Summer 2006
Englewood, New Jersey
“Elias drove without sleeping, straight through, for thirty hours,” Mother says as we gaze out the window at the full moon, now high in the sky. “We stopped four times for supplies. Adele’s contacts had food ready for us, different cars, and a new set of papers at each stop. God knows how many people your father paid off to ensure our safety.”
And only God knows my mother’s terror and bravery. Our lives feel like something out of a movie. Not for the first time today, I wish I could remember more—the joy and love and terror and pain, so I could be a better witness to my mother’s life.
I reach for her hand. Even chilled, it’s more comforting than I can explain.
“I didn’t sleep a wink,” she says before letting out a mammoth yawn. She doesn’t protest when I suggest she lie down awhile, and lets me tuck her in with a knitted throw.
“We went south at first, toward Bern. That was the riskiest part, but it was easier to cross into France from there.” Mother moves a finger through the air, tracing a path along the invisible map in front of her. “Then across France into Spain, and finally, Portugal. It took six weeks to secure passage from Lisbon, but Elias stayed on to look after us. He found an apartment, and we posed as a family. He even hired an English tutor. Elias stayed until the end. He was the last face I saw when we left port.”
“And then America. A new life.” I’m here because of the help and sacrifice of dozens of people—my parents, Adele, Elias, Lisel, Alex, and many more whose names I will never know.
Mother nods. “Yes. And I came full circle, thanks to your father,” she says, eyes soft with love. “The set of papers waiting for me in Lisbon were for a German woman named Allina Strauss. He remembered. First I was Allina Strauss, then Allina Gottlieb, then Allina von Strassberg, and, finally, I became Allina Strauss again. He gave me back my name.”
We’ve cried so much today, but it seems there’s no end to our tears. Here’s a truth I hadn’t anticipated, and maybe one more reason for all the years of secrets.
“I think it was a final message from him, Mama. He wanted you to leave all the pain behind.”
“Maybe.” She sniffs, fussing with a crumpled tissue to wipe our tears. “Adele and I traded letters at first, but she died in 1944. Heart attack. Lisel wrote in her stead to stay in touch, but I cut contact.” Her lips tremble. “Ten years after the war ended, I received a letter from Rilla. I don’t know how she found me. I never wrote back.”
“Did you find out what happened to Karin, your friend from Badensburg?”
She shakes her head, lips tipped down in regret. “No. No, I never looked for her.”
“You needed to leave the past in the past.”
She nods, takes my hand. “Yes. That’s exactly so.”
There’s another question I’ve wanted to ask for hours, one I’ve hesitated over, but the new ease between us gives me courage. “Mama, you never raised me in the Jewish faith. Is that why? You needed to leave the past in the past?”
We didn’t attend religious services when I was growing up. Instead, every weekend was filled with activities—library and museum visits, English tutors, sports practice—always pushing forward toward my future. To the American Dream she’d worked so hard to give me.
“Partly.” Her shoulders lift and she offers a lopsided smile. “God and I have always had a complicated relationship,” she says, glancing down at our linked hands. “I was angry at him for a long time. Why would he allow such evil to thrive in the world?” She shakes her head, purses her lips as if trying to hold back the words.
I nod, waiting.
“After you went away to college, I tried. I attended Shabbat services for a short while, hoping to find a measure of peace. Hoping to find my mother again. But it only brought back the pain, and the memories. Of your father and the choices we made, all the children we couldn’t save. So I stopped. I never went back.”
My mother had buried that grief in her heart again, hidden it as surely as the box under the floorboards in her bedroom closet. She’d denied her faith and culture—alone with all those secrets and pain that festered over decades.
How tragically history has repeated itself in my family. How high a price they’ve paid.
“Perhaps you could try again, Mama,” I say, cupping her cheek. “I could go with you. I want to.” With the truth now linking us, it can’t be too late. There are more stories to tell, and joy to be found.
“I’d like that.” Her smile is genuine and soft, and a little sleepy. “Was I wrong, Katchen? Did I fail you in that way, too?”
“No, Mama.” I kiss the forehead of this fierce, resilient woman who lost so much, yet gave me everything she could. “You were right. You did everything right.”