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 | A New Year's Eve toast with an old friend, Emma Siegal. |
On the way to Tiberios I asked Avraham to stop; I needed to go to the bathroom. He turned into a gas station and the other couple followed. Avraham introduced me. It turned out the woman spoke Polish, as does Shoshana. So while the three of us were in the washroom, we talked in Polish. When we came out, I said to her, “Where are you from?” She said, “From Bydgoszcz.” “Oy!” I said. “I am from Bydgoszcz too.” There hadn’t been all that many Jews in Bydgoszcz. She asked, “Who are you?” and I said, “Renia Apt.” At first, I didn’t recognize her. She looked familiar, but it had been so many years. I asked, “Who are you?” “Emma Siegal,” she said. Now I realized that she was an old schoolmat of mine. We hugged, we kissed, we cried. All five of us. “Remember Kopa? Remember Wasserman? Remember Dr. Sonenschein?” she asked excitedly. Here we were in a gas station on the way to Tiberios and I’d met a friend I hadn’t seen since I was thirteen, fifty-five years earlier, before the war, before everything changed.
Life is full of surprises. The life I’ve described in the chapters above didn’t end with Sam’s death and it doesn’t end with this book. I plan to be around for a long time to come and to add many more chapters to this, my life story.
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