The Day My Heart Broke

FranticFrummie

Sun, Aug 11 2013, 4:58 am

When DD was 8 years old, we went to London. While we were there we visited several museums, including the Jewish History Museum. It's a small place, a bit hard to find, but very nice. They had lots of good quality exhibits, Zionist history, Yiddish theater, Sephardim in Europe, etc. Of course, there was a section on the Holocaust.

The Holocaust exhibit had a special section for kids, where they talked about the kinder transport. There was a battered old suitcase, a teddy bear, and a small pair of old shoes. There was also a pad of paper and pencils. The kids were asked "If there was a war, and you had to get to safety, what would you pack if you only had a few seconds to get ready?" They asked kids to write down their answers and "pack" them in the suitcase, to become part of the exhibit.

DD had just gotten a video game for Chanukah, and it was a really big deal to her, so she wrote "My DSi game" on the paper and put it in. Then she thought about it a second, took it out, crumpled it up and threw it away. I thought she was going to write "Nigel, my stuffed monkey.", which she sleeps with every night, but I was wrong. She wrote again, very slowly and thoughtfully. "My mother's coat. It will keep me warm, and it will smell like her."

The realization hit me like a bolt of lightening. In that moment, I knew that she knew. She knew that I would not be with her, and that most likely I would not be alive, so I wouldn't need the coat anymore. She also knew that my scent would be her closest way of keeping my memory near.

I knew something that she didn't know, though. If she were to get on a different train, going in a different direction, she would be going to a place where they would strip that coat off of her, and she would spend the end of her life bereaved a second time, without even the comfort of my smell to keep her company.

Just like the other one million Jewish children who died.

And my heart broke.