Survivors and Liberators, Liberators and Survivors

A few months ago, my mother called and told me that she had found a Nazi war medal in our basement.  She had been cleaning out her house preparation for a move to the suburbs of Pittsburgh, away from the city where I had been raised. 

“How is that possible?” I asked her from my apartment in Brooklyn.  I thought of past residents of our house, of closet-case white supremacists.  But the owners before us had been a family of Orthodox Jews.  

“I’m pretty sure I’m right,” she replied, “I think it’s an Iron Cross.  It has a cross on it.”