In a previous post, we talked about trip planning. You plan the when, the where, and the how of the trip. You take care of all pre-trip necessities. The excitement builds and the day approaches. Finally the day is here and the trip begins. The trip goes as planned and all is well. And then something totally unexpected happens. We tend to think of the unexpected as something negative. It does not have to be. Sometimes the unexpected can be the most amazing.
Meet Michael and Yolana
In May of 2005, we planned a trip to San Francisco and the surrounding area. Instead of making reservations at a hotel, we decided to stay somewhere less conventional. Naomi found a website that stated “The hosts are a nice older couple, originally from Europe”. This sounded great, especially since we enjoy cultural experiences.
We flew into San Francisco, rented a car, and drove to the address. It was a typical San Francisco row house where we would stay for 5 days and see the local sites. We met our hosts and were shown our room. We settled in for the night and were excited about the coming days. The next morning, while we sat in her kitchen, Yolana fixed us a very nice breakfast. While we ate, she poured her coffee and sat down and visited with us. Yolana was very chatty and we had a great conversation. We then left for a full day touring downtown San Francisco.
The Unexpected
The next morning began identical to the previous morning. Yolana fixed another wonderful breakfast, served us, sat down with her coffee, and another conversation began. Because Yolana had mentioned living in several European countries in your stories, Naomi asked “So what do you consider your nationality?”. She responded, “I am a Hungarian Jew“. It was then that she told us she had been in Auschwitz. Our eyes moved to her forearm and we could see the number that was tattooed there. These words had a huge impact on us. As students of history, we immediately knew what this meant. We were sitting there talking to a survivor of the death camp.
That day we left to go on our sightseeing later than we had the previous day. We were spellbound as Yolana spent over an hour telling us about her experiences. Although she did not speak of her experiences in the camp (and we didn’t ask), she did talk about being taken out of Poland to Germany in cattle cars before the Russians liberated the camp. She told about being moved from place to place in Germany until the day the soldiers pointed them in the direction of the American line and disappeared.
Even after the end of the war, the hardships did not stop. Yolana lived in Hungary, a Soviet-bloc country, and life was hard. Finally she and Michael were able to immigrate to the United States in the early 1970’s. While telling us her story, she would often say “Can you imagine?” One day while in San Francisco, she received a phone call from her eldest son. He said, “Mama! Those stories you told us were true!” He had been watching the mini-series “The Holocaust” and only now understood the atrocities that his mother had seen.
We left Missouri for a vacation in California and ended up meeting a Holocaust survivor. Can you imagine?