Out of Chaos: Hidden Children Remember the Holocaust

To Annette, the Center Point

89 To Annette, the Center Point Marguerite Lederman Mishkin When the Holocaust swirled around us, dizzying us with disaster, and ripping away our mother, and ripping away our mother again, I reached for your hand, You reached for mine, Two tiny hands of tiny girls, Holding together the whole world, For each other. Between our hands was all the center point there was. I existed to protect you, I was real amid the unreal terror; The pointless cruelty—miracle!— had left this point of meaning. Annette. Marguerite. Marguerite. Annette. I was I because of you. Alone, I disappeared. When you appeared, I was again. We held hands and refused To be apart, to be converted, to be blown out like candles, Two remaining out of millions. Later, lied to and loaded on a ship heading into a foggy future, we endured. Compliantly and calmly, as that voyage ended, You stepped off, reached back for me, and stayed My center point in the new place. Suddenly we were daughters again With a father and a mother, a home, a bedroom of our own. Aunts and uncles appeared Popping like big flowers up close 90 Out of Chaos To our frightened faces. You and I agreed to Fit in, Lose our French, Be good enough to be loved, To be kept, This time. Sometimes I wondered When you would leave me. I know how to do that, how to be Abandoned. Sometimes it seemed That was all I knew for sure. You never did, Never left me in all those drama-ridden teenage times. Still the center point, Safety in the turmoil. Then you left and married, took a new name, walked into a new world filled with kashruth and with babies, with the sounds of Hebrew, of dancing, and of joy, wearing your new last name calmly and at peace. Alone, I found new sisters in my friends— but never the held hand, never the center point, again. And now, Annette, I stand in for you, in single witness, One last lit candle in the chaos and the fog. Hidden with Rescuers 91 Figure 26. Annette and Marguerite Lederman in hiding in Rumst, Belgium (near Malines [Mechelen]), 1944. Courtesy United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. ...