SPENDING THE DAY WITH MY SISTERS

The day with my sisters was a lot of fun.  We started here, at our place, with a brunch.  Everyone seemed to enjoy the food.  And I know we all enjoyed the conversation and coffee.

Pictured here are the two honored guests.  Ruth is on the left.  She is the middle child.  I am the eldest sister, and Betsy, here on the right, is between me and Ruth.  The three of us are retired now, so we are able to plan some girly day trips.  I neglected to take a picture of Lois, our youngest sister.  She is still working, but she is more than willing to take a vacation day to spend it with us older gals.  And we didn't invite our brother.  He doesn't like pink and green depression glass!

Ruth and I hit some thrift shops in the afternoon while Betsy and Lois attended another birthday party, this one for Betsy's 3 year old grandson.

Then in the evening we all  attended a play at the college where hubby and I used to work, and where our youngest sister, Lois, still works.  The play was excellent.  Absolutely excellent.  It was "And Then They Came for Me: Remembering the world of Ann Frank" a story about the Holocaust, told with actors and actual interviews of some of the survivors of concentration camps.  The highlight of the evening was after the play, which remember I said was very well done.  But topping it was a question and answer period with an actual survivor of Auschwitz and the medical experiments done by Dr. Mengele who performed these experiments to find ways to sterilize the "undesirable" portions of the population, namely the Jewish people..  She is a spirited 90 year old woman, who told us that she was the first liberated woman.  She told how her husband died in the concentration camp, and after the liberation she fell in love with someone else.  Now there was no death certificate for camp deaths,  and the law stated that one could not marry for 5 years and 5 months after the death.  So, with a little giggle, she informed us that she was the first liberated woman.  They lived together until they could legally marry!  This marriage ended though, but she married again.  The marriage this time lasted 44 years.  She was asked how she managed or what did she use or call on to make it through those awful years in Auschwitz.  She again giggled, and then said that she was always a little bit obstinate.  She did exactly the opposite of what was expected of her.  Everyone hated the lukewarm colored water that they called soup.  Soup probably made with the scraps of peelings from the vegetables and the food made for the guards.  But she said she was known to eat four bowls of it! She endured the death march, a three day, two night, 60 mile march in the dead of winter to end up in a labor camp where she remained until she was liberated.

I could have listened to her for hours, but you could tell that after about 45 minutes she was tiring.  Can you imagine what she has lived through?  We probably don't want to know of most of the atrocities that she endured.  So if she wanted to leave so she could rest, she deserved to do so.  I will not soon forget the evening I was privileged to be in the audience of Margot DeWilde, or as her tattooed arm reads, 47574.