I want to tell you about the happiest little girl in the world. She had a young mother, whom she adored. A widely respected father, whom she idolized. An older brother who looked out for her, and two younger sisters who looked up to her. Her town was colored in the pastel shades of a Chagall painting. The air tasted like fresh-baked challah. Her household was in perpetual motion from one Shabbat to the next, from one Yom Tov to the next, filled with aunts and uncles, cousins and friends. And filled with chessed.  The happiest little girl in the world was Libu Gelb, my mother of blessed memory.

Although my mother was forthrightly outspoken about the horrors of her darkest time during the Shoah, this town, this childhood, this family was the overriding........

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