Vienna, 1947.
The city still bore its scars — bombed-out buildings, shattered windows, and people who had learned to walk with silence in their steps. Among them was Marta Grün, a Hungarian Jewish mother who arrived each Sunday at the same gray stone building — the Kinderregistratur, the orphan registry.
In her arms, she always carried the same bundle: a few baby clothes and a small blue sweater, soft from years of holding, worn at the cuffs where her son’s tiny hands once reached out.
Her son, David, had been two when they came for them. She survived Auschwitz. He did not — or so she was told. But hope, cruel as it was, had a way of whispering her name each morning she awoke. So Marta returned to Vienna, to the city where the lists were kept, where maybe, among the endless names typed by tired clerks, she would find his.
Each week, she traced her finger down the registry pages, lips trembling as she whispered names that weren’t his.
Each week, she left empty-handed.
But she returned — always returned.
That winter was bitter. Snow drifted through broken window frames, settling over the city like dust on forgotten graves. One Sunday, as Marta stood by the stove in the registry hall to warm her hands, the door creaked open.
A nurse stepped in, leading a small group of orphans from a nearby shelter. Their shoes were thin, their eyes older than their years. Marta turned — only out of habit — and then froze.
A boy stood at the back, thin as a shadow, his face half-hidden beneath a threadbare scarf. But the curls — brown and unruly — and that shy, uncertain smile…
Her breath caught.
The sweater slipped from her hands.
Her knees gave way.
“David?” she whispered, the name catching like a prayer in her throat.
The boy hesitated. He looked at her, confused — as though hearing a word he had forgotten long ago.
Marta reached into her coat pocket, trembling, and drew out the little blue sleeve she had kept for four long years.
“See?” she said softly. “Mama made this for you.”
He stepped closer, hesitant, his eyes wide and searching. Then, as he touched the soft wool, his fingers lingered — tracing the same pattern he had once clutched as a baby. His lips parted.
“…Mama?”
The word broke her.
She reached for him, and in that frozen hallway, beneath the flickering light and falling snow outside, they held each other — not in the joy of reunion, but in the quiet exhaustion of two souls who had waited too long to believe in miracles.
Outside, the bells of St. Stephen’s tolled across the wounded city.
Inside, a mother and son wept — not for the years they lost, but for the breath they could finally share again.
