When I was 18, I went to England, and spent a month there.
This replica tin from our kitchen; in the 1970s, is one of them.
The impact he made on my life, words can not do justice to. We rarely talked about his life before he came to the U.S. He was a Holocaust survivor. I knew him as Grandpa Morton.What I remember about him, was his stubbornness and his gruffness. Other than that the only trace on the outside, of his life inside the concentration camp, in Poland; was the tattooed identification numbers on the inside of his forearm. His heart died when he lost, what was so precious to him; his wife and sons. This unmeasurable pain, he carried in his heart, though it seeped out through his rough exterior.
I knew growing up, that he was a tailor. What I didn't know until his funeral, was that was what kept him alive, when million of others perished. He was kept alive to sew uniforms for the Nazis.
After he died I came across the book, Polyn. I was hoping it would give me a glimpse into the life of a man I adored, but never really got to know. One thing that I do know, is that as a little girl, I reclaimed his heart.
