1.
It was the story of their lives
but it guided my life.
I wasn’t even born
But I remember.

2.
I know the sting of the cold air
As my mother and her brother walk,
One behind the other
each careful not to touch, speak or acknowledge each other,
On the treacerous streets that are Warsaw in 1942.

3.
It could be ‘43 or even ‘40.
I know the stories but not the dates.
I feel their pain
I see the scenes.
But the stories come out in pieces
And there are no photos
so their journey through hell is a cracked tableau in my mind.

4.
Warsaw is a city I have never visited
The home of my parents
And their parents
And all the other dead relatives who could have peopled my life
but didn’t.
Like my mother’s brother,
who never lived to be my uncle,
They are strangers to me
But their stories are mine to imagine.

5.
For as long as I can remember
I have been given the Cliff Notes of
How My Parents Survived the Holocaust.
There are many terrible stories,
But this one is the worst
I think of it simply as Keep on Walking.
I take it as our family motto,
and my personal mantra.
I understand that these words are my parents’ instructions to me,
my obligation to them.

6.
This story begins as my blond mother trails her blond brother
On the sidewalks where Jews may not walk.
Hiding in plain sight
Walking as if they had lived there all their lives (which they had).
Coat sleeves unsullied by yellow armbands
Which would mark them as Jews (which they were).
They bravely make their way through the urban minefield
As if it is a stroll on the Champs Elysee
Except for the dead bodies of fallen Jews lying in the street.

7.
A brown-suited, brown booted young man
With a blazing red iron cross on his cap appears,
Pulls my uncle aside,
Pulls him off the sidewalk
Into the gutter,
Reserved for Jews and rats.
Pulls him out of the path of the ordinary,
Out of life going forward,
Towards the dungeons of the doomed.

8.
My mother knows her brother’s life is over
Sees his sweet face disappear
Remembers how they played and talked
And shared all of their lives
Feels herself crumble, scream, reach out, shrink and die herself.
But she does not even blink.
She does not stop.
She keeps on walking.

9.
Four decades later,
my own husband dies suddenly.
I sit in front of his casket
with our five year old boy on my lap.
As the funeral prayers are chanted,
I remember that my mother kept on walking,
I pull my child close to me,
and I whisper in his ear:
“This is not going to get us.
Do you hear me?
We are going to be fine.”

10.
I am always fine.
How can I complain that life is hard
when my mother kept on walking,
when my father hid in a hole in a wall?
Not a metaphor
But a real hole in the wall
of the attic apartment where my mother pretends to be living alone.

11.
I have heard their stories many times

12.
These were the stories of my childhood,
my Grimm’s fairy tales
Grim, indeed.

13.
I know a lot.
But I do not know what it really means
To live, as my father did for over a year,
below the streets of Warsaw
hiding in a sewer.

14.
So I become obsessed with watching movies
reading books
hearing stories
That tear my heart apart.
I need to fill in the missing pieces.
I need a picture book of my parents’ journey.
But there are no pictures and
filling out the stories will be my life’s project.
I am haunted by what I can imagine.
I am haunted by what I cannot imagine.

15.
The path of destruction left by the Nazis is far, deep and wide.
As a divorce mediator, I help others to let go
But I cannot let go of what the Nazis did to my parents
When I think about it-
And I think about it a lot-
I am enraged.

16.
I return again and again to therapy.
I turn to yoga.
I meditate.
I ruminate.
Pause, Breathe becomes my new mantra
But Keep on Walking feels more natural

Even so, I persevere.
Maybe, by the time I die, I will have calmed down.
I doubt it.

17.
In the meantime,
I write Holocaust poems.