Broken Beginnings: Chapter Twenty Four:

Chapter Twenty Four:

We didn’t look human, we were merely more than walking skeletons. The fact that we could even walk was astonishing.

Some made it to liberation, simply to collapse and die as we were freed. Exhausted to fight any longer but strong enough to hang on long enough to make the Nazi’s realize that they were not going to win this battle as if to say I’m not going to give you the satisfaction of dying while I was still your prisoner.

I had seen old black and white photos of the Holocaust survivors, so thin it seemed that with the slightest misstep they might break in true. I tried to picture Bubbe looking so fragile but my mind would not allow me to picture my Bubbe in such a weak state.

Some people eat so much, so fast they die, starving bodies are put into shock when they do this. I eat slowly, deliberately, stopping long before I am full. I am going to be careful, I do not wish to die. Someday I will go to America just as my family dreamed, I will go for all of us.

The soldiers are kind, they do their best to help us, but I see sadness in their eyes as they realize Help came to late for many.

I closed my eyes, picturing Bubbe’s beautiful smile, her kind eyes, her gentle spirit. She was strong and firm when she needed to be, and she had refused to be intimidated or bullied or watch as others intimidated those who were weaker. Bubbe did not tolerate bullies and that was part of what had allowed her to fight so hard for others. She would not be bullied and she would not sit back and watch as others were bullied.

As the days move, less and less die, because with food we are able to gain the strength we need to survive, we have survived at least physically but many have built this wall of silence around ourselves, afraid to let anyone penetrate it. For many it has become like a secret armor, an armor like the ones in those stories Mother and Father used to tell me.

I know they are dead, that I will never see them again on this side of Paradise but I feel them with me, I know because of them I found the strength to survive them and YHWH of course.

They tried to strip me of my very Faith, but I refused, the worse it got the more fervently I prayed, calling out to Adonai…