ABSTRACT
There was always the family-whispered story of Shira, which I have only come to know recently. My knowledge is incomplete. I feel bewildered, I go numb, I turn away, yet I keep returning. This is the story as I have known it: Shira was born the same year I was (1942) in Lithuania. I think that the family spent some time in the Kovno Ghetto. Under the coming threat of the Nazis, her parents left her with a family in Italy. There was a baby sister who died (or was she killed?) with her parents. I overheard whispers of Shira when I was a child—mysterious, fascinating, frightening. When the war was over in 1945, Shira’s uncle (my grandfather’s brother) went to find her. Her parents had been murdered in Auschwitz—the exact circumstances remain unknown. Her uncle felt compelled to take her into his family of survivors, then living in South Africa. I know this story through fragments that I overheard as a child—in whispers. Clearly, it registered in my mind in some unformulated way. I have a letter in my possession, which is a communication to the uncle written by a person from a Jewish social service agency. (I feel uncomfortable as I write this section—guilty as if I am taking her story away.)
