Grandma's House

“ … and my room was up there on the third floor.” Greta pointed to a small, square window close to the top of the only wall left standing in the rubble.

Rose pulled the plug out of her ear. “What did you say, Memo?” Greta heard the faint sound of a woman singing something about being obsessed.

Greta had asked her daughter, Olga, if she could take her only grandchild to Warsaw to teach the rebellious teen about her Polish roots. Rose had been running around with a bad crowd in Chicago, and the family thought a change would do her good. Rose didn’t want to leave her friends, but she finally agreed, to appease her parents. She wasn’t a bad girl, just restless.

Rose looked up at the partially demolished building. The area had been preserved as a memorial site. Tourists, mostly in their 80’s like Greta, were silently viewing the remnants of destruction.

“I was a little younger than you are now when the German tanks rolled down our street in the fall of 1939 and ordered everyone out of their homes. Papa and Mama were terrified as they rushed me and my little brother into the square. Then the big guns on top of the tanks turned and fired at the houses. All that was left is what you see here.”

“You were my age?” Rose had turned her i-pod off and was looking in awe at her grandmother.

Greta chuckled. “Is it so hard to believe? I worried about my hair and my clothes, just like you do. I went to dances with my friends. I was crazy about one particular boy. His name was Jozef.”

“You mean Pawpaw?” Rose looked astonished.

“Yes, Rosie. He was the one. We married shortly after the war and moved to Chicago with your great-uncle, Bruno.”

“Why did they bomb your house, Memo?”

“Maybe because Mr. Hitler didn’t have a grandmother to teach him how to respect other people’s beliefs.”