Dear Mr Lite,
You probably don’t remember me but I remember you. Going to your store on Sundays was a treat for me. Your store was always our last stop in the wholesale houses we frequented for Grandpa’s store. Your happy smile and gentle words always offered a pleasant ending to a hectic day. We would eat lunch with you at the corner diner with the red Formica tables and the juke box attached to the wall. Your eyes were always so gentle, your smile so easy, and your movement so soft.
Then one day I reached across the table to run my 12 year old finger across your forearm. Why? Why did you always have that number so abruptly tattooed on your arm. Instantly your eyes turned clouded, your mouth went firm. The sadness trickled through your tissue papered skin and nestled directly to my heart. It has stayed there all these years, shaping the person I would grow into. Since your words of Holocaust. Auschwitz. Jewish. Killing. I have learned what your eyes sent me.
Today I walked the steps I knew I would visit since that day. A place where your sadness grew. I felt the sun and saw your smile. I heard the wind and felt your whisper. I touched the tracks that brought you here.
I used to think everything happened for a reason, like there was some grand plan for the good of all or a lesson to learn. I was wrong. There is no reason for the evil that lives here.
Today, I believe we have choices. Choices we make in the situations we may find ourselves. Choices of hope. Choices of action. Choices.
I walked places you walked and I wish I could say I’m stronger for it, that maybe your suffering could be less or that your dead family could smile once more.
I only offer my efforts on your behalf, to make the future filled more of your gentle ways, your happy eyes, and strength of will. Hope lives in you and I promise to carry it on.
The above is a letter that I’ve wanted to write for years. It’s based on the first time I learned what the Holocaust was from a man who lived through it. I have read and studied but nothing prepares a person to walk where evil thrived. The medical experiments, the torture rooms, the gas chambers, the smoke stacks, the concrete buildings that reflect the state of truth. It seems concrete is a theme for this trip. Hard cold facts. This trip has transformed me into…I don’t know what. But I am not the same.
Pamala Learn