Last Letters Lingering

This week the activity that struck me the most was reading the last letters from the Holocaust. I knew going into this reading, it was going to hit hard, but I wasn’t expecting it to stick with me as much as it did.I was assigned to read Satanov and Bilcze Zlote, both of which I read last Friday, before leaving campus for the weekend. The letter on Satanov was about Edik, a 7 year old boy living in Ukraine. His parents were part of a traveling Russian theater and they left Edik with the mother’s grandparents. While they were away, the family was evacuated to a concentration camp. They eventually recieved a letter from Satanov after they had been liberated, that all the Jewish citizens, including Edik, were murdered. I loved how Edik ended all his letters with “I kiss and hug both of you very tight”. It is clear that he didn’t completely know what to say since his letters were very short. It was especially sad to see the letter about the family being murdered was sent by the family’s neighbors. This letter definitely hit me hard and made going on to the next letter a challenge. The letter from Bilcze Zlote was about Rivka-Regina Folkenflick, an 11 year old girl from Poland. When the Nazis arrived in their town the family was sent to the Borszcow ghetto to live with the other Jewish people from their city. When the family escaped the ghetto they went into hiding and Rivka was given to a childless family in Bilcze Zlote. When the rest of the family was captured again they escaped a second camp to a refuge area, but when they arrived they let the family know the daughter was caught by Ukrainian policemen. Even paying a release bribe, she was still shot dead. I found it so sad she referred to all the random people she encountered as “the man”. I also found it so endearing that she wrote specifically to her mother, even though the letter was addressed to both parents. After finishing these letters I sat and wrote up these summaries to truly digest what I had just read. Days later I still see the photos of little Edik, that were attached to his letters, in the back of my mind.