World Affairs

The Echo Continues

by LINDA GERMAIN 
02/24/22
Free to Share

  Message Writer
  Hire Writer

Tweet

*TRUE STORY

The diesel fumes from the huge bus reminded me there were seventy-two hours of a boring trip stretching into my immediate future. Since I would be captive for three days with little to do on this journey from Arizona to the other side of the country, I had decided to make a valiant attempt, once again, to read that tediously long book, War and Peace. (There’s more to contemplate about the title later.)

Little did I imagine such an incredible character would cross my path those thirty-odd years ago. I never got past page five of the book, but her story more than made up for anything Tolstoy, a highly regarded Russian author, had to offer.

My favorite seat on any bus is right-front. Somewhere in the middle of Texas, in the middle of the night, I woke up to hear the loud voice of a short matronly woman with fluffy white hair. She had a foreign accent I supposed was German, and she seemed to have a most cheerful attitude. She took the seat across the aisle, right behind the driver.

As miles piled on miles through the wee hours, she knitted and chatted contentedly with the few around her who were awake. I yearned for sleep and wished she would wind down at some point. We had a breakfast stop and then returned to the cross-country coach. A mother and child needed to sit together, so the loud talking woman asked to join me. What could I say?

Her engaging inquisitiveness leaped out to embrace me as soon as she got settled and picked up her knitting needles. I told her I was studying political science and had just finished a European Governments course. She was quiet for a while until she seemed to slip the bonds of some memory prison and grabbed my arm as if she had been sent to deliver a life-or-death message.

Her intensity and unexpected confrontation startled me.

“Do not think it cannot happen right here in this country. You are young and have no idea how things can change overnight, and then you will lose everything!”

Huh? I had no clue what she was talking about. There were tears in her eyes, and all jocularity was gone. Her voice became almost a whisper, and she was trembling

“Listen to me. I know what I know. I was like you—going along in life, looking forward to a bright future, free as a bird. The possibility of this obscene horror never occurred to anyone in my country. They killed my family!”

Oh, my! What did she mean? I glanced in the review mirror and saw the driver raise his eyebrows and give a slight shrug. He could hear every word.

Given her accent, I was beginning to understand what story she was trying to tell, so I tried to be polite and let her speak.

“He came to power, and everyone believed him. He seemed to hypnotize people with his fiery speeches and swaggering ways. I still don’t know how it happened so fast, and then they sent me to that evil, stinking place!”

This sudden glimpse into a total stranger’s past was something I will never forget. The reality of those events was like a barely healed scar--a scab whose scratched surface always leads to new bleeding--but curiosity got the best of me.

“Where did they send you?” 

She was deathly quiet for a few minutes, seeming to return to the painful horror that must have been a frightening shadow always hovering on the edges of her mind.

“The only thing I can think of you might understand is to imagine how far away and cold Siberia would be to you. That’s what it was like.”

I figured out that was her euphemism for a concentration camp.

As daylight faded into dusk, a light rain fell. This articulate, elderly lady continued to speak of World War II and her homeland and many other things about Europe in those bygone days. Finally, sometime in the night, we pulled into a small terminal. She bustled around, gathering her things to disembark.

I did not want her to leave. Once more, she took my hand.

“Don’t ever, ever forget, my dear. Any society positive it can never lose its freedoms is blind.” Then in a pleading voice, she added, “I PRAY your generation won’t let it happen again. PLEASE!”

As we pulled away from the station, she stood by her well-worn suitcase and waved as if we were old friends.

The bus driver turned to me and said good-naturedly, “Well, wasn’t she something?”

“Yes,” I agreed, still puzzled about what had taken place, “she certainly was something.”

That surreal conversation has resurfaced in my memory so many times over the years, and even more lately. Although she must be long deceased by now, I am so sorry I did not get her address. I don’t even know her name, this person who survived making her own peace with the agony of senseless war, but God does.

For some reason I will never understand, a sweet, mysterious woman shared her personal tragedy with me as we rode through the night in the right-front seat of a Greyhound Bus.

But why me? Was there something I needed to know for the distant future? Was the real message that not learning from an evil history condemns humans to repeat it?

Is it time for Christians, especially teachers and writers of the faith, to speak up, sound the alarm, encourage others in these scary times?

Do we genuinely listen with spiritual ears so that we do not miss the call to arms in God’s Army to put on the armor as those Scripture-referenced principalities of the air go into a monstrous battle?

Maybe that’s what a stranger on a bus decades ago was sent to say to a young woman who one day would grow to be mature enough in the faith to share.

Sadly, perhaps it really was all about war and peace in the end.