The Oasis
by Adam Popescu 

I'm lucky.

My sister is lucky.

My mom is lucky.

My dad is lucky.

My grandparents are definitely lucky.

Me and my sister are lucky to be born in America , in freedom. My mom is lucky to be born at all. My dad is lucky to have made it out of communism, and live and work in America . My grandparents are lucky to have survived the Holocaust.

I didn't understand who I was for a long time. There's a lot of history in my family. A lot of triumph, sacrifice, failure-all of things people have no idea about. For my family, it's important that my sister and I are successful. It's important that we make something of our lives, because the fact that we are even here is a blessing in and of itself. We grew up in America , free of the hardships that plagued the rest of my family. No one persecuted us because of our religion. No one jailed us because of our politics. No one treated us less than human.

My grandparents can't say the same. They grew up in and around Prague , in what is now the Czech Republic . Before the war started, they lived simple lives in simple shtettl towns no more than twenty miles away from each other. But, they would not meet until after the war had started, in very precarious circumstances: Muhldorf's Dachau 3b, a concentration camp.

"She won't last long. None of them will," my grandfather, Carl Friedman, thought to himself, the first time he saw my grandmother, Blanka Davidovich. Stepping off the train and into an alien world full of walking ghosts, no one was expected to live long.

Skinny, hair shaved, and gaunt, Blanka was one of hundreds of women brought to the work camp to "give it a woman's touch," I was told.

"She had a scarf over her head, hiding her head," Carl said.

Back in those days, Carl was called Mirek. An imprisoned politiker-a political freedom fighter from the Czech underground who had forged documents that concealed his Jewish heritage, which saved his life on more than one occasion.

Carl told me many stories growing up. I was told he embellished, and exaggerated, but I believed every word he said. One story I remember him telling me had to do with torture. After the Germans discovered that he had a shortwave radio in his possession, they tied him to a pole to make an example of him. The Germans beat him until he was near death, but before they could go any further, however, Eichman stopped them.

"Do you have a paper from Germany that says you can beat me?" Carl said defiantly to the German commandant.

With no answer to his question, Eichman told the soldiers to cease the beating, and Carl lived to fight another day. While in Warsaw , Carl was part of a reconnaissance team that was lowered into the Jewish ghettoes to retrieve gold, and other lucrative treasures for Eichman's SS. Remembering Carl from his days in Warsaw , the Nazi decided to go easy on him, and give him a break.

Although he was lucky, Carl was defiant to the point where even his enemies respected and feared him. It was this never say die attitude, and a significant amount of luck that kept my grandfather around, even though he probably should have died several times over.

When Carl was 13, he ran away from home, leaving his family behind, and moved to Prague to learn a trade. He sent home a few letters and some money, but never returned (if he would of stayed, he would have surely died). Within time he became an apprentice and later, an electrician. He would use this skill time and again to further his own survival in the years to come.

In Prague , Carl joined the underground, and was recruited as early as 1938, by American Intelligence, during the Spanish Civil War. Around that time, many people were being trained in partisan methods-methods Carl would use time and time again.

"In 1942, Heinrich was assassinated," he told me in an afternoon phone call. "He was traveling in a convoy, we threw grenades on top of his car, blowing it up. We ran. We escaped and went to Prague ."

It was in Prague that Carl got important documents that would cement his new identity.

"I knew a German man whose son went to school with me. He died in Spain , in the war, and the father let me use his name, and gave me his papers."

Carl used those papers to assume a new Christian identity, and to get a job in Vienna , in the opera house as an electrician. But, his new career wouldn't last. In a beer hall, one of Carl's underground comrades got drunk, and began talking-singing a tune that would throw Carl in jail.

"I was arrested in Vienna , in the opera house, in 1942," Carl said.

When I asked him to tell me all the camps he'd been in, he paused and began to dictate: "Telazin, Dresden , Auschwitz , Dachau , Muhldorf, Warsaw ."

Carl spent time moving from camp to camp as an electrician, relaying information to the underground, and sabotaging whatever he could.

In 1944, Carl met Blanka, in Dachau . Blanka was deported, along with her entire family in 1944, and spent three months in Auschwitz , from June to September. In September, she was sent to Dachau , along with several hundred other women.

On her first day in Dachau , during roll call, Blanka slipped up, and it was discovered that she had assumed a fake identity to gain transfer from Auschwitz . In Auschwitz she switched clothes and identities with a woman named Hilda, so as to go to Dachau with her cousins. Her life already in a precarious position, she was lucky she was not killed on the spot. Using her charm and intelligence, she managed to gain the commandants good graces, and worked in his personal quarters, cleaning and cooking. It was this close proximity to food that allowed her to prolong her life, as well as the lives of others (drinking left over coffee, and eating scarps of bread, and anything else she could get her hands on kept her strength and moral up).

As time passed in the camp, Carl and Blanka began to meet regularly, at night at the camp's fence, which separated the men from women. Their love blossomed, and they found an oasis of love in a sea of hate.

Carl gave Blanka a flower made out of paper-a symbol of their love. Blanka hid the flower in her bunk, risking her life just to keep this present. Carl told Blanka that after the war, they would meet on a bridge in Prague . He gave her instructions, and told her she had to survive. She must survive.

Unbeknownst to Blanka, Carl was on a secret mission, relaying information to the resistance about a Nazi project that was underway in Dachau -the Nazis were trying to build a super plane that they hoped would turn the tide of the war in their favor. They would never get a chance to get this plane, or their plan off the ground.

One night, in 1945, Carl cut the power to the camp, and escaped. In the weeks to come, allied bombing raids began to destroy the camp. Realizing they would soon lose the war, the Germans began to cover their tracks, killing mass amounts of prisoners in an effort to "wash their hands" of the whole thing.

Dachau was eventually liberated by American soldiers, and Blanka was amongst the liberated. She made it back to Prague , on the same trains that took her to the gates of hell.

In Prague , she reconnected with her brothers, and the siblings shared a house by the bridge that Carl had told her to visit.

For weeks, Blanka waited at the bridge for Carl, waiting for him beside a statue with Hebrew writing. With no sign of Carl, Blanka was sure he had been killed. To add to her torment, everyone around her was getting married, which put serious pressure on her to find a man.

There was a Greek who pursued Blanka, but she denied his advances. She was in love with another.

One day, Blanka visited the bridge, only to find Carl waiting there for her.

"I thought he was dead," she told me recently. "He was with the Americans, in Frankfurt ."

Carl was helping the Americans in a de-Nazification program in Frankfurt , which helped deal with war crimes, and punished Germans for the atrocities committed during the war.

Carl and Blanka were soon married, and moved to Israel , where they had a baby, Yon, my uncle. A few years later, my mom, Iris, was born.

They lived in Tel Aviv and Haifa , but Israel would not be their final destination. Around 1956, Blanka's brothers decided to move to America , and Blanka and Carl decided to go along with them. They were going to travel by ship, but the 6 Day War broke out, and they had to take a plane-the last plane out, according to my mom.

They settled in Cleveland , but everyone hated it.

"It was so cold," Carl told me, wincing as he said it.

Next, and final stop: Los Angeles . It was here that they planted the roots of out family. Twenty years later my mom met my dad, Petru, on a blind date. Five years later, I was born.

My dad married into a deeply historical family, but had his own demons to fight. Born in communist Romania during the war, he experienced firsthand life behind the iron curtain, and received a rude awakening to the real world.

"I was interrogated when I was 13," he began. "My phone was tapped, and I was followed."

All this because he was a successful young author who challenged the system.

In 1977, he defected to England , with the help of author John Cheever.

When the two were in Egypt on a press trip, the Englishman convinced Petru to flee and make it out of Romania .

Petru agreed, and sought political asylum. He stayed in England for a few years before coming to America .

He received a scholarship to the prestigious Iowa school of writing, and even taught there for a semester. Drunk and giddy off his luck, Petru penned a screenplay with Director Peter Weir, "The Last Wave."

In 1980, Petru met Iris, and the two fell in love. Two years later, they were married, and four years later, I was born.

My family's history is truly an oasis-akin to a rose growing from concrete, they made something out of nothing, and created successful, beautiful lives through hard work, in the face of tremendous adversity, odds, and hardship. For these reasons and more, my family is a personal inspiration that I draw strength from.

It took me awhile to fully understand where I come from. To understand what their sacrifices meant-to understand what it all means. Now that I do, I couldn't be any prouder being a Friedman Popescu.

Adam Popescu is a student at Pitzer College. This piece was written for a Creative Nonfiction course.