Can We Really Picture Auschwitz?

When Buba Weisz Sajovits and her sister Icu arrived in Veracruz in 1946, their eldest sister, Bella, was waiting for them by the dock. Bella, who had been in Mexico with her husband from the 1930s, insisted that they were not to speak of what had happened to them in the war. Life was meant to be lived facing the future, not the past.

So Buba — her given name is Miriam but she has always gone by her nickname — lived life forward. She married a fellow émigré and concentration camp survivor, Luis Stillmann, whose story I wrote about last year. They had two daughters, then four grandchildren, then five great-grandchildren. She started a beauty salon, which thrived. They became pillars of the Jewish community in Mexico City. They prospered as they grew old