The Polish Countryside
The meadows outside the window sway with the gentle breeze, dancing to a silent orchestra as they wave at the sky. The tall grass is a different shade of green from what I remember as a child, but when the sun blankets the earth, the golden hue returns, chasing away the cold. Ma would love it here—fresh air, birdsong, and insects trilling. Pa would be looking for scrap wood to build something—an addition to our house, a barn, and a swing for Flora. A swing big enough for him and Flora to share.
I built our house from the ground up. A place to call home, somewhere to raise a family, to share love and memories, an heirloom to pass on to the next generations. A way to keep me alive long after I’m gone. Pa said that’s what we were doing for people when we were building houses, but I have nothing left from him, nothing to hold onto. Nothing but his words and our memories. So I built this place. Made it perfect just like he would. Even added a barn and a tree swing.
Pa would be proud. I’m proud. And our family business is back up and running. Sometimes, I imagine Pa, Jozek, and Natan working alongside me, cracking jokes or wise comments, and I feel like we’ve gone back in time for just a moment. I’m carrying this business forward—keeping it alive just as I once promised to do.
Halina’s sitting at the kitchen table, her arms wound around Flora, who’s coloring another masterpiece of the grass, sun, and sky—half on paper, half on the table. Her legs dangle over Halina’s lap, her braids down her sides as two golden ropes with tight little curls framing her face. With a daily dose of endless, worldly questions mixed in with contagious giggles, I believe this little girl owns a sense of peace and safety. I gave them their first homes. Watching what it looks like from the inside paints a different picture of what I had always thought I was giving others when building their houses. I only ever saw it from the outside and imagined the inside. The inside…it’s warm, rich with scents of fresh bread and biscuits. The sunlight brightens up each room. It’s us. Our home together. Our new life.
Flora takes her drawing and twists around on Halina’s lap and pats her belly before flipping the paper upside down and backward. Then she whispers, “Do you like my picture, baby? I’ll teach you how to color lots of pictures soon too,” she croons. With a hand cupped around the side of her mouth to make her conversation a little more private, Flora continues. “I’m your big sister. So, I can teach you everything.”
Halina and I exchange a glance, a smile meeting a smile.
Flora’s cries, delays, pains—the ones that once felt unending, were all connected symptoms to an infant’s unsettled stomach. No doctor was able to give us an official name for what was wrong but told us we should wait and be patient. That she’d grow out of it as her digestion matured. And she did.
I turn for the sink to prepare the potatoes for our dinner, my hands still moving in a careful regiment of stiff, quick movements, no noise, no pausing—a remaining scar of prison life.
Someone was always watching. Waiting for us to trip.Sometimes I question if the walls have eyes. If the Nazis can still see us—still want to steal our happiness.
Daily, I must remind myself that the war is over. We’re safe. But the memories…they’ll never go away.
The reminders will never stop.
A letter arrived yesterday without a return address. A name isn’t needed. The words say it all. Halina read it first then left it face down on the counter without a word.
Heinrich Schäfer—tried and convicted. Hanged.
Thank you for saving us too, Halina.
–Ada
Halina watched as I read the short letter after she did. I read the one line several times, waiting to feel something…
I didn’t feel anger, or triumph, or closure. Just nothing.
No one knows how they will survive when leaving loved ones behind. Will they fall to pieces with broken hearts, grief stronger than the will to breathe, tears that could drown us in our sorrow?
Halina and I have forged our own way through grief together. We’ve learned how to let sorrow move through us like ocean waves—lifting us, dropping us, then lifting us up again. We know we won’t drown if we just let it pass.
Heinrich Schäfer was buried in our minds long before he faced a trial. We hoped the confession Halina wrote—the one she slipped beneath the commandant’s napkin during the dinner party, would be enough. The proof of taking another woman’schild, truths of his abuse to his wife, the way he tormented his children, and stole treasured goods from Jews at Auschwitz, is what was punishable, even from the view of a high-ranking Nazi. The murders—Adam, included—we had to wait for justice on those.
Ada likely got away with the crimes she committed. That was Halina’s hope—that Isla and Marlene might have a chance at a life untouched by the blood on their father’s hands. Knowing what I do about Auschwitz, I also believe Ada unknowingly saved Flora’s life. Most children did not survive that place.
There was no letter from my family. No notice to say my parents were shot and killed while stepping out of a cattle car, or that both of my brothers were worked to death then burned to ash. No ceremonies of remembrance, and no stone to kneel beside. Just a list of names among thousands, tucked in an archive. But I found them. And they will be with me forever, wherever I go.
Flora jumps off Halina’s lap and runs to my side with her drawing. “Look, Pa! You have to see my picture too!”
I dry my hands on a dishrag then take the paper in my hands and admire her drawing. It’s different from the series of sunshine and flowers she’s been focused on this week. Today, there’s three lopsided figures lined up with smiles and their hands joined…
“A dog,” I say, pointing at the first animal, “a cat, and…” There’s a little gray blob with a long arm and I’m not sure?—
“A mouse, Pa. It’s a mouse. It has a little pink nose,” she says with a squeak. “Can’t you see?”A dog, cat, and mouse. Of course.“They’re friends.”
“This—this is wonderful—absolutely beautiful, sweetheart,” I say, my heart swelling with joy and pride. “I think you know what we need to do now.”
“Tape it up!” she shrieks, jumping up and down as blonde curls pop out of her braids. I press a kiss to her forehead and hang the paper with the others on the wall—our makeshift gallery of Flora’s hope.
From the time we made it to Slovakia to moving back to Poland last year, Halina was relentless in her search for Flora’s mother. Countless aid stations and archive offices, waiting with bated breaths as clerks flipped through records. Halina left our contact information and the name of Flora’s mother on a note for every person who helped us, until we were handed a transport list to Auschwitz with Flora’s mother’s name among others, and an x marked in the box to label her as deceased.
