Deborah J. Stein: Letters From Ruthie

As refugees flee Ukraine, TFP is proud to publish artist Deborah Stein's lyrical essay for her mother, Ruth Stein, who fled Nazi Germany in 1937 at the age of 12.

Ruth Stein, née Salomon, at her family home in Wanne-Eickel, now a part of Herne, a few years before fleeing Nazi Germany in 1937.

I try but shut the door still on my mother’s final purse, her nightgowns, her lower-lumbar pillow, the last perfume bottle I gave her—a smell which sends out her ghost, the reminders that a woman who was a mother once walked, slept, smelled strongly of sweet powder in the morning, existed.

This last thing found and re-found, a letter my mother began, the last letter. The last letters:

H. I. M. A. G. I.   

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