The Things We Cannot Say

by Kelly Rimmer

Every other piece of news in those past months had changed things, and never for the better, so I told myself that even deafening silence was preferable to noise if the noise always ended in grief.

“Hitler wants land and power, and it is much easier to convince an army to die for you when you have an enemy to fight,” Father said, quite gently. “And the Jews make for an easy enemy, because people will always hate what is different.”

“It might not be much, but all we can offer you is to protect you when we can, and sometimes that means to relieve you of the heavy burden of secrets. One day you’ll be grateful that we kept you busy and kept your focus on survival. One day, daughter, all of this suffering will be contained in your memories, and you’ll be free.”

There are some moments in life that are distorted by anticipation. It has a way of warping our expectations—inflating them somehow. This was not one of those moments.

“Home is not the country we stand in—it’s us. Home is the future we have been planning and dreaming of. We can build it anywhere.

Don’t you see? To stay is to accept death at the hands of these monsters, and they have taken enough from us both already. Our only choice is to try to run.” “What if we try and fail?” “Then…” He paused, and for a moment, fumbled for words, then he whispered, “Well, Alina? At least we will fail together. That’s worth something, isn’t it?”

I didn’t yet understand the horrific depths of the evil of the Nazi agenda—but somehow in the moonlight that night, I felt the loss of humanity, a very pause in the heartbeat of our shared existence on this planet.

And in those too-brief days in the cellar I had once been so terrified of, I proved to myself once and for all—happiness really could be found anywhere, just as long as Tomasz was with me.

“To freedom, Alina. And I’ll be there to hold you. I’ll hold you for the whole damned journey.” “Then I will survive it well.” I smiled at him, and I believed it with all of my heart as I said, “As long as you are with me, I can survive anything.”

What happens when stories like theirs are lost? What happens when there’s no one left to pass your experience on to, or you just can’t bring yourself to share it?

“We will always find our way back to each other, Alina,” he breathed, when we broke apart. “Our love is bigger than this war—I promise you that.”

“It is the only truth I live by. Everything else is gone. We are made for each other…meant to be together. It doesn’t matter what happens in this life or the next, Alina. We’ll always find our way back to each other.”

He reached forward and kissed me again then. This kiss was different from any other we’d shared. It was a plea, a promise, and a farewell.

Sometimes you have to smash the damn door down. I can’t walk away. I just can’t give up this easily.

Those hints of daylight were actually glimpses of something even more precious—I could see freedom through the cracks of the wall of that cattle cart, as ever so slowly, it dawned upon me that I was actually out of occupied Poland. Although I was a long way from safe and a long way from settled, I was finally free from the Nazis.

“War breaks us down to nothing more than our most selfish will to survive—but when we rise above that instinct, miracles can still happen.

I knew with absolute certainty that small problems in a country can become immense tragedies when left unchecked. It started small in Germany. It even started small in Poland, long before the occupation. It started with a small group of people harassing and vandalizing and desecrating, and it ended with trainloads of my countrymen shipped to furnaces and dumped into a river.

Life has a way of shattering our expectations, of leaving our hopes in pieces without explanation. But when there’s love in a family, the fragments left behind from our shattered dreams can always be pulled together again, even if the end result is a mosaic.

Our family life is never going to be easy, but that can’t stop any one of us from reaching for our dreams. It cost our ancestors too damned much for us to have this life—the best thing we can do to honor them is to live it to its fullest.