All of the survivors I met had one thing in common with me and
with one another: We had no control over the most consuming facts of
our lives, but we had the power to determine how we experienced life
aer trauma. Survivors could continue to be victims long aer the
oppression had ended, or they could learn to thrive. In my dissertation
research, I discovered and articulated my personal conviction and my
clinical touchstone: We can choose to be our own jailors, or we can
choose to be free.
* * *Before we leave Israel, Béla and I visit Bandi and Marta Vadasz, the
friends Béla had le waiting at the train station in Vienna. ey live in
Ramat Gan, near Tel Aviv. It is a poignant encounter, a meeting with
our unlived life, the life we almost had. Bandi is still very political, still
a Zionist, eager to discuss the anticipated peaceful agreement between
Israel and Egypt over Israel’s occupation of the Sinai Peninsula. He can
recite with precision details of Arab bombings in Jerusalem and Tel
Aviv. He and Béla keep us at the table long aer we’ve ĕnished eating,
enthusiastically debating Israel’s military strategy. e men talk about
war. Marta turns to me, she takes my hand. Her face is plumper than
it was in her youth, her red hair duller now, going gray.
“Editke, the years have been kinder to you,” she says with a sigh.
“It’s my mother’s good genes,” I say. And then the selection line
Ęashes through my mind, the smoothness of my mother’s face. is
moment is a ghost that trails me through the years.
Marta must notice that my mind has traveled someplace else, that a
darkness holds me. “I’m sorry,” she says. “I didn’t mean to say you’ve
had it easy.”
“You gave me a compliment,” I reassure her. “You’re how I have
always remembered you. So kind.” When her baby was born dead, she
didn’t let my healthy baby sour our friendship, she was never jealous