and Breine and all of them were forced to live, and where none of them had been before, and where all of them tried to make it a home anyway.
G is for Gosia, Aunt Maja’s friend, who survived, and who will always be a connection to my past.
H can be for Hannelore, the little girl loved by the family she calls stepparents, and I can be for Inge, the mother she’ll never stop looking for.
J is for Josef.
K is Commander Kuznetsov, bringing a bottle of vodka, sending me to Foehrenwald.
L is for the Lederman family, the Chomickis and the Ledermans, and all the people in the family, because even though they are gone, I will carry their name and history forever: my mother, my father, beautiful Aunt Maja, Baba Rose.
? is for ?ukasz. A boy who was not part of the Lederman family. Who eventually wished he was.
M is for Miriam, whom I barely knew but who was also looking for her own sister, who wrote letter after letter after letter.
N is for the nothing-girls, trying to become something again.
O is for Mr. Ohrmann, traveling the continent, trying to sew families back together as best as he can.
P is for Palestine, Eretz Israel, which could be our future.
R is for Ravid, trying to organize his people to go there, even when it seems impossible.
S is for Sosnowiec. I will make S always be for Sosnowiec, because you can’t erase where you’ve come from, and nobody else can erase it, either, even when they change the name and tear down the street signs.
? is for Uncle ?wi?tope?k, an old man who can carry memories of the past, from long before this terrible thing happened to us, and who can say he is still alive after the terrible things finally ended.
T is for Sister Therese, the nun who gave me hope.
U is for Nurse Urbaniak, the nurse who gave me bread.
V is for Mrs. Van Houten, an old woman who volunteered to walk a young woman she barely knew to her groom on the evening of her wedding, and who represents the tiny, tender kindnesses we have tried to give to one another. V, even though it doesn’t even exist in the Polish alphabet, typically, and neither does Q and neither does X, but I am meeting people who exist outside of my alphabet now; my alphabet is new.
W is for the W?lflin family, who represent the larger, heroic kindnesses. The people who took in children, who risked their own lives.
X is to x things out. To cross out the things I’ll forget on purpose. Some things are okay to forget on purpose.
Y is for Mrs. Yost, trying to run Foehrenwald. And for all the other people trying to run all the other places in this terrible land after the war.
Z is for Zofia.
Here is what I am thinking, sitting in this makeshift library across from a boy whose life has been every bit as hard as mine.
I think we must find miracles where we can. We must love the people in front of us. We must forgive ourselves for the things we did to survive. The things we broke. The things that broke us.
I choose my next words so very, very carefully.
“Maybe I could meet ?ukasz one day,” I say. “Not right now if he doesn’t want to. But one day. Maybe one day he can tell me more of his story.” I stand and extend my hand.
His face fills with the most fragile hope. “Does that mean—”
“Yes, Abek.” My brother’s name, spoken out loud, carries so much in it now. It’s an offering, it’s an acceptance, it’s a lie, it’s a goodbye. I clear my throat and start again. “Yes. It means that for now, we should go home.”
Epilogue
London, 1946
IT’S ALMOST TIME. ABEK AND I HAVE SAID THIS ENOUGH TO EACH other that it’s become a joke. Don’t worry; we’re almost there, he said when we rode in the back of the truck and I was desperate to use the bathroom, and then we ended up being in the truck for nearly three more hours as we were driven through Germany and then through France, past checkpoints and through demolished cities. Don’t worry; we’re almost to the front of the line, I consoled him as we waited for hours to have our papers processed, but then the aid workers changed shifts and we had to keep waiting. Now almost has become the joke for “never,” and we say it all