Today's guest blogger is Christa Holder Ocker, whose memoir, AUF WIEDERSEHEN, chronicles her harrowing childhood experiences in Nazi Germany during the Second World War. Below, she recalls a poignant moment shared with her ailing, elderly mother that prompted her to finally write about a past she's kept buried for decades.What was it like growing up in Nazi Germany? I've been asked many times. With countless others of my generation, I shared the guilt of the Holocaust and evaded this question for a very long time --- the answer buried behind the floodgates of my soul. But then one day, many years later, I went to visit my aging mother.
"Oh, it's you." My mother sits at the foot of her bed as I enter her room. Her life grown fragile as the old worn shoes on her swollen feet, she waits each day for me to come by. "Where were you yesterday?" she asks, an edge of reproach in her voice.
"I told you I had a luncheon date with Debbie Panchino, remember?” A shaft of sunlight slants through the far window and touches her feet. “Why do you always wear those old shoes? You have much nicer ones.”
She ignores my question and raises her silky eyebrows a trifle. "Debbie who?"
"Debbie Panchino from New York Pictures. They're interested in doing my story, Broken Bonds."
“Oh.”
My lips touch her hollow cheek and I detect a scent, a bit musty like a moss-covered stump.
"Did you have a shower?"
"No, I don't feel good." Her eyes, set deep in a pale face, narrow as if in pain. "Maybe tomorrow…"
"I think you'll feel much better after a shower," I insist as she allows me to get her undressed. I'm always amazed at how immodest she has become in her old age. She used to be so private, private and proud.
Bent like a tree leaning away from the wind, she weighs heavily on my arm as I lead her into the bathroom. "I don't know why I can't walk anymore," she complains, holding on tight. I turn on the water and let it run over the palm of my hand until I am satisfied that it is nice and warm, but not too warm. I help her step under the spray and slide the soap gently over bumps and lumps on her body, remnants of a life ravaged by storms. I adjust the showerhead so that the warm water reaches her all over.
Wrapped in a towel and smelling like a rose in June, she continues with her litany of ills. "I don't know what's wrong with my hand." She frees a trembling right hand with utmost concentration. "I have no more strength in it."
If only she would stop moaning, I think as I help her get dressed. She never asks anymore, How are you? How are the kids? Just moan…moan…moan.
"Do you think I had a stroke?" She looks at me with something like anticipation showing in her weary eyes.
"No, Mom, I don't think so." I hold both my hands in front of her and say, "Squeeze." As she squeezes, quite firmly and evenly, the trembling subsides. "No, Mom, I don't think so," I repeat. "I think it's just weakness."
"But it wasn't like this before." She brings her right hand, steadied by her left hand, close to my eyes. "Something isn't right," she maintains, shaking her head from side to side. "See?"
And I see my mother, her hands having pushed aside the floodgates of my soul --- my mother young once again, cheekbones flushed, flashing eyes expressing a readiness to kill, a soldier’s rifle pointed at her heart, her arms extended backwards, her beautiful hands strong and steady shielding two little terrified girls.
Suddenly, I am breathing in gasps from a source that is somewhere deeper than my soul. My fingers, hardening into bone white, dig into my palms. And then I feel my mother's tremulous hand on my arm. "Are you all right?" She asks. The concern in her smile echoes in her voice, and her hand remains on my arm until I become, once more, quiet as morning mist.
As I drove home, my thoughts began to form the idea to at last answer the question of what it was like growing up in Nazi Germany. Vignettes of my life as a child danced before my eyes. As soon as I got home, I started to write. I hope that my book, AUF WIEDERSEHEN --- a story about a journey that begins toward the end of World War II, a journey that weaves through everyday life and world-changing events --- will have a broad appeal not only for adults who are curious about that period in history, but also as a lesson for our youth.
-- Christa Holder Ocker
