Mystery of 1944

Mystery of 1944

As I walked eerily down the dark streets of Manhattan with the rain gushing down, I stepped on something firm. Ordinarily I would just keep walking but for some unknown reason I bent down and picked up the mysterious item. It was a soaked little black book. To say I was intrigued is an understatement. I resumed my ten block walk home with the book clenched in my hand the whole time.

I entered my home, carefully placed the book on my armoire and quickly changed into dry comfortable clothes whilst thinking about the book the whole time. What could this book be? Who did the book belong to? An exciting mystery I couldn’t wait to discover and unravel. I sat down in my grandmother’s rocking chair with a glass of wine and with extreme care opened the book. What was inside changed my life forever. It took me on a journey I never would have experienced otherwise.

The extremely ragged and frail book had hundreds of entries in it. The first entry was dated with the year 1944. The ink had partially faded away yet was still readable. I got comfortable and excitedly commenced reading. After the first three entries, I was hooked and immersed myself into the book. It was a 20 year old young woman’s journal entries from the holocaust. She was separated from her family and every day she wrote to her husband as if he was coming home that day. In every daily entry she explained to him what she did that day as if he was there in person. It seemed to be her own way of coping during a lonely and scary time. After hiding for two weeks she was taken in by a nice family and given a small room in their home. She wrote about them in her entries and explained how grateful she was to be taken in by a graciously kind family. She told her husband she was safe and not to worry about her even though she was worrying about him.

About 30 entries into the book she told her husband she was pregnant with their baby. She went on to explain how she was starting to show and how she hoped he’d find her again. She told him that she saw him in her dreams and prayed for him every night.

Halfway through the book, she had a beautiful baby boy. The family that took her in accepted the baby with open arms. They helped her take care of the baby in the scary time it was in the world.

As I got farther into the book, days/entries were occasionally skipped but each entry that was there was always written with a huge heart of love to her husband. At this point, I was so invested in this mystery woman’s story. I couldn’t wait to see how the rest unfolded. I felt like I was living her life for this brief moment in time.

After taking a quick breather to calm my eyes, I plunged back into the book. The baby was now a year old and the woman and the family that took her in were living a great life together. The holocaust had just ended and she was hoping to reunite with her husband and keeping faith he was still alive. Each entry going forward she would tell her husband she missed him and hoped he would find her. She would occasionally call businesses that were in the town she had previously lived in with her husband in hopes to get information on him. It was a small town where everybody knew each other. However, for months she was unsuccessful. Many of the businesses no longer existed and the few that did exist had new owners. She didn’t give up hope. It was a true love story. One of extreme faith.

As I approached the last quarter of the book, the entries were less frequent and the time between entries increased. Sometimes weeks went by without an entry. She still wrote to her husband and told him she loved him and hoped to see him again but now the baby had grown and she escaped to New York. This is where the last few entries got interesting for me. The year was now 1958 and her young baby was 9 years old. She worked as a cashier at a local grocery mart and found a small apartment in the outskirts of Manhattan. She still wrote to her husband about her life and their child and told him she missed him dearly.

Finally, after 4 hours of virtually nonstop reading I got to the last few entries in the book. It made me cry. It was now 1970 and she was 48 and her son was 21. She never remarried and stayed faithful to her husband the whole time. She told her husband that she lived a good life and her son turned into a fine young man. She told him not to worry about them, that they were doing just fine. For 22 years she never gave up hope. The last entry in her book, the year 1975, told her husband that she was ill but their son was taking care of her and hopefully he would find her soon. She had put a few ads in the paper looking for a Michael Weinstein who once lived in Germany and would be 57 years old and ended it with G. Weinstein. Sadly her ad attempts were never answered but she never forgot her one and only love. The entry ended with “Michael, I will always love you and can’t wait to meet again one day.”

I slowly closed the book and tried to decipher what I had just read. It led me on a mission to know more. I had just found the black book so someone alive had to have possession of it. It was dropped 10 blocks from my home. My wheels in my brain started turning and I started on a journey to find the owner. With it being 2015 and social media a great outlet, I searched the internet for a Weinstein in Manhattan that would now be 66 years old. I spent weeks with no success until one day my efforts were successful. A man with the name Michael Weinstein responded to post I placed on Facebook. He asked if we could speak. I responded to him and we started a conversation on Facebook. I asked him if he had a mother that would be 93 and her name started with a G. He said yes his mother was Guever Weinstein. She had passed away when he was 25. He asked how I knew her. I told him I had found a little black book in the rain and for some reason felt compelled to pick it up. He was so grateful. We ended up meeting at a local Starbucks in Manhattan and I gave him the black book and tears rolled down his face. He said after his mother had passed away he found the black book and read the story of her life and what she did for him all those years. He said he was devastated when he lost the book on his way home from work about a month ago. We ended up meeting every week for months for coffee and became good friends.

It turns out he was a retired stockbroker in Manhattan and lived a comfortable life with his wife in the city. He shared the story with his kids and Guevers “would be” grandchildren and had me over to dinner to meet the family. It was an experience like no other. Such a wonderful and welcoming family. I never married so I enjoyed being in the company of the family of such a fearless woman. It was then that Michael wrote me a check for 20,000 dollars as a thank you for caring so much about his family and for searching for the meaningful book’s rightful owner. I didn’t want to accept it but he insisted. He knew how invested I was in their story and how much I truly cared. I thanked him graciously.

I asked Michael if he ever found his father. He told me he found on the internet that his father had died a few days after Gertrude escaped and before he was born. It was a bitter sweet moment. A woman who never gave up hope on her husband and who made the best of her life with her son living with courage and belief everyday. What an extraordinary woman.

I know from that day forward I not only had life long friends but also a zest for life I never knew existed.