Last Waltz in Warsaw

Bright flame against dark bleak boots

Rests a high-heeled red wedge shoe

Dense crowd files past in silence as red shoe comes into view    

Blood red shoe belonged to

a young girl; who was she?

Scarlet shoe, evocative of youth, vitality

                                                                                                        

Was the wearer dancing

on the eve before the train?

Realise as she saw steel gates she'd never dance again?

Did she think it was a shower to cleanse

For personal ablution

Know Hitler's evil Nazis sought the - 'Final Solution?'

Red wedge shoe amongst dull black ones

Grabs fraught crowd's imagination

Staring through plate glass at lost, murdered generation

Survivors helped by loved ones

Survey grim gruesome scene

Memories, never gone, sweet lives that might have been

Sad, silent crowds, eyes brimming

Leave wood huts that house decay

The sun is out, but it feels cold, no words for them to say

They gassed them over there, guide tells

Fire burned all evidence

Arriving every day by train, imprisoned by wired fence

Couldn't burn them fast enough

Cruel SS dug deep pits

Mass inhumane cremation - no choices - just submit

I own some high heeled red wedge shoes

I wear them when I dance

Young owner of these red wedge shoes never had the chance

 To grow old; be free; born just like me

In a democratic nation

Imprisoned, murdered, victims of vile mass extermination

Day trippers board their tour bus

Goodbye Camp Birkenau

Silent, stunned, shocked - as one ask, 'Could this happen now?'

Family Tree

I met a Genealogist in Cambodia. As we chatted together she became fascinated with my family history. She feels it is important for us to know and understand where we come from in order to know and understand who we are. Why we are like we are. Maggie lectures and studies Genealogy professionally and  lives in Beijing.

I gave her two family names. One was my Grandfather's name. This is Luder - my birthname. The other was my Grandmother's name. This is Bluestone. 

My Paternal Grandparents were Polish and Russian. Maggie has since discovered passenger lists on the Aquitania leaving Southampton, destination New York, naming Harry Bluestone born in a town called Plock in Poland, aged sixteen in 1911 and my Grandmother's younger brother,  as a passenger off to seek a new life. 

The Luder family seem easier to track. I know my Grandfather came from a town, in what is now The Ukraine, called Gorodok. 

Sometimes family stories can be Urban Myths. Embellished to make them more interesting. More compelling. This family story is fact.

Around 1905 a young man was murdered in the town of Gorodok in the Ukraine. The officials of the town declared a Jew was probably the killer  and that it was alright for any Jew to be killed for no other reason other than revenge. 

My Grandfather, just a boy, along with his younger brothers and sisters, hid in the cellar of their home in Gorodok as an attacker with a sword aimed to kill them all. He took pity on them and instead  killed their cat and spread the blood around the house tricking any other intruders to believe The Jews had been killed. 

That's when The Luder family left and took refuge in the UK. 

I'm not much of  a family person beyond who matters to me in a close and a now way. My dear Mum, my daughter, my grandsons matter more than anything. Beyond first cousins would be too much for me as I am more interested in why and how or what strength of charactor and survival allowed my Luder and my Bluestone Grandparents  to make that journey to the UK with no money, belongings, no language and start again. 

I already knew and felt these strengths before I met Maggie the Genealogist from Beijing but somehow seeing all these facts trailed back, my own researching on the Interweb discovering the history of the towns where they were born and the horrors they escaped from have reinforced my belief in myself. Why I am like I am. Why I feel like I feel. 

Then, there is a startling fact that emerges from all of this. So far, all the towns, such as Plock, where they were all born or lived are on rivers. 

My favourite travel experiences are always on rivers. I love canals as well. I see there's a river trip along the Vistula where Leah Bluestone was born and her brother Harry.

I can sense one coming on.