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She was laughing and crying—something about my snow boots and money and ahusband and childrenand a newspaper. Over the sound of her sobs and mine, I couldn’t make out half of the words. But who cared about specifics? I was speaking with a real-lifemiracle. It was some time before we calmed down enough to swap stories through our sobs.
“I had two precious years with my family after I escaped Germany, and then two years in the Krakow Ghetto with them too,” she said, but the smile in her voice faded as she went on. “I survived two years in Auschwitz, although I cannot tell you how. They all died—Grandfather and Mama and Moshe’s wife and son on the first day at the selection, then Moshe a few weeks later. It was hell on earth, Sofie—things I cannot even allow myself to think of now—but later, when we meet in person, I will tell you...”
“You don’t have to,” I replied. “But if you want to, I’ll listen.”
“Andfinally, it seemed to be ending and Soviets were coming and those Nazi monsters sent us on the death march. For all of that time, I’d held on to those snow boots of yours. Some nights I would be sleeping on the ground, so cold and scared and tired, but at least my feet were warm, and I always thought of you. Every night, I thought of you. We were liberated and I was taken to a Red Cross camp, and then I met Ben and I wrote to you.”
At this, I gasped.
“I didn’t get a letter from you!” I was so sure she’d write to me if she’d survived, so when years went by without word from her, I forced myself to come to terms with her death.
“Laura replied,” she said heavily. “She told me you and Jürgen had both been killed for disloyalty. She told me not to contact her again. So I thought you were gone. I mourned you.”
“Georg died toward the end of the war. He was shot fighting with his Hitler Youth unit. With Hans.” Jürgen had been holding my hand and passing me handkerchiefs throughout the call. At the mention of our first son’s name, he squeezed my hand. I stared at him through my tears as I admitted the truth about my daughter. “After the war ended, Laura struggled. She was grieving Georg and unable to let the Nazi ideology go. She and Hans turned to one another for support. At first I thought it was a good thing, because I knew Hans was heartbroken too. But while I was trying to drag Laura back into the real world, Lydia and Hans were determined to keep her in the old one. It breaks my heart that she would find your letter and lie to you, but it doesn’t surprise me.”
“I’m so sorry, Sofie. I’m just so sorry. Where is she now? Is she with you in Alabama?”
“In time, her relationship with Hans changed—and when I told her I was coming to America to be with Jürgen, she ran away to Lydia’s house. I tried to bring her home, but the housekeeper wouldn’t even let me see her. Just before we left, Lydia pushed a note through the mail slot to let me know Laura and Hans were married and didn’t want to hear from me again.” As I explained this to Mayim, I finally realized that the letters I’d been sending Laura since I left Germany would nevertrulyreach her, even if Lydia did pass them on, even if Laura did read them. “The end of the war came too late for her,” I said, finally accepting the truth myself.
Mayim told me about meeting her husband, Benjamin, at the Red Cross camp where he was working for the United Nations, and how they fell quickly in love and married only a few months later. They settled in Washington, DC, and had their daughters, Sidonie and Celina.
“I have everything I dreamed of,” she told me. “A beautiful home. A wonderful, handsome husband and my two beautiful girls. My life is a miracle, Sofie, and every single day I wake up and thank God for it. But then one day last week, Ben came home from work, just about jumping out of his skin because he recognized Jürgen’s name in the newspaper in an article about what happened in Huntsville.” She laughed weakly. “Ben knows all about you—I swear I’ve told him every story at least twice. And here we are.”
“And here we are,” I whispered, laughing through my tears.
There has to be an after, I told Jürgen the previous year when I first arrived in Huntsville. Hearing Mayim speak with such immense gratitude and hope as she told me about the blessings of her new life, I finally accepted a truth that had been gradually dawning on me since Jürgen was shot.
Afterwasn’t going to be a single moment when all of the trauma and the guilt disappeared and everything was okay. There would still be regrets and shame and nightmares and midnight anxieties, butaftermeantwaking up every morning and facing each day as it came. It meant extending grace to those who feared me and my family and giving our new community time to learn that we were more than just the mistakes of our past.Afterwould be truly mourning Georg and Laura, but it would also mean long car rides to see Mayim and to meet Ben and her children. It would mean never losing the wonder I felt that she had survived.
Afterwould mean living the second chance Jürgen and I stumbled into with constant gratitude, raising our children in love, to counter the immense hate we had seen.
That was how we moved on. And I was finally ready to begin.
