Chasing Miracles - Katie

          Sometimes, most of the time, in fact, the miracle doesn't come. Wandering around Europe these last couple of weeks, constantly shadowed by the Holocaust and the brutal regimes that followed during the Cold War, this fact is ever present, reinforcing the difficulty in believing in miracles in the first place. Why don't we just give in to the feeling that miracles are a silly notion when confronted with such unspeakable cruelty and suffering?

          In Budapest, I walked alongside the Shoes on the Danube depicting worker's boots, shoes of fine leather and children's shoes all in a row along the edge of the river, marking the spot where scores were shot in the back and fell into the icy water during the winter of 1944-45. One night, the Nazis brazenly broke into the Embassy protected neutral safe houses and rounded up 150 people to be taken to the river. Several members of the Budapest police, led by Karoly Szabo, risked their lives by following and confronting the Nazis and freeing the group.

          In Vienna, the founder of a small museum is intent on acknowledging the truth of Austria's complicity in WWII. There, we heard the story of Elfi, age 10, who was sent to Sweden by her parents to escape what was now too late for them - certain deportation to a concentration camp. She was eventually taken in by a local pastor who went home to his wife and said, "We have four children, how do you feel about five?" The pastor and his family adopted Elfi as one of their own. Inexplicably, both of Elfi's parents survived the camps and they were reunited seven years later.

          And, in a Czech ghetto an artist named Friedl Dicker-Brandeis smuggled paper and drawing utensils to teach art in order for the children to find emotional escape. She left 4,500 drawings in two suitcases behind, including the names of the young artists, most of whom perished, as did she.

          Anne Frank somehow recognized, "...a single candle can both defy and define the darkness." These stories of courage, love and the selfless care of others endure and set the bar for all of us; to do what we can, where we are, in much easier circumstances. Perhaps, she left the miracle door ajar in acknowledging the candlelight. And, in something else she said, a message that rings true across the decades, "Think of all the beauty still left around you and be happy."