I remember sitting in Babcia’s kitchen (babcia is Polish for “grandmother”, so that’s how we address her). I was in eighth grade at the time. Our teacher made us take a unit on the Holocaust, and, knowing that Babcia had been born in Poland the late ’20s, I asked her if she remembered anything.

She put down the metal utensil she had been using to test the pierogis with and grabbed me by the shoulders.

She had been born in a small community called Lubomia, a stone’s throw from the Sudetenland, a heavily German part of Czechoslovakia. She remembered the major European powers meeting over Germany’s claim to it and their ceding it to Germany. She also remembered the tanks.

The Nazis barged into Lubomia on September 1, 1939. They seized her and herded her into a cattle car. They forced her into a concentration camp, working her nearly to death before the Allies saved her.

I could see the pain. I could see it in her eyes.

She admonished me never to turn into a monster like the Nazis.

Believe me, I won’t.