Miryam Howard offers you a poignant entry that spans the generations, arching through time, to an independence unimaginable by those who suffered and perished.

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Dedicated to the memory of 310,322 Jews who were deported from the Warsaw ghetto to extermination camps between July 22^nd to October 3^rd, 1942.

The summer months at my Bubbie Lucy’s beach house were what my life longed for all year long.  The summer of 1962, I was nine years old and my spoiled-rotten baby sister Hanna was five.  She was an annoyance to my JAP (Jewish American Princess) status, to say the least!  Leaving baby Hanna and traveling to Bubbie’s each summer was like getting my life back again, — an independence that freed my soul. Within Bubbie’s massive house, I would get lost in the forever-long hallways and cedar- lined closets that were as big as school busses. Each morning, we would eat our toast and jam together, and then Bubbie would let me pick out a record to put on the player. She liked music playing all the time, and she would say,

“Music carries our worries away.”

Sometimes she would take my hands in hers and we would twirl around the breakfast table, until we were so dizzy with laughter that we plopped down, right there on the floor!

But it was our evenings together that I cherished most. We always had several projects going, and at the end of the summer, it was a frenzied race to see if we could finish them all!  Picture puzzles –- sometimes two or three at once throughout the house. Doll clothes would be sewn by hand.  Booties for new babies feet were crocheted. My favorite of all activities however, was our summer memory book.  Bubbie would save glittery greeting cards, and bits and pieces of ribbon, which we would cut and paste on construction paper. We made paste from flour and water, as this was the way Bubbie always did it.  We would fill our scrapbook with silly poems, and pressed violets between waxed paper. We would outline our hands and toes. Comic strips from the Sunday paper, and saved stickers from fruit and vegetables were colorful additions as well. It was a whimsical mixture for sure!

We would finally lace up our pages with colorful yarn and seashells.  As we proudly admired our pages, Bubbie would recall when she was a girl in Poland and describe our family.  When she began reminiscing I could anticipate the box coming down from a special cupboard, and a serious look would unfold upon her sun-bronzed face.  As she opened the lid I could catch a familiar whiff of musty, suffocated wood, and the hinge sung out a squeak, as if it were announcing the beginning of a special event and knew well the contents it held within it’s chamber. Bubbie’s weathered hands would reach inside the box, and one by one, bring out bits and pieces of a life long ago.  She would tell me,

“Little one, we must never forget.”

I would cuddle next to her upon the green velvet sofa, as the evening light grew dim, and catch her tears with her embroidered hankie that she kept in her apron pocket.

As she held each tattered photo, she would speak of memories.

“Mamma and Papa hid me beneath the floorboards of our kitchen, as I was very tiny for my age of nine, and they made me swear to be silent.  I could hear the boots of the soldiers above my head and feel the dust falling on my face, as they drug them away, along with my sisters, Hanna and Avigail. Such screaming I will never forget. I continued to lie still in my hiding place for a very long time, and then finally, I crept carefully out from beneath the floorboards. Momma’s precious dishes were broken everywhere, and Papa’s shabbos hat was flattened on the floor.    I frantically gathered these photos and stuffed them in a pillowcase, which I tied around my waist, beneath my skirt, and I ran out in the darkness of the woods. I didn’t stop until daylight.  A farmer going to his barn at dawn heard me sobbing and found me huddled beneath a tree, and ‘Baruch HaShem’, (Blessed be His name) he took me inside to his wife, and they hid me within their family until the war was over.  I would never see my family again. A furnace at Birkenau would be their resting place.”

As my fingers traced the faces of the wrinkled photos, Bubbie would whisper softly,

“Wrinkles are a sign that Gd sees our pain, and such pain for freedom, little one, may we never know again.”

And she would kiss my forehead before I drifted off to sleep…..

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If you feel moved to write something of your own, please hurry. We’d hate to have you miss the July 31^st deadline:

www.awordwithyoupress.com/2010/07/04/we-hold-this-contest-to-be-self-evi