Letter from my Father (26 page)

Isabel Allende wrote in
The House of the Spirits
:

My observation is that if grief, rage and terror – any of the primitive emotions – are experienced with enough furious intensity, some unanalysable critical point is likely to be reached. Then something occurs. It can be a glance, a word, a blow, an incident. The mind flips over, changes its set and without the intervention of the will, perceives the possibility of a new direction.

I visited the Galapagos Islands to which Jonathan had travelled as a young man. He had come back with
Mum, it is paradise. You must go there
. I felt compelled not to delay any longer. I travelled with my friend Lea, since Sam was not able to climb and walk the rough terrain. Lea and I had shared a tent on my second trek to the Annapurnas.

The volcanic Galapagos Islands are rich in wildlife and best known for the species that were studied by Charles Darwin. Their isolation has ensured the survival of ancient animals such as giant tortoises, marine iguanas, sea lions and the wondrous albatross, as well as the blue-footed booby. The absence of man-made noise creates a sense of timelessness. The islands provide a direct encounter with the laws of nature, survival of the species at all costs, necessitating adaptations to changing environments, fighting off competitors and creative methods of camouflage. Our small group of humans was able to walk about and observe the doings of these animals as if we were invisible. On the rugged and starkly beautiful Espanola Island we saw some albatross nesting. They mate for life, forty to fifty years. The male of one such couple was standing by while the female sat incubating its
one large egg, with dignity and patience. She was engaged in the one vital task that needed to be done at that point, attending to her young. No multi-tasking. No search for the meaning of life.

Another incident affected me deeply. We landed in our tender on a beach with the whitest of sands and deep blue waters, to find a colony of sea lions, the adults mostly sunbathing and the pups frolicking, diving in and out of the water and feeding. Some of the female lions had gone off for up to ten days to forage for food and fatten up, leaving their pups to fend for themselves. During this period the pups did not eat and became visibly thinner. We noticed one pup approach a cow which already had a couple of her own pups suckling at her teats. The pup lay down and started feeding along with the others. Instantly the mother turned, growled fiercely at him and pushed him away with a blow from her powerful flipper. He was not family.

The pup retreated and stood forlornly on the beach some distance from the shore, quite alone. Suddenly something in the water caught his eye. We followed his gaze and saw in the distance a cow swimming towards the shore. He focused on what we guessed was his mother returning from her hunt. He waddled as fast as he could towards her, using his flippers to propel himself. Mother and pup reached the edge of the water at the same moment and their whiskered mouths touched. The exhausted mother then collapsed on the beach. Her pup did not immediately seek to feed. Rather he moved in a relaxed and playful manner around the resting figure of his mother.

I had spent years learning about the significance of attachment between children and parents but had rarely seen this so powerfully demonstrated.

On our last day, on Floreana Island, we walked along the rugged coastline to arrive in the late afternoon at an isolated beach. As I stood taking in the darkening water and sky and
the frigate birds hovering above the cliffs, so remote from the hassle of our lives, I felt a rare sense of tranquillity. I thought about the struggle for survival we had witnessed in the Galapagos and the privilege of life.

Back in Sydney Anna asked if she could interview me for a school project on Holocaust survivors. She came over one Sunday afternoon and, in the quiet room, wondered aloud about the impact on four-year-old Ester of her parents disappearing from her life. I began to talk about what I had written in
Light from the Ashes
, then stopped and said:
I suppose it is this fear of being abandoned, a fear that is often overwhelming. Even though my brain tells me that my father and mother never abandoned me – in fact, nobody did, my parents with every fibre of their being wanting to save their child – still part of me, the child part, feels abandoned. My brain has to keep on talking to my feelings.

With tears in her eyes, Anna nodded her head in understanding. We were joined in empathy for that four-year-old. I could not bear her sadness, so continued:
Ester has had a lot of sorrow in her life, but there are also positives.
She turned to me and quite forcefully exclaimed:
How can there be anything positive in all these bad things?

I told her that while there was absolutely nothing positive in unkind acts and painful losses, I still believed that my experiences gave me the understanding and motivation to work with people who have been targets of prejudice and racism. I have empathy for and am able to work with children who are hurt or damaged by powerful adults.

Last Friday night, my family came for dinner. In preparing it, as always I considered each of my grandchildren's food likes and dislikes and catered accordingly. I would never embark on Friday night without preparing Adrian's favourite carrot fritters or Anna's and Rachel's strawberries. According to our tradition, the table was decorated with colourful napkins, the traditional plaited bread covered with a special
embroidered cloth and white candles in silver candlesticks waiting to be lit.

As the family, including Ruth's mother, arrived, I observed how each of my granddaughters and grandsons was a bit taller or sporting a new haircut or outfit. They assured me that I had become a little shorter since they last saw me. I warmly embraced and kissed the girls, who readily reciprocated, while the boys either brushed my cheek or avoided altogether such unmanly behaviour as kissing their grandmother. But I could rely on Simon to give me a life-affirming hug.

There they were sitting around the table: my family. Looking at my five grandchildren, all moving towards young adulthood, I had a moment of acute awareness that here were the great-grandchildren of my father Szulem and mother Chana. The continuity of family made me feel as if my soul were being stroked. It brought me close to tears.

Rachel and Anna recited together our traditional prayer before lighting the Sabbath candles. They prayed that God
keep far from us all manner of shame, grief, and care, and grant that peace, light and joy ever abide in our home.
Then, standing together, the girls covered their eyes with their hands and said the blessing over the lit candles. We said
Amen
and
Shabbat Shalom
and then there was kissing around the table which even the boys could not escape. At dinner, there was laughter, political discussion and joking.

Dessert included the expected Nena Ester fare: strawberries with raspberry coulis, chocolate cake and a pear tart. Some chess was played later on. It was a wonderful evening, good to be there with the family.

15 January, 1949

My experiences during the Nazi Occupation

I was born in Rzeszow in 1938. In 1939 my parents and I travelled to Mikulince. From there the Germans made us go to Zbaraz. There I lived with my parents in the ghetto. It was very bad for us. We lived with other families in the same room. We had neither food nor heating. But this was not as terrible as during an
aktia
. During an aktia we hid in a shelter deep underground. Those terrible Germans would discover a shelter and then they would kill the Jews straight away but some were transported naked and barefoot to Belzec to be burned. Such terrible things were taking place which I cannot describe. My parents knew that the Germans would kill us, so they gave me to a Polish woman, and they themselves went to the forest to hide.

That Polish woman was very bad to me. I had to play with her little children when I was 5 years old. She did not give me food and she beat me. Often I would sit in a corner and cried for my parents. I knew they were not alive because they did not write to me.

At times I would see through the window how the Germans drove Jews to work and how they beat them. It was hard to look at that.

In the spring of 1944, I was liberated by the Soviets. The Polish woman with whom I had been took me to my auntie, with whom I am now.

Hadasa Braun

Note: This is an English translation from Polish of a Testimony by 10-year-old Dasia (Hadasa Kahane Braun), deposited at Yad Vashem by the Central Historical Committee of Liberated Jews in Munich.