Madelaine Zadik

Madelaine Zadik lives in the wooded hills of western Massachusetts. A former botanic garden educator, she now devotes herself to writing. Currently, she is working on a memoir about her relationship with her Aunt Helga, whom she never knew except through letters Helga wrote from prison in Nazi Germany. Her work has appeared in Shark Reef, DoveTales: An International Journal of the Arts, the Still Point Arts Quarterly, Public Garden, Being Home: An Essay Anthology, Months to Years, and is forthcoming in Pangyrus.

Hope

Hope is what filled Helga’s letters, in fact, they were overflowing with hope. Hard to imagine so much hope inside a prison cell. That first year awaiting trial moved slowly, with little to do inside that cell. Helga was in solitary confinement for over eight months.
My mother and her sister, Helga, were part of the resistance in Nazi Germany. As teenagers they worked as couriers, smuggling anti-Hitler newspapers across the mountains from Czechoslovakia into Germany.

Creative Nonfiction

Issue 57, January 2022

Madelaine Zadik

Madelaine Zadik lives in the wooded hills of western Massachusetts. A former botanic garden educator, she now devotes herself to writing. Currently, she is working on a memoir about her relationship with her Aunt Helga, whom she never knew except through letters Helga wrote from prison in Nazi Germany. Her work has appeared in Shark Reef, DoveTales: An International Journal of the Arts, the Still Point Arts Quarterly, Public Garden, Being Home: An Essay Anthology, Months to Years, and is forthcoming in Pangyrus.

Hope

Hope is what filled Helga’s letters, in fact, they were overflowing with hope. Hard to imagine so much hope inside a prison cell. That first year awaiting trial moved slowly, with little to do inside that cell. Helga was in solitary confinement for over eight months.
My mother and her sister, Helga, were part of the resistance in Nazi Germany. As teenagers they worked as couriers, smuggling anti-Hitler newspapers across the mountains from Czechoslovakia into Germany.

Creative Nonfiction

Issue 57, January 2022

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