Mosaic has published a moving memoir, written by Czech Holocaust survivors, that’s well worth reading. “As the war ends and she comes down from the mountains of Slovakia, a Jewish girl discovers that she can still be ‘moved by something other than the mere struggle for existence,'” Mosaic says.
Here are the opening paragraphs:
It was still winter where we were. But truly we had descended into the Promised Land—starving, gaunt, in filthy clothes, the landscape below us green like a blurry watercolor, the air soothing beneath a glassy sky.
That April, the last remnants of snow trickled down the hillsides. The smell in the air was indescribable, unique, the breath of spring awakening that so clearly sets those few days apart from the rest of the year.
Up until then we had been in the mountains. Ten disparate, estranged humans in an underground hole, animals scenting danger, bunched together in a shivering cluster. Men and women of varying temperaments, personalities, opinions—and all around us Death. I was going on seventeen (the year that old ladies most fondly remember: dance parties, the first love notes), and even if young people do endure hardship more easily, there were moments when all I’d wanted was for it to be over, I didn’t care how. I couldn’t imagine ever being able to live again. Had it ever really been possible? Or was it just a beguiling fiction?
That April, the last remnants of snow trickled down the hillsides. The smell in the air was indescribable, unique, the breath of spring awakening that so clearly sets those few days apart from the rest of the year.
Up until then we had been in the mountains. Ten disparate, estranged humans in an underground hole, animals scenting danger, bunched together in a shivering cluster. Men and women of varying temperaments, personalities, opinions—and all around us Death. I was going on seventeen (the year that old ladies most fondly remember: dance parties, the first love notes), and even if young people do endure hardship more easily, there were moments when all I’d wanted was for it to be over, I didn’t care how. I couldn’t imagine ever being able to live again. Had it ever really been possible? Or was it just a beguiling fiction?
Whole thing here.
