Lost and Found

Lost and Found My name is Daniel. For 70 years--from age 14 to age 84-- I was incomplete, bereft of mother, father, my identical twin brother Joshua, and all my boyhood friends who were with me that day in 1944. Some of the stronger men had strained and struggled to force apart the bars on the window of the railway cattle trailer packed to capacity with Jews bound for Auschwitz. The results of their labor was an aperture large enough for the egress of very slender people--like Joshua and me. "Go, my precious ones!" cried my mother. "Go, and LIVE!" said my father. "GO NOW!" I grabbed Joshua's hand and pulled urgently. He wrenched loose: "I--I just can't! I love you. Good-bye." It was in this manner I escaped terror and death, but--Oh, there was so much I could never escape. Each day since then, I have seen their faces--those anguished,tear-stained faces, especially Joshua's. Soon they were all dead; they had to be, didn't they? I grew up, married, worked hard at a fulfilling career, raised three fine children with my wife, and played joyously with children and grandchildren--but still was incomplete. On mild spring day, the greatest void in my life was filled when a stranger approached me at the park and said, "Daniel (he knew my name), a very important person is waiting for you a few yards ahead on the next bench." Then he just walked away. Sitting on that bench was the near-mirror-image of myself. He stood and smiled broadly. He had my eyes, my build, my crooked smile, my snow-white shock of hair. Then he said it--he said "Daniel"-- like no one else who has ever existed could say my name! It was then I noticed we were dressed alike--same style, same colors! He told me of our parents' deaths from starvation, of his escape from Auschwitz, of the life he had lived, of his seventy-year search for me. My heart broke, and I begged his forgiveness for presuming that he was dead--that they had all died at Auschwitz. Then he spoke the words that dried my tears: "I've nothing for which to forgive you! You must now forgive yourSELF and be whole." We are inseparable. Hundreds of people escaped in route to Nazi concentration camps and from those camps. written for Silent One's Long Lost Family Contest on July 22, 2016