The train rattled and shook, and eventually they arrived in the Auschwitz camp in Poland, where they were crammed into pens that looked like they should house cattle. There were thousands of other people stuck together in the pens, and armed guards watched over them with rifles.
Ariela saw a man try to escape, but it was hopeless, and he was shot to death in front of her.
There were bad rumors about what the guards would do to them at the prison camp, but nobody knew what was going to happen for sure.
Three days after they arrived in the camp, though, Russian soldiers stormed the area, and as fast as Ariela’s ordeal had begun, it was over. They were liberated, and eventually freed.
The Germans had surrendered.
Ariela and her parents were returned to Hungary, but their lives were never the same.
Eventually, she learned that six million Jews were slaughtered by the Germans under the leadership of Adolph Hitler. That was more than two-thirds of all the Jews alive in Europe. They were families, like her own, and it didn’t matter how old the people were. Women and children were killed first, because they had no value.
At Auschwitz, the preferred method was to use Zyklon B gas, which was a pesticide made of hydrogen cyanide. Ariela read how the Jews were stripped naked and told they were being taken for delousing and a shower. They were locked in the gas chambers and the Zyklon B released inside. Horrible shouts and screaming followed as the people suffocated. Then their bodies were hauled to the crematorium and burned.
When she was sixteen years old and found out about the history of the Holocaust, Ariela decided she no longer believed in God. After all, what kind of a God would allow a monster like Hitler to live?
Chapter 5
I stared into Grandma’s apartment from her doorway. I’d just unlocked it and let the door swing open. I half-expected to hear it creak, like I was walking into an ancient tomb, but it glided open without the slightest sound. It was just like her to get rid of any wayward squeaks.
My grandmother, Ariela Adelman, was that most perfect of perfectionists. It wasn’t that she was showing off or felt the need to compete with anyone. It was who she was. I remembered when I grew up that she never sat still to watch The Bachelor or Grey’s Anatomy on TV like some of my friends’ moms. She always worked. She cleaned, she washed dishes, she re-painted her bedroom, she took the garbage out to the dumpster in back when the bag got half-full, she balanced her check book, she walked half a mile each way three times a week to the grocery store, she dusted and vacuumed even when there wasn’t the slightest hint of dirt, and she raised me to be the best child she could.
She wasn’t doing any of that to impress anyone. Nobody visited her. Nobody cared. She only had me.
Now, her apartment was empty, and the silence seemed to roar at me. I hated it. It took me a moment to put my foot forward to get inside, because all I could think of was how I was violating her space.
Silly, I know, but that’s how it felt.
“Ridiculous,” I said to the walls. “You’re dead.”
Didn’t help.
In my mind’s eye, I saw her eyes light up and a broad grin spread across her face.
That contrasted with my last image of her, when her body swung up and she delivered what would be her last words.
“David, you must go to my home. Everything is waiting for you on the dining room table.”
The creepy image of her swinging up that way made me think of an old EC comic book, like Tales From the Crypt, where some forgotten and moldy body crawled out of his grave to chase the unsuspecting teenager.
“Stop that,” I told myself.
Yes, I have a habit of talking to myself when I’m alone. After all, I’m alone a lot. I like being by myself, but I hate the quiet. I’d rather have people think I’m crazy.
Grandma hadn’t had to tell me how to get into her apartment. She’d been living there for almost six years, since shortly after I moved out to live on my own. I was nineteen at the time and already selling photos to major newspapers and magazines.
When I left home, I think she felt abandoned and needed to find a different place to live so that she wouldn’t feel my ghostly presence everywhere. I’m only hypothesizing that, because she would never have said a word that would bring guilt to me. She said she wanted a place with a view.
So, anyhow, I knew she kept a spare key under a fake rock in the tiny garden outside the front door. I closed the door and switched on the lights.
I felt a little guilty, because it was after 9:00 p.m. and Grandma had clearly wanted me to find whatever the heck she’d left me. Unfortunately, there had been a lot of details to work through at the hospital. Not to mention my heart was broken.
Above all else, Miss Ariela Adelman was very Jewish. I knew she’d haunt me for the rest of my life if I screwed up her funeral.
According to Jewish custom, I knew Grandma had to be buried within seventy-two hours of her death, and not on the Sabbath, which ran from Friday evening to Saturday evening.
Today was Wednesday, so the burial had to happen even sooner, before sundown two days from now. I needed to arrange everything with the funeral home as fast as possible. That was just fucking wonderful. Pick out a coffin. Music. Notifications. The service. Was there a specific rabbi who should deliver it? I think my brain overflowed and I don’t remember what I even picked for most of the options. At least I didn’t have to worry about flowers. Jewish funerals didn’t have flowers.
I suspected I’d be the only one attending the service.
Confession time: even though Grandma tried desperately and even though I call myself Jewish, that’s really just a word to me—a word that has few concrete impacts.
I don’t believe in Grandma’s God any more than I believe in the Jesus that Christians follow. I will sneak a pizza with pepperoni or a ham and cheese sandwich, but at least I avoided doing that around her. I did respect her beliefs. I just couldn’t share them.
Grandma was the friendliest person in the world. But she also was afraid of almost everybody.
And who can blame her? Certainly not me.
I almost forgot not to let her be embalmed, but fortunately Jason Sanders, the funeral director, had seen many Jewish burials in his time.
After all the discussions, I sat in my car and cried. I don’t have a clue how long I stayed there, but eventually I blinked and it was twilight. I grabbed some tissues and wiped my eyes and blew my nose and pulled out of the funeral home parking lot to head to Grandma’s apartment.
“What’s here, Grandma?” I called. Of course, I knew she wouldn’t answer me, but there was always a chance somebody else was in her apartment—landlord, distant cousin, who knows?—so, I wanted to announce my presence and not walk in like I owned the place.
Nobody answered my shout.
I thought I could smell her, but that might have been my imagination. I knew I’d soon forget that smell, and that thought made me sad.
People die and then they die again. Grandma had died, and soon her scent would be lost forever. My memories of her would stop assaulting me every second, and eventually I’d only think of her once in a while, then only on special occasions.
Maybe one day, far from now, I’d think of her for the last time. My job takes me around the world. What if I abandoned Minneapolis and lived in Houston or New York? I’d have no obvious reminders of my grandmother, and one day, my last thought of her would be exactly that.
That’s when she’d be truly gone.
I wanted to vow never to let that day come. I would surround myself with reminders. I’d take her alarm clock wherever I moved and think of her as I woke each morning. I’d use the same brand of air freshener she used and I’d go to the synagogue for service each Friday evening.