A Single Step Toward Hope

The scene is set in August 1945. World War II has just ended, and over 300 traumatized Jewish children from Germany, Czechoslovakia, and Poland, who survived the Nazi concentration camps are arriving at Windermere in England's Lake District as part of a British philanthropic effort to help these young children recover their lives again after what they have been through. They have been through a living hell in recent months - watched their family members and friends murdered in the most horrific of ways and been child laborers in the concentration camps. They are malnourished and unwell, both physically and emotionally. Most do not know where their families even are or if they have survived. They come to this unknown country in the knowledge that this is for their healing, but most are skeptical. Is this just another ploy to take advantage of them? Do the people running this thing actually mean well? They agree to do what they've done all along - stick together. A family made up of co-sufferers in life's atrocities. 

The bus pulls up to the estate. The children begin to be escorted off the bus and into the buildings for medical evaluation. As they are being looked over, treated, given new clothes, etc...one of the staff notices one boy refuses to get off the bus. Everyone else is inside, but he is not. The staff member tells Oscar Friedman, the gentleman in charge of the facility, "I tried to explain to him he's got nothing to fear, but he won't budge." Friedman makes his way slowly out to the bus, along with the staff member who informed him of the boy's hesitation. Friedman is the perfect one for this moment: a German orphan who became a psychologist and fled his native country during the war and who also experienced some time in a concentration camp, he can relate better than most to what these children have endured. He is also bi-lingual and can communicate to many of the children, knowing all cannot really speak English. He makes his way onto the bus. 

"Salek, isn't it?" he asks the boy. There is a slight nod of acknowledgement to his name. 

Friedman sits down at the front of the bus. 

"I could sit here and say you are safe. But... why would you believe me? Refusing to get off the bus makes more sense. However, there are two face you know: the Nazi's have been defeated... and you can't sit here forever." 

There is a long pause. The boy says nothing in reply. Only listens. 

Friedman adds, "No one's going to drag you off." The words hang in the air. He stands up and quietly walks back off the bus, leaving the child to think about what has been said and to choose for himself what he will do. 

The staff member asks, "What happened?" Friedman replies, "We talked, and now we wait." There is silence. That boy named Salek knows the promise of healing has been made to him, but the past holds him so captive that he isn't even sure he's brave enough to get off that bus. He doesn't know yet that, months later, his older brother will find him, and they will go on to set up a successful business together on England's south coast. There is a life ahead. There is a future. But right now, all Salek sees...feels...is pain. 

And somehow I'm seeing myself in this child and feeling like a part of me isn't sure it can get off the proverbial bus either. Can trust again, love again after loss. Even when I know I'm likely on the edge of healing, I'm not sure I can trust enough, be brave enough, to take that first step and move ever so slightly toward reclaiming life. 

The two men stand together. A few seconds later, they hear footsteps. Salek emerges from the bus, somehow summoning an ounce of courage to believe that the promise of healing is real and the people here mean well. The staff member escorts him to where the rest of the children are to be medically evaluated and begin his journey to rebuilding his life. 

In the months that follow, each of these children will battle through dark days: post-traumatic stress, depression, anxiety, flashbacks, grief as they find out the fate of their families, loneliness, and uncertainty about the future. But, under the guidance of 35 caring adults, in time, they will begin to hope again. To attempt to put the horrors of the past in the past and learn skills and life-lessons that will allow them to rebuild. In the few, short months they are at Windermere, they will learn to speak English, learn to interact with the community, learn to live again. Eventually, they will be placed with caring families in England and make a new life for themselves. They will become known to history as the "Windermere Children," a closely-knit group of survivors who still meet at the estate once a year to remember. To thank God that healing began for them here. *

I'm struck by this moment in Salek's life. Because it's all our lives. And there are times we find some odd safety in the past, however horrible. Even when pain is all you've know, there is a sense of fear of stepping out into the unknown...even when you've been told it's the path to wholeness, to well-ness. To hope. When you're not even sure what hope looks like anymore and the darkness has been your friend for so long... when you've run out of bravery and your heart has grown cynical, doubtful... refusing to get off the bus does make more sense. After all that's happened, why would you believe that things will get better? 

Salek's story is our story. And maybe we're all a bit paralyzed by the past in some way. Perhaps a part of us all is still stuck on the bus, too afraid to move forward. Afraid, maybe, that the memories and the emotions - however aching - will disappear if we choose to get up and move. And for all the words of belief and affirmation offered to us by others, they sound empty in the ears and the heart. After all, they haven't lived your pain, so how would they know? 

But equally as real is the truth that the past will win if we choose to never get off the bus. As much as you're afraid now that what has happened will own you for the rest of your life, the fact is, it will own you if you never get up. You will never discover what's ahead if you choose to remain where you are. 

Salek somehow... deep in his soul... understood the power of Congressional Medal of Honor recipient Kyle Carpenter's words when he said, "The smallest of steps eventually completes the grandest of journeys." Were Salek to have stayed on that bus, to an extent, he would've forever given power to the Nazi's over his life. They may've been defeated on the battlefields of Europe, but in the battlefield of Salek's mind, they would've won. The choice to step off the bus was an act of personal choice...a quiet defiance... that evil would not have the final say. That hope could write the ending, however awful the past had been. 

We all have enemies that we're fighting in the heart. The pain of the past whispers to us that love will never find us again. That it's not worth trusting after what we've been through. That it's safer to stay in one's soul-shell than it is to risk opening it to faith and hope. But what if a single step toward hope is all it took? What if we allowed ourselves to believe that just maybe the promise of healing is real? 

Maybe that single step is a simple task. For the hurting, even the most minute of things can feel and seem monumental. So you cleaned out a drawer. Or you went for a walk. Or you called someone to ask for help. Or you said a prayer for assistance and comfort. You tell yourself: one step toward courage. One step toward life again. Because that's where it starts. And someday, all those little steps add up to a beautiful story. Experiences and memories that might never have been had you not chosen to take that little step forward all that time ago. 

Salek knew the past. He was lost and bewildered in the present. And he had yet to discover the future. But his life began again the day he stepped onto the Windermere estate and chose to walk, however fearfully, toward healing. 

What choice will we make? 

* To learn more about the Windermere Children and their story, watch the riveting PBS documentary "The Windermere Children" on Amazon.com or at shop.pbs.org