All But My Life: A Memoir

by Gerda Weissmann Klein

Finally Mama called us for dinner. It was as it had been all those years, those wonderful years of our childhood, when we played in our warm room, the autumn wind howling in the garden, the fire crackling in the dining room, all of us going there to share our delicious warm meal.

These thoughts were a wonderful escape from the present. Comfortingly, the past was unwinding before me, my wonderful childhood, safe and sheltered, too sheltered perhaps for what the years ahead were to bring, but full of lovely memories from which to draw strength.

I was fortunate to have had a happy childhood, one that in all probability was not as perfect as I have chosen to remember. But its memory has helped me survive, and I have used it as a beacon to illuminate the darkness of the tragedy that followed, just as I often use the darkness of past despair to show me the blessings which I might otherwise take for granted.