b’alma di-v’ra chirutei,

v’yamlich malchutei b’chayeichon

uvyomeichon uvchayei d’chol beit yisrael,

ba’agala uvizman kariv, v’im’ru: amen.

Later, when Annie had gone home, and my parents had gone to bed, I stayed up. I didn’t want to leave the candle alone while it burned. I wanted to stay till the end.

I looked at the photograph and I was back there. That day, less than ten years ago – but still a lifetime away, a million lifetimes away. The day that a moment of carefree joy made me bump into a stranger. The two seconds that would save my life. The two best friends who had shared my childhood, who had shone a light on everything, brought me to life.

The night was closing in.

As I sat and watched, the candle flickered and danced and finally went out.

2021

LEO

A young woman came to see me today. A teacher.

She sat perched on the edge of the sofa in my lounge and looked around the room. I saw her eyes travel the length of the sideboard, taking in my photographs. A lifetime of memories: a wife, children, grandchildren, family. And in the centre, the oldest photograph of them all, and the most precious: the three children who thought they owned the world. Two copies of the same photograph, framed together. I never found out what had happened to the third.

I made tea for us and then I sat in the green armchair in the corner of the room and put a blanket over my legs.

‘How can I help you?’ I asked her.

She told me there is a rise in fascism in Europe. She said there are refugees dying in their attempts to cross oceans to a place of safety. She asked me to come and speak to her students.

I asked her, why me? What do you want with a ninety-three-year-old man who can barely stand, let alone speak to a room full of people?

She said I was there when it happened.

I told her she was wrong. I wasn’t there. I was one of the very lucky few who escaped, who lived, who carried the guilt and the burden of survival through my whole life.

‘But you lived at that time,’ she insisted. ‘You have much to share with us.’

I looked into her young, idealistic eyes. For a moment I saw a flash of Elsa in them. The burning in them lit something inside me.

‘I’ll tell you what,’ I said. ‘I’ll make a deal with you.’

She smiled. ‘Go on.’

‘I’ll tell you my story,’ I said. ‘But my story is a baton, and in telling it I pass it on to you.’

‘What do I do with it?’ she asked me.