Poland 1940

Magdalena and Daniel were orphans since they were 8. They were twins living in Nazi Poland. As much as he tried, the memories of their parents could never re-surface for Daniel. Only bits and pieces of a conversation remained.

"No, no, Daniel, you are playing the notes all wrong!"
"But, Pa, I'm playing them as you did."

And that was it. Magdalena was in the other room, but could remember every shout and every whisper of the their father's last day. The twins' father was a pianist for the Nazi's and often came home bloodied and bruised from playing the wrong note or tune. Perhaps this was why he drilled it into Daniel to play the right chords. Daniel and Magdalena would never know.

Their father would be taken by the Nazi's for absolutely no particular reason. He would be sent to a labour camp, and eventually die from over-work. But Magdalena and Daniel would never know how he died.

During the war, Magdalena and Daniel would scrounge and beg for food, just to live. Just to live and strive for the end of the war.

But one fateful day, as Magdalena and Daniel were crossing the Vistula, a usual and regular chore to find food, Daniel simply didn't come to the water's edge. Magdalena rasped her voice in order to frantically search for her brother, but in a fruitless effort. Daniel was spotted by a sniper on top of a fortress in the distance, and mistaken for an escaping refugee.

As he sunk to the bottom of the frigid waters, Magdalena knew that now, she was truly alone. Her mother died during child birth, and she did not know her grandparents. She did what any small child would do in the circumstances: she bunched into a ball and cried for her family to return. But they never would. Magdalena would be stranded, on her own in Poland, running from those who killed her family for 2 more agonizing years. Until one Thursday afternoon, when she was looting an abandoned house, she came across a starving man guarding a single can of green-beans.

"G....Go..Go aw...awa..away...Th...Thei....Their....Mi...Min.....Mine"
He whispered in a freezing whisper. Magdalena could not respond. It was the first person she had seen up close since her brother. She could not believe her eyes. Actual food. Such a luxury she had taken for granted way too much before the war.

Magdalena had been alone for two years. Two whole years of crying herself to sleep. Two years of holding her breath every time she heard a Nazi tank or troop of foot soldiers go past in their ranks.
The thought of getting caught haunted Magdalena for the entirety of the war. The man that Magdalena had met with in the abandoned house was virtually in the same position as her. His family was killed, and had absolutely no one left. Magdalena had been able to coax out a little of his story. She had been able to learn that he and his family were Jewish and had been taken away from him near the end of 1940.

         “I still remember their screams. I can still recall the night when they were taken. I had gone out to get milk from the store, if you could call it a store. The Germans had taken everything. The store was nothing more than a simple bakery with a single icebox. That was it. I had gone out, thinking my family was safe, and when I returned, they were already loaded onto the trucks. I hid behind a brick wall in fear of being seen. I peeked around the corner and saw the guards beating my wife and child. My only child, Jacek, being hit in the back of the head with a rifle butt. He just fell. I couldn't go to save him, I would have, but.....It was the worst thing I have ever seen in my life.”

         Magdalena didn't know what to say. She couldn't respond simply because she didn't know what it was like to lose a child. She took his hand and held it softly. He looked up to her, tears streaming down his face.

         Magdalena would stay with this man until the end of the war, and when they both moved to an apartment complex in Southern England together. Until that point, Magdalena had never felt as safe as she did with this man. Now, she had a family.