“I embrace you and our darling Jacques with all my strength.
I am leaving on Monday morning.”
Elie
That was the last sentence in a Postcard that Sarah Barsimantov received from her husband, Elie Barsimantov. Elie was born in Turkey in 1900 but immigrated to France in 1922 and there he met his wife Sarah Gabai and had their son Jacques in 1935 after a year they married. He was arrested and taken to Drancy camp in 1941 then was planes to deported from the Drancy camp to transported to Auschwitz in 1942.
Reading Elie’s postcard was so surreal. Just the emotions in his writing were intense, you could feel and empath with him as he consoles his wife and asks for her to be brave in their depressing situation. From his postcard, I can see how much of a lovely heart Eli had for his family member. He wanted his wife to be strong and brave for their son, telling her to keep her spirits up. He wanted to reunite with them, put the war behind them, and continue their life before WW2. I can’t imagine how heartbreaking it must be when Elie realized he wasn’t returning to his family, and how Sarah must have been devasted from not receiving any more letters from her beloved husband.
The realization that death is staring down at your lover and you can’t save them. You feel powerless. And sometimes you just are powerless. We as humans like to believe we are indeed protected from the reality of death but we are not. You build a connection even knowing the truth of what happened. You realized as Eli is writing he is writing as its last but try to stay hopeful for his son and wife. For Sarah and Elie to find love in one another, and build a home and family based on that love, for it only be tare apart by blind hatred must leave an immortal wound that bleeds with every eyeblink.
