Guilt

This morning I looked at this little desk with different, new eyes.
I inherited it from my grandmother who long time ago told me its history:
During the war her jewish neighbors were deported to one of the horrible places my family said they did not know about. Those of their belongings that the Nazi bosses did not want for themselves were sold for cheap to the German population. That was how my Grandmother bought this desk for herself. I could not make her tell me whether she believed that her former neighbors would ever come back. I think many people preferred not to think much at all in those days.

I always liked it because of its delicate shape and size. I polished the old wood a lot. I brought it with me from Germany to the US ten years ago.

All my life I have felt so terribly guilty about what Germans have done to Jews during those years. I read books, watched all the movies about the Holocaust. And all of a sudden I realize that I am sitting at a desk, right now, that has belonged to maybe a young girl that started her life full of hope and was murdered so cruelly.
Would it be better to have given it away in 1978? Should I get rid of it right now?

Very often in my life I all of a sudden got a glimpse of the feelings that the Jews must have had, when they were so suddenly pulled out of their 'normal' lives. Of mothers sitting with their children in those cattle trains with nothing to eat or drink. Babies to feed.
It was like shifting consciousness. Ephemeral, fleeting. And then I pulled myself back into my own 'normal' life.

I think it is better to keep this desk and send a little prayer for all those poor souls who died because of what "my country" did in those horrible years. I caress the old wood and think of them.