The Final Years

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“I know what I have to do, I have to go back to Poland. I have to go back to the place I was born. I have to see and feel and talk to the people. I want to go back to the place that I lived. I want to pay my respects to my family in the camps that I think they perished, and I want to follow my own footstpes down my lonely path to survival."

“People often say to me that they know how I feel—and no they do not know how I feel. They may sympathize with me, but this is a wound in my heart and soul that will never go away; the Holocaust is a wound that I live with, I get up with it, I go to sleep with it, I think about it, flashes come to me when I drive, it never stops.” 

“Yes, I believe something like the Holocaust could happen again. The human soul is always prejudiced deep down. We are always pointing fingers at this group or ethnicity–we don’t like this one or that one; it’s okay to not like someone, but it’s not okay to point fingers at someone, belittling someone—because this brings someone hate. Just look at what's happened in Bosnia or Rwanda.” 

"After he retired, it got worse. He was taking the pills from my pill box rather than his own. He was putting the sugar bowl and cooking it in the microwave and putting the eggs in the freezer. And he couldn’t remember what drawer his socks went in. And we would go to a restaurant and he would say, “You order for me. You know what I like.” (Sonya Braverman)

Editor’s Note: Larry’s cognitive health began to decline in the early 2000s and received an Alzheimer’s diagnosis in 2004. Following this and the worsening condition, in 2010 Larry and Sonya agreed to confront the past that had haunted Larry for his entire life by traveling back to Poland where Larry grew up. This turned out to be a therapeutic process for Larry, and for Sonya, who finally got to see her love’s past and got to understand him better before his death in 2014. Following his death, Sonya began telling his story to not only friends and family, but to the MHHE and agreed for him to be featured as part of Georgia Journeys. Sonya wrote about their trip to Poland in her book Lullaby in the Blood following his death.