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What my mother didn’t talk about (2020)

My mother and I were very close, but when she died last year there was still so much I didn’t know about her.

My grandfather, who was captured as a POW and forced into a German labor camp when serving in the Polish army during World War II, told my mother he didn’t see the point in her going to college. As my father handed over our American passports, I saw him become more and more agitated, as if he had been plunged into the memory of the time before, when my parents pretended to be going on vacation in order to leave and beg for political asylum in Vienna. Our destination was the town of Traiskirchen, and the refugee camp that we had been sent to after my father had followed the instructions he was given by people who had previously fled and asked for political asylum at a police station in Vienna.

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