A Piece Of Bread
By Evelyn Carlson
 When I was in my late teens, living in Indiana Harbor, a section of East Chicago, Indiana, most of the downtown businesses were owned by Jews. There was a Jewish jewelry store, furniture store, produce market, bakery, and clothing store. I worked at the bakery; the owners, Mr. and Mrs. B, were a German-Jewish couple, and many of our daily customers were Jewish. I knew, of course, about WWII, but it seemed like ancient history to me. This was in the mid- to late 1960s, a good twenty years since the war had ended, and twenty years sounded like a lifetime to my teenaged ears. In my terms, it was a lifetime.
Now, in my sixties, I know just how short twenty years really are, and it makes me realize that many of those European Jews I knew back then were probably refugees from the horrors of Germany, Poland, Austria, and the rest of the countries being “cleansed” by the Nazis. Even the ones who were not new to the U.S.—who were not refugees from the war itself—undoubtedly had friends and relatives who were. They probably had lost parents, siblings, aunts and uncles, cousins. They probably shared their Sabbath meals with people who had numbers tattooed on their forearms—tattoos that the rest of us never knew about, thanks to long sleeves, shawls, and silence. Read more
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