Near the beginning of my excursion I felt the ever present need to take pictures.  For reasons I cannot explain, it suddenly seemed gauche to do so.  I chose instead to let the shocking images filter into my mind through trickles and atomic blasts.  On my first tour, I separated myself from the group so that I wouldn’t defile my experience with inane small talk.  I wanted to absorb on my own terms and at my own pace.  To have Maya at my side for my second tour was a gift.

Yennj, my assigned victim of the Holocaust, her husband, and daughter were eventually deported to Aushwitz, where they all perished. 

Maya is a reminder that even when humanity is at its most depraved, there are small beacons of sunshine that break through the roiling clouds.  She is a daughter of Hope.

Maya relayed that her grandmother had decided that God is not real.  How could a loving God allow such atrocities?  “God was not in that place with us,” her grandmother deduced.  Elie Weisz said much the same thing. 

“Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, which has turned my life into one long night, seven times cursed and seven times sealed....Never shall I forget those moments which murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to dust. Never shall I forget these things, even if I am condemned to live as long as God Himself. Never.”
― Elie Wiesel, Night  

I will not commit sacrilege here by dissecting such screams from broken hearts.  Only those who stepped of those train cars and into the night of evil are allowed that privilege.  But I contend that God WAS there.  Maya’s very life was proof of that.  Out of horror came this beautiful woman who tore open my heart then softly applied pressure to the wound.

I do not think the intersection of our paths was coincidence.  She and I were meant to meet and share Communion bread for a brief moment. 

We hugged at the end.  I had a tight schedule to keep and she had other sights to visit.  We exchanged information and promised to stay in touch.  I hope we do.  I think we will.

I walked away from that building filled with horror and hope and felt a renewed sense of the divine. 

And so I share Maya’s story here with you.

I am changed.
I hope you will be too.

“Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.“-  

George Santayana

P.S.  Please visit the Holocaust museum if you are ever able to do so. 

http://www.ushmm.org/

Maya found her grandmother's village on this wall listing those that were destroyed by the Nazis

Maya and me

Full-Time Teacher/Part-Time Road Supervisor

You may not be aware that I have served several terms as a professional politician.  That’s right.  I have worked for the people for something like fifteen years, and I am drunk with power.

There are a few things you may know (or think you know) about North Dakota.  We are rural.  We are a part of the Great Plains.  We can get a wee bit chilly in January.  As with other states, our counties are divided into townships, generally a surface area of thirty six square miles, or so.  The last census states that our township population is a crowded thirty-seven.  Not hundred or thousand.  Just thirty-seven.  Let’s just call it my own little kingdom.

Not long after my little brood moved to North Dakota seventeen years ago, the local Township officials asked the Hubster and myself to consider allowing our names to run for the Township board.  Bing, bang, boom, we’re both sitting on the board.  My first elected position came with the daunting title of “Road Supervisor.”  Say WHAT?!  “Don’t worry,” the board assured me.  “It’s not difficult.  Just let us have our meetings at your house and make pie.”  This might be doable, I decided.

And so, the years have rolled along with election after election finding me in one board position or another.   And the pies (or cookies, or muffins, or on a really busy day – Girl Scout cookies) kept coming.  All this glory came with a paycheck too.  You think we politicians get wealthy off the public dime?  You are correct.  We live the high life, thanks to your tax dollars.  Our little circle of fat cats meets twice a year and for each meeting, we receive a golden check for…..

…. twenty-five dollars.

That buys a lot of cruises and vacation homes, sister.  I am sorry if you are outraged.  Let your voice be heard at the next election.

You may be wondering what I did in exchange for all that denaro, besides bake and vote.  Honestly, not that much.  The old timers drove the roads in order to fill out the annual maps that indicated which needed county maintenance.  They seemed to enjoy it.  I didn’t have the time.  I had pies to bake.

That all changed yesterday.  When I got home from school, the dishy Mr. Dahl informed me I had a phone message I needed to listen to.  I listened.  Apparently I had an angry constituent.  Well, I’ll be dogged.  That’s a first.  I had a sinking feeling I was about to earn that $25.

I won’t bore you with the details – information really too technical for you laypeople.  The Readers Digest version is that heavy trucks had torn up a section of gravel road.  Mr. Dishy had informed me before I placed the call that the company responsible was already on it and would make it right.  I shared all of that with my unhappy caller.  He seemed assuaged and at my urging, promised to call in a couple of days if things were not better.

I hung up and felt better about all of those cashed $25 checks. 

On my way home from work today, I decided to go all the way.  As I drove by that Road to Ruin I thought I should stop by and see if any work had indeed been done.  Sure enough, there were gigantic machines lumbering down an impressively long stretch of road.  I could see why my neighbor had been unhappy. 

I brought the Chrysler to a stop and stepped into the frigid wind (when had the day turned so bitterly cold?).  I idly wished I had a badge or Road Supervisor uniform, or even better, a pink hardhat with rhinestones.  I watched the massive machines smooth the road for a few minutes and before long the largest of the lot backed toward me and stopped next to me.  The operator opened his door and shouted over the noise of the engine that I could pass on by.  I shook my head and grinned.  “I’m the road supervisor,” I shouted back.  The look of shock on his face made me laugh.  He grinned back, stopped his giant toy, and hopped out of the cab.  He held out his hand and introduced himself.  He then spent ten minutes regaling me with how-to-fix-a-road details and the plans to make it better than ever.  I nodded and smiled and pretended that I was something of good road/bad road expert.  I know what a pothole is, if that counts.  I probably had that glazed over look men get when a gaggle of women swap childbirth stories.

I told him about my phone call and the safety concerns that had been expressed and now it was his turn to nod and smile.  After six minutes I was shivering in the Arctic gale winds.  After ten minutes I was sure hypothermia was setting in.  Time to wrap up the convo. 

I climbed into my rolling sauna and pulled back onto the highway.  I couldn’t help but giggle.  If you had told me twenty years ago that this St. Louis native would live on the northern prairie and drive around checking on road maintenance, I would have laughed my fool head off.  I mean, isn’t life just the absolute biggest kick?  I love it.

So if you need an expert to look your road over or need helpful tips on how to deal with burly road crews, just give me a call.  I do consulting work. 

Oh, and I’ll bring a pie too…