Nona Roebweiss

Holocaust Remembrance Day. 81 years ago today

Nona Roebweiss



Nona had always been overweight.
She'd been teased by the girls in her school.
They made her cry. But Nona was strong
and she knew that teasing only hurt if you let it.
She knew that was true because her parents had told her so.
They always told her she was stronger
than any storm.

Then one day, she and her family were swept up
like trash by a broom no one could fight.
She never saw her parents again. She was strong
and she could work. She did, day after day after day.
Nona had never experienced hunger like she did
in the camp. Everything was so beyond
her worst nightmares. But she remembered

her parents telling her she was stronger than the storm.
She fought for food. One day she realized
she was skinny now. She remembered being teased
for something as silly as being overweight.
She wondered if she'd still be alive if she hadn't been.
Then someone decided she was of an age
to take part in their experiments.

Nona held on to her being strong
even when they made her sick,
when they did things to her that hurt beyond pain.
Being strong, no matter what, became her mantra.
Strong for her parents, strong for herself.
The more she hurt, the more she sang.
She wrote a song: Stronger Than Anything.

Nona was carried out of the camp
on the day they were liberated. A soldier
gave her a tiny piece of chocolate. She decided that
chocolate was what freedom tasted like.
She survived the storm. Incredibly weak,
unable to walk, she was still strong
and she sang her song as she was carried out, away.

I was ten when I met Nona. She held my hand as I cried
because I was bullied so horribly at school.
She told me I was stronger than I knew and that
it wouldn't hurt if I didn't let it. She had numbers on her arm.
I asked her about them. These are my lucky numbers,
she told me. You seeing them means I was strong too.
Always be strong, no matter what, she told me.

She told me her story, sang me her song.
I've never forgotten her, her words, or her strength.
They have gotten me through days when pain
seemed like such a little word. Weeks when
life seemed terribly hard. And times when I couldn't
understand how people could be so horrible.
And I stood strong because Nona told me I was.

No, it didn't dull the pain. No, it didn't dull the hurt.
But it couldn't reach the core of who I was.
It was all outside stuff that wasn't who I was, am.
Nona was such a gift. A gift that gave and gave and then,
gave even more. She was strength.
And she taught me that I too, was strong
and could get through anything.

I have, and I did. I grew stronger than I knew.
She had the sweetest smile, and now, even now
I can see and feel her smiling at me
and can hear her words when I need them.
She wasn't bitter. She forgave the unforgivable.
Why? Because she told me she was stronger
than actions or words. She was right.