My First Opera

This story is dedicated to Anita Rothfeld and all the opera lovers in this class

 My first opera I saw in Landsberg/Lech in Germany in 1946. My friend, Bluma, and I arrived at the Displaced Persons’ camp late Fall 1945 after a torturous journey from Mauthausen concentration camp where we were liberated via Vienna, then to our city in Poland. After disembarking in my city, Lodz, while standing on the station’s platform not knowing where to go, where to turn, a Polish man who also got off the train turned towards me remarking out loud, “There are still Jews left. I thought they killed them all off,” not realizing that I was one of those Jews.

After about two months in Poland, Bluma and I, with a few Jewish survivors we met, made our way to Berlin to the American zone. In Berlin an organization gave us our first identity cards and sent us to a Displaced Persons’ camp in Landsberg in Lech in Bavaria.

Trip to Poland

It was almost 4 pm and I was still at work.  Still undecided, if to go or not, when my co-worker implored me, “Why don’t you leave already, aren’t you taking the plane tonight?”  My anxiety intensified just to be reminded.  After hasty goodbyes, I left the office.  At home my suitcase was packed, the neighbor had the keys to the apartment to water the plants and pick up the mail.

I was supposed to meet my husband, Vachel, in Frankfurt the next morning and that night take the train to Warsaw.  Vachel was in Germany working on a movie.  Originally, he thought that after the filming was finished, he would go to Lodz, the city where I was born, ‘to walk on the cobblestones’ I ‘walked on,’ he proclaimed.  So I drew him a simple map of where my apartment was located at the end of the courtyard.  I also tried to teach him a few Polish words like, ‘dziekuje’ and ‘prosze’ which would be helpful.  But with his Midwestern accent, I didn’t think anyone would understand him.

One of our sons was staying with us for a week, and while listening to all the excitement of my husband going to Poland, turned to me saying: “Why don’t you go with dad, he will be lost there without you.”  My stomach sank, my throat contracted.  I thought, I’ll die.  I never, never thought of going back to Poland.

Guinea Pig

By Tonia Blair, a member of Get Your WordsWorth

Sometimes when I look at Morning Glory II, my cat, sprawled on his back on my husband’s reclining chair, waiting for a stomach rub, my thoughts go back to December 1939, when proclamations were posted on every building wall and fence, for all Jews to deliver their pet animals to the main market on Zielona street, by a certain day at the end of December.

Morning Glory II would have been considered a Jewish cat and his fate would have been sealed. When M-Glory looks at me so endearingly with his yellow-green eyes, I drop whatever I am doing, walk over to rub his belly, kiss him on his moist, pink nose, and try not to think of my Guinea Pig, who met his untimely end on that December day.

Since ever I was a little girl, I have loved animals.  I remember bringing home skinny little stray kittens and petting every dog I encountered.  One of those kittens caused a minor tragedy when, during the night, the kitten played with my girlfriend’s new stockings, turning them into an uneven gray ball.