The Choice

the blast of bullets. For a split second I am a terriĕed girl again, a girl
who is in danger. I am the imprisoned me. But I breathe, I wait for the
moment to pass. I feel for the blue American passport in my coat
pocket. e guard reaches the wrought-iron sign and turns around,
marching back into the prison. He must stay here. It is his duty to stay.
But I can leave. I am free!
I leave Auschwitz. I skip out! I pass under the words ARBEIT MACHT
FREI. How cruel and mocking those words were when we realized that
nothing we could do would set us free. But as I leave the barracks and
the ruined crematories and the watch houses and the visitors and the
museum guard behind me, as I skip under the dark iron letters toward
my husband, I see the words spark with truth. Work has set me free. I
survived so that I could do my work. Not the work the Nazis meant—
the hard labor of sacriĕce and hunger, of exhaustion and enslavement.
It was the inner work. Of learning to survive and thrive, of learning to
forgive myself, of helping others to do the same. And when I do this
work, then I am no longer the hostage or the prisoner of anything. I
am free.