Frank Grunwald's mother had written the letter to Grunwald's father moments before she, with Grunwald's older, crippled brother and hundreds of other Jews, entered the gas chamber at Auschwitz on July 11, 1944.
The father told the son of the letter's existence back in 1946, right after the war, but the son, who was 11 years old, did not want to read it. He avoided even seeing it.
Frank Grunwald, who survived a German Nazi concentration camp,
is now a retired industrial designer living northeast of Indianapolis on Geist Reservoir.
He is 85. "I was curious about the letter," he said, "but at the same time afraid, I think, for its sadness."
Ten sentences, scribbled in pencil on cheap paper, yet so extraordinary the letter is now in a museum in Washington, D.C.
Links to the most interesting and valuable articles dedicated to memory around the world (wide web)
LINKING THE MEMORY
OF THE WORLD