Julia Seifer
February 26, 2019
Pasadena, CA
Afterword
On her motorized scooter, Gerda opened the door with her head cocked slightly to one side, her light, clear eyes taking my measure. It was our first meeting. She invited me inside, showing me boxes and envelopes overflowing with pages she’d written over decades about her experiences in Poland during the Holocaust. She told me her story. She showed me many prized possessions, collected from around the world: paintings, pottery, glass, and most especially, the green plants of her garden. There was a certain reassurance in our tour, that despite all whom she has lost and all she has endured, beauty remains a sustaining force in her life and things grow.
At the end of the interview about whether or not I would help her assemble all her notes and pages into a memoir, I told Gerda to take time in thinking over whether she’d like to work with me. “I don’t have to think it over,” she said, pointing a long, green-lacquered fingernail at me. “I know,” she said, “I know right away when I like somebody.”
It is that trust that has guided us through the past year, trust that has matured and grown round, like the ripe figs she made me pluck from the bushes in her yard. “Not that one, that one!” she would demand, making me reach ever higher, dodging a squadron of green June beetles.
She tells her students a story about being stopped by a Nazi officer when she was a teenager. The Nazi asked if she was Jewish. “What would you say to a Nazi officer? Quick!” Gerda urges her students. “You can’t think long. You have to stay one step ahead of the enemy!”
Hers is not merely a story of survival but of resilience in the face of extinction.
Thank you, Gerda, for sharing your story and so much else with me. It has been a rewarding education, and a reminder that the act of remembering is less about regret than it is about anticipation.
Cecilia Fannon, Editor
February 20, 2019
Laguna Niguel, CA
The Girl in the Cellar Page 18