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Separated when Josio is drafted into the army, reunited amid the chaos of the war, their connection endures as their persecution intensifies. When everything they hold dear is lost, together they build a new future.
On July 21, a beautiful sunny day in , I found myself sitting in the ruins of our house, crying bitterly. The little town of Kozowa, where I was born on December 9, , had been destroyed. After I could cry no more, I just sat there thinking and dreaming, watching my life pass before me. My hometown, Kozowa, was in Poland now western Ukraine , the area known as Galicia.
It was built among meadows and fields of corn and wheat that stretched for miles. In my mind it came to life in front of my eyes like an oasis in the middle of a desert. I could see the centre of town where there was a marketplace with a round building containing three stores and two groceries. Around the marketplace, streets branched out in all directions. I used to love to run down the hill from the marketplace to my home.
After turning the corner and walking up a few steps, I would reach our big, brown front door. I loved living in Kozowa. The summers were beautiful, not too hot or humid, and the air was always clean, making it a pleasure to take a deep breath. I used to go for long walks in the fields to pick wild flowers or just to get a little sun on my face. On a nice sunny afternoon in July or August, I would dress in a dirndl and sandals, put a ribbon in my hair and walk down to the train station with one of my girlfriends.
It was a beautiful walk. We would take a short cut through the schoolyard and then through a garden that looked almost like a park. The garden was private property but had a path that led to the Koropiec River. The water was so shallow that we could even walk across it.
The riverbed was uneven and the water ran swiftly downstream, like a miniature waterfall. Over that waterfall was a little bridge. We would take our shoes off and walk across the board in our bare feet. On the other side of the river was another path between gardens — mostly vegetable gardens — where a herd of goats roamed.
We often talked to the goats, and sometimes they even followed us. But they must have spotted the two air pipes sticking out," my mother would tell us. When the Germans finally left, some people who had survived the ghetto massacre came to my mother's house and opened the cave, pulling the members of her family out one by one. At first, they thought everyone had suffocated. But as the corpses of her family were being loaded onto wagons, someone noticed my mother's eyelid flutter. They poured water on her, and she was revived.
A miracle! I was shocked and angry, and asked them, 'Why did you revive me? Now I'm all alone. Afterward, my father, who had been dating my mother, took her to his family's home. When they heard of the Nazis' plans to make the town "Judenrein" clean of Jews -- they intended to kill everyone remaining in the ghetto -- my parents fled, and for the next 14 months they depended on their wits and the kindness and courage of Gentile strangers while they scrambled to hide.
While many Holocaust survivors refuse to speak of wartime atrocities, keeping their pain locked inside forever, my parents believed that talk was therapeutic. And so, my sister and I listened. Sometimes, I would hide under my bed when I didn't want to hear the dark "war stories" any more. But my parents wore their tortured past like badges of honour, and while I secretly wished they had been born in Canada, and had nice, normal lives like my friends' parents, I was always fiercely proud of them, and their ability to not only survive, but flourish.
Their courage and tenacity fuelled my desire to lead an extraordinary life -- and to realize all the dreams they never could.
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