Part VII
"Oh, I spent two and a half years in Germany," she responds.
"What took you to Germany?" I ask with deepening interest.
"I was in a Nazi concentration camp during the big war," she responds without emotion or inflection.
I am flabbergasted. "How did you end up in a concentration camp in Germany?" I ask, now somewhat agitated. She then tells me what few of us seem to know. The Nazis came into Russia and the Ukraine, Anna's point of origin, and took thousands of Soviets captive to staff their labor camps. When the war was finally over the survivors were given a choice. They could either emigrate to the U.S. or return home. Those who chose to return to their own country never suspected that Stalin would either kill them or exiled them to Siberia and the Far East of Russia. Thousands were killed and others, like Anna, found themselves in places like Nikolaivka in the Far East.
"I miss the Ukraine," she tells us sadly.
I am touched and beyond words as I look at this wonderful, warm and loving woman across her small cozy kitchen. The wrinkles on her weathered face are many and deep. I imagine how each one was developed over the years. I pray I'll have an opportunity to explore each one with her one day as she smiles her toothless smile and a spark appears, lighting her time-wizened eyes. She shows us pictures of her husband and her sons taken years ago when she was young. Now, at 81, she's strong and vibrant � a veritable reservoir of memories both of joy and of despair. I feel blessed by her very existence, seeing in her a beacon of hope for many. I see how wise my friend Natasha is to save this for the last, to bolster her spirits after seeing the hopelessness of the lost we left only moments ago.
It is time to return to Khabarovsk and we reluctantly say our good-byes. Arriving at the train station, we run into Svieta once again. I think she's there to see Natasha off but find she is still with us an hour later when we arrive in the city. She has come alone and empty-handed to look for her lost son.
It's been a long and eventful day. I am bone tired and soul weary. My heart twists in my breast as I head for home, lifting to my God the final image of a lone mother walking off into the twilight � a shepherd searching for her lost lamb.