The Walk

I saw a movie once at the National Holocaust Museum in Washington DC. It was at the end of the tour I took. We all filed into the small theater and the film started. Survivors told their stories. By the end I wept. A women shared her story in flashes. A man shared his in flashes. It was summer and she was going to school when her father made her change from her sandals to her winter boots. She thought he was crazy but he seemed so determined she did what he said. The man joined the US Army and went to fight in WWII. The day the woman wore her winter boots in the middle of the summer was the day her family was rounded up and sent to a concentration camp. She spent two years in that camp wearing her winter boots. Near the end of the war she was forced with thousand of others who had miraculously survived to march from one camp to the next in the middle of the winter. If she had not been wearing those boots she would have died. Her father was already dead. The man helped the US Army push into Germany. He had seen terrible things over the last few years but nothing prepared him for what was to come. When the German soldiers abandoned the camp where she was they were free but so many did not have the strength to leave. They were living skeletons. She and several other women went out side the gates to get water. There they were approached by US Soldiers who had come to liberate them. When he approached the group of women he was shocked. They were like skeletons with grey hair but none of them were older then twenty. He asked if he could help them, he called them ladies. When the US soldier called them ladies she wept. It was the first time in years anyone had ever referred to them as ladies. She fell in love with him just a little bit. That love would grow and be returned. They would marry and have children and one day would make a film that would be played in the National Holocaust Museum.