29.3.21
Today two nuns visited our house. They came to visit Lena, the tenant from the Phillipines, as she volunteers at their mission. We all started chatting and the nuns asked me where my parents were from. I said they were from Poland, had spent their teenage years in Auschwitz concentration camp as well as other work camps, and had lost most of their family in the Holocaust.
I mentioned to the nuns that after the war mum was so down and alone that she decided to enter a convent and become a nun. She described the nuns as being welcoming and comforting. However, she only stayed there a few months as her friend from the camps, Madja, (who later became my aunty) convinced her to join a group of friends who had a plan to leave Poland for good and journey to Russia.
The nuns were intrigued with mum’s story and that she was a Holocaust survivor. They were very much eager to meet her. Standing by her bedside, they requested a blessing. She touched the cross on their habit, then crossed herself, and rested her hand on their heads. It was one of those moments that gives you goosebumps.
