Jewish Remembrance week Görlitz, 2021
Görlitz to Phoenix via Birmingham
Boxing Day 2021
Today I’m mending a little wooden train engine and carriage that arrived uncoupled from its secure place attached to a Christmas tree.
Yesterday, Christmas Day, I discovered a package from the UK in our mail box around the corner of the house.
Last month, Amy Williams flew from her home in the UK Midlands to Germany for the laying of Stolpersteine in Görlitz, a town near the Polish border.
Uncoupled
Görlitz, Gunter Demnig laying Stolpersteine in the rain
And there in Görlitz she found the miniature engine and carriage. Amy has studied, lectured, interviewed, and written about the Kindertransport. Our Zoom conversations and Instagram messages, her gentle presence, her questions and insights have unwrapped new discoveries, fresh insight and deeper healing in my personal Kindertransport story.
Could the broken engine and carriage be a metaphor for the shattered memories of my own escape by train from Germany in July 1939? Perhaps the repair is a symbolic healing of painful memories…the train saved my life but I would never see my parents again.
8814, my Kindertransport identification number
Restoration
And the UHU glue comes from Germany.
And In the same package with the wooden ornament Amy sent a cross…
Thank you Hanna, for sharing this with us.