Rivka/Aunt Eva Character Analysis

There was a lipstick stain where Aunt Eva had kissed her on the forehead. She ran some water and tried to scrub it off, feeling guilty because Aunt Eva was her favorite aunt, the only one who preferred her over Aaron. Hannah was even named after some friend of Aunt Eva’s. Some dead friend.

“Never mind, little Chaya, never mind,” Gitl said. “Shmuel and I—we are your family now.”

Photographs of Grandma’s family but none of Grandpa Will’s, because, Aunt Eva had once explained, no photographs had been saved in the death camps. “We are our own photos. Those pictures are engraved only in our memories. When we are gone, they are gone.”

“God made the Devil, so God is here, too,” Rivka said.

“Organize,” Rivka said. “As I have organized some shoes for you, and not wooden clogs, either. And sweaters. You will need them because the nights are cold still.”

Suddenly Hannah noticed that one of the camp babies was still cradled in a wash tub. Without stopping to ask, she grabbed it up and ran with the child into the middle of the midden. Garbage slipped along her bare legs.

When it was silent at last, the commandant threw the shoes on top of Fayge’s body. “Let them all go up the stack,” he said. “Call the Kommandos. Schnell!”

The memories of Lublin and the shtetl and the camp itself suddenly seemed like the dreams. She lived, had lived, would live in the future—she, or someone with whom she shared memories. But Rivka had only now.

Then all three of them took deep, ragged breaths and walked in through the door into endless night.

“In my village, in the camp . . . in the past,” Eva said, “I was called Rivka.”

Hannah nodded and took her aunt’s fingers from her lips. She said, in a voice much louder than she had intended, so loud that the entire table hushed at its sound, “I remember. Oh, I remember.”

It later became an adoption agency, the finest in the Mideast. She called it after her young niece, who had died a hero in the camps: CHAYA.

Life.

There was a lipstick stain where Aunt Eva had kissed her on the forehead. She ran some water and tried to scrub it off, feeling guilty because Aunt Eva was her favorite aunt, the only one who preferred her over Aaron. Hannah was even named after some friend of Aunt Eva’s. Some dead friend.

“Never mind, little Chaya, never mind,” Gitl said. “Shmuel and I—we are your family now.”

Photographs of Grandma’s family but none of Grandpa Will’s, because, Aunt Eva had once explained, no photographs had been saved in the death camps. “We are our own photos. Those pictures are engraved only in our memories. When we are gone, they are gone.”

“God made the Devil, so God is here, too,” Rivka said.

“Organize,” Rivka said. “As I have organized some shoes for you, and not wooden clogs, either. And sweaters. You will need them because the nights are cold still.”

Suddenly Hannah noticed that one of the camp babies was still cradled in a wash tub. Without stopping to ask, she grabbed it up and ran with the child into the middle of the midden. Garbage slipped along her bare legs.

When it was silent at last, the commandant threw the shoes on top of Fayge’s body. “Let them all go up the stack,” he said. “Call the Kommandos. Schnell!”

The memories of Lublin and the shtetl and the camp itself suddenly seemed like the dreams. She lived, had lived, would live in the future—she, or someone with whom she shared memories. But Rivka had only now.

Then all three of them took deep, ragged breaths and walked in through the door into endless night.

“In my village, in the camp . . . in the past,” Eva said, “I was called Rivka.”

Hannah nodded and took her aunt’s fingers from her lips. She said, in a voice much louder than she had intended, so loud that the entire table hushed at its sound, “I remember. Oh, I remember.”

It later became an adoption agency, the finest in the Mideast. She called it after her young niece, who had died a hero in the camps: CHAYA.

Life.