Wednesday, November 2, 2016

Magnificently Poignant: "The Lost and the Saved"

Read the whole thing and take a few moments to really consider the haunting photographs:

"At the station, Avigail watched as the iron locomotive ground to a halt, its billowing smoke rings swirling through the crisp air of the September afternoon. As Avigail and her mother waited and waited, the anticipation was mounting. Reluctantly, Adel’s face turned white as she boarded the train holding Avigail’s hand. At the last moment, Manis appeared with the look of a defeated man. There was no family at his side."

"Adel remained silent, her sad eyes following the suitcase as she passed it through the window into the large rugged hands of Manis. Avigail remembered that she pushed her head out the window as Manis, frozen in time, motionless, was left holding the suitcase. As the train departed, Avigail watched as Manis became smaller on the horizon until he disappeared into the distance. This memory, she said, was as vivid today as it was more than 75 years ago."
"Adel and her daughter Avigail headed to Istanbul, boarding a freighter to Palestine. It was during their voyage home that they learned theirs was the last ship to depart before the Nazi blitzkrieg of Poland. They, too, could have been trapped. Instead, they headed to Palestine to build a new life and a new country."

"Manis, his wife, his wife’s parents, and their children would disappear. History records that by 1942, the entire Jewish population of Sniatyn was brutally murdered in the nearby forest, or sent to their death in Belzec concentration camp."