3 December, 1942
We had an menorah on the farm that passed from mother to daughter for more than 150 years, a praxis I failed to follow. I did not forget it, there was simply no room.
Zelik remembers it in detail, and the holidays it centered those first five years. Gitla does not, and knows only the rough wooden chanukkiah carved with a lick and a promise by Uncle Josek last year, finishing, just as he did, a day before we lit the first candle. She loves it, insisting in her delicate, yet determined way that she can still see his hands smoothing the edges as his thumbnail embossed the Star of David under the shammus.
Having lost more people by the age of four than I knew during my entire childhood, perhaps she can. I fight against any acknowledgment of my daughter’s mantic tinge; her claim on this as the last hanukka chills my bones far deeper than the hoary drifts of ashen Warsaw firn, and I would much rather think her theatrical than clairvoyant.
Thank God I do not see future — it is ataraxia I seek, and that lives only in shades past — and I pray the zeitgeist of my time does not end up matching the writing on the walls of this Ghetto: Verboten! Under penalty of death.
They took Rywka and Mendel this morning. The children, too, of course. As they shuffled down the stairs she passed me a small parcel and whispered, “A mentsh tracht und Gott lacht.”*
My sister! Surrounded by Gestapo, the camps and worse only hours away, yet managing to go on her own terms in a small way.
I don’t know what I expected to find wrapped in that bit of newsprint, but a semilunar slice of contraband halva would not have been on any list. Rywka must have been saving this for months, maybe longer, and planning to share it out amongst the children over the holiday.
Well, it will not go to waste.
Tonight we will light the candle either serendipity or thieving placed in Zelik’s crafty little hands and both of my children will know the sticky, sapid sensation a little slice of sweetness can bring, even here, even now. There are so many fewer to share, so they will gorge and not leave a morsel.
Baruch atah Adonai, Eloheinu melech ha-olam, shehecheyanu, v’kiyemanu, vehigi-anu laz’man hazeh.**
We are alive. My little man, Zelik, too thin, too mean, a rabid fox of a child which is why I still have him. My Gitla, frail, all dark eyes and nightmares. Me, their mother, offering havla as we once again celebrate the first night of the Festival of Lights, the miracle of oil.
Tomorrow?
Ek velt.***
For tonight, though … Happy Hanukka.
I wonder why it is that only Passover prompts the wish, “Next year in Jerusalem”?
-End-
*A person plans and God laughs.
**Praised are You, Lord our God, King of the universe, Who has kept us in life, sustained us, and enabled us to reach this season.
*** End of the world.
(This is another brain exercise for the Answers.com writing challenge. The “must use and link words” are: a lick and a promise, ataraxia, contraband, halva, mantic, praxis, sapid, semilunar, serendipity and zeitgeist. I added a few of my own for the linky bit, just for drill.)
A collection of my short stories:
I'm in this one, too ...
And I'm in here, as well ...
Paradise Preoccupied 
[…] Paradise Preoccupied: Sweet Polska […]
Hey! Thanks again for entering the Challenge!
We posted about it on our blog and used you as an example 🙂
Check it out!
http://www.nostupidanswers.com/2007/12/04/answerscom-creative-writing-challenge-brings-ataraxia/
Congratulations – very nicely written 🙂
[…] 1st Place Sandra Hanks Benoiton Paradise Preoccupied […]
Superb!
Sandra, thank you for sharing your thoughts and heart.
i didnt understand a word of it… goes to show how good it must be… could yyou explain it to me
by replying on
footymadaim@hotmail.com
thnkyou…………
=]
An inspiring and moving work of art.
From the corner of my world i will propose your name as a reference to beautiful writing.
Cheers
I didnt understand at all. Dont know how you won. Need to be WAYYY More deatailed and expressive to get my taste. Congrats though….i didnt like it.
Beautifully written and deeply moving through the simplicity of this half-stolen moment of shared pleasure between this woman and her children as they are taken up in a self-destructive and collapsing world.
I am surprised to read some people didn’t understand. It seems pretty clear to me. The narrator is a Jewish woman during the Second World War. She lives with her elder son (Zelik) and her 4 year-old daughter (Gitla) in a land where her people are gradually deprived of all they had.
Her own sister and her family have just been arrested and sent to concentration camps by the Nazis.
And on the night of Jewish holiday Hanukka, she considers as a tiny miracle her plan to share a piece of unexpected sweet with her children, showing them that in small things, a hint of happiness can still be found in spite of the violence surrounding them.
I hope I did not make any mistake in this interpretation.
For me, a short story definitely does not need to be “detailed” and explicit to be touching and endowed with a deep expressive power.
Is it so difficult to understand what the narrator means by “worse only hours away” for example ? I hope it’s still common knowledge to know what went on in the camps during WWII…
If you did not like it, please read again carefully, that’s purely beautiful…and what is left unsaid plays an active part in this kind of story-telling.
5bI’ll thingk about it.7g I compleatly disagree with last post . spu
ламинат 6b
i can say much but, geneus says it all.
Done.
Thanks, Ricky. I went to college in California many years ago, and, yes, I write for a living …
Dear Sandra,
I read ‘Sweet Polska’ twice and love it. Congratulations! Better late than never, right? Yes, most of us know what went on in the concentration camps during WWII. But sadly, there are some around the world who deny the Holocaust ever happened. I have seen most of the the camps since I’ve been living in Germany. I wonder if those few who deny it ever happened have seen the camps. I doubt if they’d change their views even if they did see them. I also visited the Anne Frank house in Amsterdam. It was so heart wrenchig to see Anne’s room with movie stars such as Deanna Durbin, Greta Garbo, Clark Gable and other stars of the 30’s and 40’s tacked on the wall of her tiny sleeping space. Her dream was to go to Hollywood herself. All her dreams came to an end at Bergen-Belsen.
Love,
Lucy
very very great