I grew up within the suburb of Bethesda Maryland, a bit farther out of Washington D.C. with a small but loving Jewish American family. Being the oldest in my family, I had to learn how to help with my family whenever they needed it. My father's parents were from Moscow and they came over to America when they were very young and pregnant with my father, leaving my mother's family coming from Poland before my own mother was a thought to their eye. My mother as a few older sibling that were already alive and adapting to the American Life, my Aunt Elizabeth, and my Uncle Robert. It was a Russian and Jewish kind of upbringing for me, yet we were trying to be as American as humanly possible. I didn't mind it, going to and from school with my other Jewish American friends and we were playing games out in the backyards of each other's homes and even being together on weekends. It was a simple childhood, simple and yet hardworking since I helped get the laundry from our neighbor who was a cleaner, cook and clean up after meals, and even assist my mother on outings.

I had to grow up quickly.

But my mother was still beautiful and wonderful in my eyes. My distinct memories were of her singing to me at night the song Lavender's Blue to lure me to sleep, that and baking cakes with her in the kitchen and how she would smell of flowers from the windowsill. I loved her with all my heart, as well as my father since he was a piano player what would be hired all around the bars and pubs in the neighborhood and in Washington D.C., playing anything from jazz to classical music to get some money in his pocket. We had an old but great working piano in the living room, my father opening the windows on summer nights to play out into the street and have people who were walking by stop and listen as the green trees above them would shield them from the setting sun. I loved hearing my father play the piano, jazz at night to have us dancing in the living room, and classical music in the morning to have us eat breakfast and great ready for the day.

My mother would work as a receptionist at a local hospital down the street from our house, she's worked there even before I was born and well into her pregnancy with me. She even told me that her water broke with me while she was typing up a report at the desk there in the front lobby, a convenience really for her since she could just walk over to the maternity ward and give birth to me within a few hours. I was an easy birth, which apparently was a miraculous sign from God that I was a miracle, child.

Since then I would be with my mother when I wasn't in school since she could not afford to send me to a babysitter while she worked during the day, having me remember plenty of times being with her at the huge front desk and seeing nurses and doctors walk back and forth, giving me smiles and winks. I was the favorite there at the front desk, all of the doctors knew my name and would sneak in a lollipop for me when my mother wasn't looking. I loved that place, the bright white walls and the clean floors that I could see my face in. It was the first time when I was very small, 3 going on 4, that I learned that Doctors and nurses wanted to help people.

I wanted that, I wanted to help people.

When I was around 8 years old, already a veteran of the hospital hallways and running to and fro the wards with my mother next to me, my mother was pregnant again and I was more than willing to help her with all that was needed in her day to day tasks. I even had a small "job" as a runner to get papers to and from doctors in their offices since I knew them all by name and by face. It was a fun thing for me to do, running around the hospital like it was some kind of game and always getting a nickel for my work and for every paper I would send.

When my brothers were around 5 years old, my mother was diagnosed with cancer. The doctors explained that they had no idea where it was coming from if it was something that came down from my family, but it came and it was something that she had to work on herself and get through. We couldn't afford to pay for some of the medicine ourselves, yet my father would double and triple shifts to help her and get more money. This also meant that I would work at the local grocery store as a bagger to get more money for my mother who was slowly losing her strength and losing her stamina.

I also had to play the role of mother more than an older sister, since my brothers still were trying to navigate their lives as five-year-olds. It was hard, beyond hard since some nights my mother wouldn't be able to cook dinner and would fall asleep on the couch when I would come home from my job. I felt useless, not knowing what to do or how to help my mother since mostly the medication would not help her at all. The cancer was consuming her and making her weaker and weaker within her steps and smiles that she would try to show to hide that she was dying.

She died two days after I turned 16, died in her sleep. We had the funeral sometimes alter with all of our friends and close family embers that were still in the neighborhood, my Aunt Elizabeth having to move in to help out with my father who was trying to pick up the pieces of his lost life after he lost his own wife. Aunt Lizzy was a pistol herself, more of a big plump with meat on her bones and always trying to smother us with love when we felt like we were suffocating. I knew she looked like my mother, having me cringe a bit when she had the same smile or the same tone of voice. Aunt Lizzy, as I called her, helped bring in more money with her job as one of the secretaries as a law firm and I was still working hard at the grocery store.

For two years since my mother's death, no music was heard in my house from that piano.

My at the threatened to burn it down once, when I was just about to be 17 years old and I heard him storming into the house late at night and drunk as s skunk. He was so angry at the world and at God for taking his wife as he came in with a sledgehammer from the garage out back and I watched from the top step and seeing my Aunt Lizzy try to talk him from being on the ledge. I was shielding my younger brothers from watching as we were seeing my father scream at my mother in German.

"I don't want to look at this thing anymore! It reminds me of her and who she's fucking gone from my life!" He was belting this from his mouth now from the living room and I felt like I had to stop him myself. I loved the piano, not knowing how to play a lick from it, it did remind me of the good times that we had in this house. I had no real understanding on how my father wanted to take that away from us now since it did remind me of my mother in a brighter light. I stormed down the steps now, seeing my father about to raise the sledgehammer over his head and about to kill the piano, the memory that he used to cherish now, and I stood there in front of him before he could lower it an inch.

"Don't break this piano, it reminds me of mother and you'll kill her too if you break it!" It was the first time I ever screamed at my father, let alone yelling it at him in German now since the only time we would ever speak German in the house was when a serious subject was on the table. It was all too intense for me, and I saw him panic a bit when he was almost about to strike his daughter with the hammer in his hands now that was still over his head. He scanned my eyes, seeing that I was dead serious staying there and not letting him touch the piano itself. I didn't want to lose the last thing that was having me remember her in a good manner and in a good light. He then slowly lowered the hammer away from me, the sound of the hammer hitting the hardwood floor echoed a bit in the room as he collapsed and started mourning all over again, his head in his hands and my Aunt telling me to take the boys back in bed.

After that night, things were changing in the household with my father coming back to reality and was booming more at peace with himself as a widower. He was playing the piano again in the summer nights, my brothers and I would dance with Aunt Lizzy and we were laughing again, slowly but surely we were laughing once more in that small house. I could see him trying to be a good father to us, not that he was before when he was mourning, but it was trying even more now and was loving on the three of us with enough to cover both for himself and my deceased mother. I was grateful for my mother, and when I graduated high school at the age of 18, I told him my plan to be a nurse and help find a cure for something as big and deadly as cancer.

For my mother.

I started going to medical school and learning the basics, acing every test and going through the protocols as a student and slowly moving along as one of the top in all of my classes. I had to go into Washington D.C. itself to take classes since they were the best but I had a car that that time thanks to me father who was lending me his car and he would ride his bike to bars and pubs for work. Classes were hard and intense, but it was worth it when I became a nurse full time when I hit the age or 20 and I was getting more money to save away for my father. I would still help with my father and brothers and Aunt when I was home, making dinners with my Aunt and helping my brothers with their homework and keeping them in line. They were reckless young boys, still holding onto their youth as long as they could. They had to lucky.

I had I had that.

When the war was coming along and the threat of America being in trouble was coming onto the papers, I saw some recruiters for the Army Nurses Corps. come to the hospital where I was working in D.C., and when I heard about the pay and what I was going to do over there, I was really thinking hard of that choice. Would I even consider leaving my father and brothers, along with my Aunt to end for themselves while I went away tons serve my country? How could I leave them when I knew we were still trying to make it out alive and be happy. I went home that night to talk to my father about when he got back from his work shift. After sitting with him over a cup of coffee at the kitchen table, My father placed his hand on my own and had me look t him with sincere eyes.

"Go, go and serve your country. We can take care of each other here. You need to go out there for yourself now."

I spend a year within the Nursing program with the army, going through the strenuous training and going over rules and regulations about being an army nurse. It was harder, longer hours and nights for me to try and study and work with other hopefuls who thought they were going good work for the war. I was still thinking about my father and brothers, hoping that they were going to be okay without me helping them with money. I would send half of my pay to them in hopes that it would show that I was still looking out for them and making sure that they were going to be taken care of. For some reason, I found myself being the mother of the family, and I didn't mind that at all because it all about me loving them more and more as I was rather and farther away.

December 21st, 1944

Buchenwald Concentration Camp

"You will be staying with the other men in the sam bunker, but in your own room," The Captain explained to me now as he was standing next to me, the officer on my other side now as we were in front of the POW bunker that I was assigned to. I had no idea how many POW's were there and if they were at least going to give me the time of day now as the officer escorted me into the bunker, right behind me and I was still freezing there within that cold night and feeling like this was literally going to be the end of my life.

They gave me the choice to lie or to die at their hands if I helped there wounded men that would come through their doors. Would my mother be proud of me? What of my father, would he even have an inkling as to what was going on with his only daughter? Being held up in a prison camp on the other side of the world and being forced to work on German soldiers and keep them alive or I would be shot in the head, did that sound like something I could write to him about?

I then thought of Joe, how the last time I saw him he said he loved me. We were so close in our friendship and with our relationship since I thought it would be better for the both of us to not make it so serious. But he was the one who was willing to let it go on, to hold on to what we have and make sure it was strong enough to carry through the war. But now, did he really know what was happening to me? Did he have a hint? I only hoped he did not as I entered the bunker.

The room was very bare and small, bucks left and right and I saw the POW's in that room now looking at me with wide eyes. No one was saying anything at all now as I was escorting into the room and the officer there was cocking his gun to get their attention. I could only recognize two Americans there with their uniforms still on and their patches, but the others I had no made really now but I would assume that they were British, Italian and Australian soldiers.

"She stays in her own room, no questions asked. If anyone touches her or even tries anything on her that is unsatisfactory with the Captain, he will shoot you between the eyes," The officer explained to them all in a harsh accent now, the other POW's looking at each other now with hesitance as the officer then left me there alone. I had no idea what to do or how to present myself in front of them, so I stood there now and I wondered what was going to happen next. I felt like I was wrapping my jacket now and trying to not to shiver in front of them all and look pathetic.

"What's your name?" One of the older men asked me, almost looked like he was in his forties now as he was walking over me with a small smile on his face and a warmth there on his skin. He already looked skinny there with stubble on his face and a hint of wrinkles near his eyes.

"Georgiana." I replied to him now, seeing him nod his head and smile widely at me. For some reason, I felt like he was going to try and be like a father figure to me now thought he sound like he had a German accent along with his English.

"You're a nurse?" another American soldier asked me now, a young kind of soldier now with a curious look in his eyes while he was standing in the back of the bunker and the others were still analyzing me then and there and watching me.

"Yes," I replied back to him, seeing him looked a bit shocked now.

"Since when do they captured nurses now? Bastards." The British soldier said under his breath with a hint of annoyance there and the first man, the German one, whipped around to give him a hard stare.

"Silence or you will get us all shot!" He warned him, the British man fell silent one again as the first man looked back at me and held out his name for me to shake, making me afraid to just shake his hand now since it already felt like I was in hot water.

"I'm Charles," He explained to me now, having me slowly reach out my hand to him and shake it as he spoke out, "I was part of the German underground rebel army against the Nazis."

"Really?" I asked him now in a gasp since it sounded like something that was not even possible of being real.

"I was caught about 30 days ago," He replied to me now, having me look from him now to the others and seeing how they all looked, like they were in different stages of surviving this place and some of them already looking like they could fall over dead from the look of sickness there on their faces and on their skin. I was feeling and for them, and then again I felt like I was just starting to have this happen to me now as Charles gave me a weary smile.

"Welcome to prison, my dear Georgiana."