Writing Partners

Assisting Rose Brown and Ann Wigoda in writing their stories had a profound effect on me, helping to explain some of my own earliest memories. During the war, I was five years old and living in London, England. My mother, who was originally from Lodz, was frantically trying to get her parents and youngest sister out of Poland. Influential British friends of my parents who had contacts in various governments joined in the fight, but to no avail. I still have some of the letters of rejection. My mother suffered from survivor’s guilt for the rest of her life. At the end of the war, I accompanied her on frequent visits to Red Cross offices to study the latest lists of camp survivors. My grandparents, whom I never got to know, did not survive. Other relatives, two brothers, did, in very much the same way as Rose, through the unexpected kindness of prison guards. As I listened to the stories of Rose and Ann, I wondered whether any of my relatives had crossed paths with them. In London after the war, my mother learned of the atrocities perpetrated in Auschwitz from a woman who had been in the camp and come to live in London with her uncle. My mother never shared this information with me and my brother. Now, it feels as though I have come full circle. I have a deeper understanding of the horrors of the Holocaust. I think my mother would be proud to know of my small part in ensuring that these events never ever be forgotten.