Flora Hogman (3:44)
Hello everybody. Well, this is very different story I'm sort of preparing you. It's 1943, Nice, France. It's in the middle of the war. The Germans have just invaded the town. I'm seven years old. I'm sitting and standing, more exactly on the platform of a train with my mother. Very tall man with a long black robe approaches us and my mother gives me to him. I don't remember how we said goodbye, but I never saw her again. The tall man deposits me in some very strange place. I was in a room in front of me. There were a bunch of iron bars and a tall woman behind the bar was welcoming me in the house of God. She presented herself as Mother Superior and the others as sisters. She was all pretty strange to me and they had these very long robes and hats like wings. I see myself in a small, well, orderly garden, sort of roaming around among a bunch of children, all somewhat ghosts like me. We don't talk to each other, but mostly I discovered the roof of the convent. It was a flat roof and here the sisters were walking around and around and around all day with their long robes sweeping the floor, their hands up in the air, praying, and their eyes always looking at the sky. And they never looked down at me or at us. I of course wanted miss the affection of my mother. I remember when they changed my name suddenly from Flora Hillel I became Mariam and I was born in Ajaccio in Corsica. Of course I had no idea what either was or where either was and actually didn't faze me. Somehow it didn't register at that moment. And then suddenly one day, water was poured over my head and I was told I was a child of God. And then I learned the rosary. Now, the good thing about the rosary, that it finally provided a source of entertainment for all the children who were there roaming around. And we all learned the rosary and we decided who could do it faster. And I still know it today. I know it very well. Anyway, suddenly one night, the sisters, nuns, I guess you've guessed they were nuns, brought us all together. Very quickly we had to leave. They said, we have to leave very quickly. There was no time to explain anything. And they sort of threw us all in the covered truck. And one of them was inspecting my suitcase and find with horror, I mean, with a great shock, that my mother had embroidered my name on each of my clothing. And she said, oh, that's terrible. It's very dangerous. And she proceeded to rip off each stretch of the threads from all of my clothing as I was looking in horror. And I started to scream. And they got very angry at me because it was very dangerous. And I was despondent. This was the work of love of my mother. This was my connection to her. And with this embroidery gone, how could anybody ever know my name? I had lost my name. I didn't know who I was. I was completely meaningless. Years passed. The war ended. I was adopted. I changed name again. I became Flora Ogman after having been Flora, I mean, excuse me, Mariama and Flora Hillel. And I grew up and the war somehow receded in the back of my mind, like on another planet. My mother also became like a very thin ghost, which, with each name change, became further away from my awareness. I didn't even think about the idea of having a father, because he had died when I was 2 years old of TB and I didn't suddenly remember him. And it was such a long time ago, in 1958, I was in Nice. At that time I was working at Scandinavian Airlines. One morning a young man comes in and asks, is Flora there? So I said, yes, that's me. So he says, so and so. And I look at him. Of course, I had no idea who he was, and I repeated his name. And I still looked at him, and he thought I didn't want to speak with him. He almost left. And suddenly I finally realized, deciphering through his thick American accent, this was my blood cousin from my mother's side who had come from America. I almost fainted. I frankly didn't know what it meant to have A cousin, but it was a source of pride, and I could boast about it. I mean, a cousin from America. How many people had that? And I asked him, I said, how did you find me? Apparently his mother, who knew that after the war, had been adopted and I was in south of France and had been absolutely no connection. This is another story which I can't get into today. When her son finally wanted to go back to Vienna to visit where he came from, she said, go and find Flora in southern France. You know, go and find Flora in southern France. Anyway, so he was walking, you know, there are things that are meant to be. And that's the story I'm telling you now. He was walking on the Boulevard L'Opera in Paris, and he saw a store that said the House of Nice in Paris. So just for the fun of it, he walked in as the girl at the counter. Do you know Flora Hogman? And she said, oh, yes, she's one of my best friends. And that's how I came to America. Anyway, this really amazing encounter did lead me to come to America, where I started a new life. And it also led me many years later, when actually I was in my late 30s, to find my uncle on my mother's side in Israel. We met at the lodge airport. My uncle recognized me from my childhood photograph and I from his large smile. Aunt Lily, his wife, came to me and, you know, embraced me in tears. They had prepared a wonderful meal for me in their tiny apartment. And of course, it didn't take very long before we start talk about my mother. Finally I could say, what was she like? And my uncle Ori says, she was a brat. She was a, you know. And she, you know, she tried to teach me the piano. She was older than him and she was such a pain in the neck. But she was a. She was a romantic, an artist. And she spent a lot of the time in Italy. And she said the reason she was able to do that is because she had two unmarried uncles. I mean, they were his uncles too, but who just, you know, with largesse, gave her money. He thought that was. He was very critical of this. And then he goes on, said, I don't know how she managed through all these tragedies and to find a way to save you. And with great sorrow, he is thinking and talking about my mother's death in Auschwitz. Then there was. Suddenly I remembered the letters. There were all these Czech letters that we had found in the apartment in Nice when we had gone there after the war with my adoptive parents. Of course, I Totally forgot about them. But I had always taken them with me everywhere I went. And suddenly, here I could have them translated. So Uncle Uri translated a letter. And one of them is a poem to my father who had just died. And the poem reads, I've been given special permission to read it. How strange that you died just now in the middle of your life. We left together, the three of us, and now we are only two. How strange that you died so young and good with Miri blood we plan to produce to contrive to snatch up you and I. How strange that you died and still are living in our sphere and love you so much and kiss you daily, your child and I. And what I forgot to tell you before, this is after my uncle told me all these stories, it suddenly, you know, it's like my mother had become a real person. I had just remembered her, this very unhappy, stoic, wonderful ghost, very sad all the time. And here she was, a real person. She was a brat. And after the poem, it was even more. I mean, now suddenly I found myself. I was a person with a family, a father and a mother. Suddenly had found who I was, where I belonged, and also had found much more about my mother, who was a real person with a real life. A few years passed, and then I continued my year searching to my past. And this time I decided to go back to the convent, which I believe you recall, I didn't have very positive feelings about. In fact, I hated them. And somehow I connected them to the death of my mother. But, you know, they had saved me. And so I decided to go back and say thank you. I walked in and of course Mother Superior was behind her grid. But as soon as she heard me this time, she opened the door and she said, flora, but I remember you. She said, you had such a beautiful name. She was a novice at the time, and she was one of the ones who were walking around the roof. And she said, you know, we were not allowed to look at you, but we listened. And she said, we prayed for you all the time. It's amazing. It had never occurred to me. And she said, so few of you came back. And she looked so sad. And so we both embraced each other. And for the first time, I felt that I could cry about my mother with her and at the same time to say thank you to her that she had helped save my life. Amen.
