“No, I’m not ready,” he said then.
After the Germans invaded Poland, they confiscated his home, and his parents and younger sister moved in with his grandparents. Soon after, they were moved to the Plonsk, Poland, ghetto where they lived from 1940 until 1942, when they were deported to Auschwitz. His positive attitude, unfathomable as I pictured the challenges and horrors he was relaying, didn’t falter. I pushed the record button and he detailed how he survived in one camp, then another.
The guards loaded prisoners on a train bound for Bergen-Belsen and my father stayed behind with the hospital staff. “We thought they were going to kill everyone who couldn’t walk, but the German doctor in charge believed they wouldn’t,” he said. He remained with the group at the hospital while the prisoners marched out.
During his last few months, when his walker guided his weakened legs, I spent more time alone with my dad than I had in years — a luxury I craved as a middle child. He shared anecdotes about relatives I never met, the challenges he faced in a new country, and his favorite topic: family. Unlike other people who shut down after one-too-many probing questions, my father often said, “Ask me anything.
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