Officially, I first met Frieda in a local swimming pool. Years of high impact cardio combined with bad genes had destroyed my knees and the best option for staying aerobically fit without further damaging my joints was an aqua fitness class. I was the youngest one in the group which at first made me sad; a constant reminder that my body had betrayed me prematurely, but my new classmates were a friendly bunch and I quickly began to enjoy our easy camaraderie as we complained about the water temperature and compared notes about our orthopedists.
Usually I stood in the back of the pool, mostly because the water was warmer there but also because it was a really good spot to see everyone without being seen. I don’t remember exactly when I first noticed Frieda, but after that initial glimpse, even though the pool was full of other people, my eyes kept seeking her out, drawn in by a niggling sensation that I knew her from somewhere. Superficially, she reminded me of my late grandmother; the European accent, the bone structure, the very specific shade of coiffed blonde hair. But Frieda was younger and much more cosmopolitan than my grandmother; she drove, she exercised, her wardrobe was more Americanized.
One morning I came late to class and my coveted spot in the back was taken and the only free space was at the front which happened to be right next to Frieda. I slid into the spot on her left and endured some good-natured ribbing by my pool friends who knew I preferred to hide. We twisted, we kicked, we lifted the pool barbells, and as I turned to my right I saw Frieda’s left arm rise from the water, inked with the distinctive numerical tattoo which simultaneously exposed and obscured a dark sliver of her past.
Years later I would find out that nineteen-year-old Frieda and her family had been sent to Auschwitz from the Munkacs Ghetto. Her parents and most of her siblings were slaughtered; Frieda and her two sisters were the only survivors.
A few months passed, and our relationship, if I could even call it that, had progressed from cordial nods to casual conversations. Early on she had asked me if I lived in Highland Park, telling me that my skirt and baseball hat had given it away. I knew her first name, and she knew mine, but I don’t remember what else we might have revealed to one another, I don’t even remember if I knew then that she too lived in Highland Park.
There was another way that Frieda reminded me of my grandmother: it was something about their eyes – the color, the shape, but also something else, something bleak, something fathomless. Sometimes I was afraid to look into my grandmother’s eyes for too long.
My daughters and I had been assigned the same seats in shul on Rosh Hashana for many years. The row in front of us was a multi-generational family. We had watched the granddaughters grow from infancy to young girlhood, their development measured in snacks; pink sippy cups and Cheerios were replaced by juice boxes and pretzels which were then replaced by water bottles and rainbow colored candies. The oldest women in the shul sat in the rows to the left of us. Directly across the aisle were two elderly sisters who had survived the camps, and in the row behind them were some other older European women I saw every year but did not know personally. That first Rosh Hashana after I began swimming I left my seat in the main sanctuary to get something that I had left in the coatroom, and in that row behind the two elderly sisters was a familiar face. It didn’t click right away, that this regal woman in the jewel toned suit and perfectly applied lipstick was Frieda from the pool, but somewhere in between the coatroom and my seat, pool Frieda and shul Frieda merged into one. I even looked at the seating chart to confirm, and now I also knew her last name.
After shul I approached her, excited that we had this new connection between us. At first, she looked at me blankly, smiling politely, but as comprehension dawned, her face lit up, and she reached out and touched the bottom edges of my sheitel. “Mein G-tt, so beautiful mit the blond sheitel, I never would have recognized you!” I introduced her to my daughters and a gentleness softened her features as she looked at them in that very specific way that older people look at children.
She was embracing them with her eyes. I was familiar with this look, it was how my grandparents had looked at me every time they saw me, even after I was all grown up. I wonder if this is what my grandson sees when I look at him as well.
At some point the pool’s filter broke, and we were told that the repair would take weeks, possibly months. I switched over to the gym’s other location and didn’t see Frieda for a while. In some ways, the new pool was better; it was consistently warm, and the instructor was more polished, but I missed my friends, I missed Frieda. I missed her unflinching honesty and her subtle humor, I missed that infusion of chizuk I got simply by watching her twist and kick and lift the barbells, her tattooed forearm a testament to her resilience. I had marveled at her ability to wake up in the morning and to not just live life, but to grasp it, to sustain it, to fight for its continued existence through something as mundane as exercise.
I continued to see Frieda every Rosh Hashana, and sometimes on other holidays when Yizkor would be said. By then I would be saying Yizkor myself and sometimes I would steal glances at her during the Kel Maleh and wonder how she maintained her composure. After Frieda’s second husband passed away she moved to California to be closer to her son. Shortly after that Covid hit, and I never went back to the pool. I never saw Frieda again.
The Thursday before Pesach I received an email from shul that Frieda had passed away and the funeral would be held in Highland Park the next day. I knew that, erev Pesach notwithstanding, I was not going to miss her funeral, no matter what was going on in my house. Friday’s weather was cold and raw and very wet, the type of weather that infiltrates your bones and shrouds the day with a foggy gray haze. Even though I had left the house early, I couldn’t find a parking spot near shul. Mistakenly I had thought that due to the timing and due to her age, attendance would be small. I was gratified to be so wrong.
Although I lived here and davened in this shul, I didn’t know any of the other mourners. Later I would see one elderly woman from shul as well, someone else I knew from town who went to school with one of Frieda’s children. As Frieda’s sons started to talk about their mother, I realized I didn’t really know any specifics about her life at all. I had guessed at certain details, but the harsh reality of knowing them was a totally different thing. How lovely it was to hear people crying for a woman who was 100 years old.
My grandparents’ experiences during the war were different than Frieda’s. They escaped the Germans, but got caught by the Russians who brought them to Siberia. My mother was born in a prison camp the year Frieda’s family was killed.
I tried not to cry; I did not feel that I had earned the right to do so. I was so peripheral to her life, especially in the last six years or so, but when her granddaughter began to speak, tears slid down my face, landing on my raincoat, still damp from the unrelenting rain; G-d’s tears mingling with mine. After the funeral, I went over to her granddaughter to share some memories of Frieda. She brightened and asked how I knew her. My answer sounded lame and inadequate the minute it left my mouth. “We swam together.” Before I could even expand on my words, she was called away by her father; the day was short and Frieda needed to be buried.
I never got to tell Frieda that I became a Bubby. The thought of being in shul and bringing my grandson over to meet her gave me the chills.
It started to rain harder as we left the sanctuary and prepared to follow in the footsteps of the hearse. I flipped my hood up over my sheitel, and the front edges peeked out from the front, the very same edges that Frieda had so delightedly touched when we connected in shul, so many years before. I followed the hearse for as long as I could, but Pesach was calling, and so was my youngest daughter. She couldn’t imagine why I wasn’t home on erev Pesach, and I asked her if she remembered Frieda from shul. She did, but only vaguely, enough though to understand why I was at the funeral.
Two weeks after she died, on Yom HaShoah, I googled Frieda and found a YouTube video of a speech she gave in 2019. At the time, she was about 94. Her voice was strong as she spoke for half an hour about her life during the Holocaust. At one point she articulated one of the lessons I had learned from her, a lesson I will carry with me forever.
“You always have to hope that there is another tomorrow.”
L’ilui nishmas Henya Frieda bas Avrohom.
