HistoryA Story by Kathryn SmithI'll come back to haunt you Memories will taunt you and I will try to love you Have you ever had a dream so real, that you wake up in complete and utter shock or panic and still are convinced it was real? Years ago, I had a dream I will never forget and it will stick with me forever. I had a dream that I woke up. (I have a lot of dreams like that.) Through the dark, I saw that my heap of clothes on the floor seemed rather large. As I looked harder, I saw something else. Sitting in my heap of clothes was a little boy. He did not move. He just sat on my floor with his legs crisscrossed, staring up at me with lifeless, and hungry eyes. His head was shaved and he was extremely frail. The short hair he had was blonde, his lips were pink, and his face was ash white and sunken. He was dressed in ragged white and blue striped pajamas. This boy was a child of the holocaust. I got up and put a pillow next to him. He put his head on the pillow and weakly smiled up at me. I tenderly covered him with my sweatshirt and clothes and climbed back into bed. I watched him fall asleep, but worried about him. Was he warm enough? I hoped he was. I awoke again to check on him and he was sound asleep still with a comforted smile on his face. In the morning, my alarm went off. I bolted upright remembering the child. I looked down to find a pillow and a heap of sweatshirts on my floor. What startled me the most was, it looked as if someone really had been sleeping there next to me. Even the pillow looked as though a small head had been resting on it. I know it was just a dream, but I felt as though I saved a boy from the holocaust and kept him safe and warm during a cold night. The holocaust has always been an interesting topic to me. It's never an easy topic to digest, but it's fascinating. With a friend, I visited the holocaust museum in Washington DC. That was one museum I never want to revisit, though it taught me so much and opened my eyes. I walked though a boxcar and met a survivor. My friend and her family are extremely proud of their Polish heritage. (As well as most of the population in my hometown.) After speaking to my friend and her family, the survivor asked if I was polish. I told her I was not. When I told her my heritage, her eyes widened in horror and she gave me a grave stare. I am bohemian and my ancestors were gypsies. Gypsies were treated just as bad as the Jews were, and sometimes much worse. There is one other theory about my father's side of the family, we never speak much about. We too might have been Jews who fled and converted to Catholicism. The reason why this has been pondered is because of my father's sister. Susie died when she was 15. She suffered from taysaches disease. A disease that is passed on through heredity among Jewish girls. Usually the disease will claim lives at an early age, (2 or 4) but Susie's story was different. Knowing my history, and knowing what might have been haunts me. It also makes me incredibly thankful to be alive and well. The film The book thief caught my eye the other day. (I highly recommend both the book and film.) I always have to do a double take because the boy who played Rudy is a spitting image of the boy who sat on my floor..only healthier with more hair.
© 2016 Kathryn SmithAuthor's Note
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