Herman's Story

Along with his wife, whose name I don't recall, Herman ran the neighborhood grocery store two blocks from my childhood home. Buying milk or bread there one day with my mother, I remember how angry she was with me when I asked him what the numbers tattooed onto his forearm meant.

Though it's been years since I've thought of Herman or recalled that incident, reading "Into The Arms of Strangers: Stories of the Kindertransport" (2000) by Mark Jonathan Harris and Deborah Oppenheimer brought it all back. I'm reminded again why books bearing witness are so critical. Those interviewed for this book, most of whom were part of a British program that rescued mostly Jewish children from Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia in late 1938, tell the harrowing story of how they survived. And they also tell the story of their parents who remained behind and did not.

I'd estimate Herman was around my parent's age; that would have made him about 18-20 years old in 1938. If I'm right, he would have been too old to qualify for the Kindertransport program. Anyway, the numbers on his forearm told a different story. All I really know for sure of Herman's story are those numbers and the fact that he survived.