Today was a heavy day, as are most of the days my classmates and I visit significant World War II sights. Our afternoon excursion to Lidice, a village evacuated and then subsequently decimated by Nazi Germany in 1942, weighed heavy on my heart. The Germans razed the city to the ground to make an example out of the Czechs whom they believed played a role in the assassination of SS General Reinhard Heydrich. As it turns out, the British paratroopers who completed the mission were hiding out in a church crypt in Prague, where they were found several weeks and hundreds of deaths later.

What is left of the small town now is only the foundations of its church, alongside several memorials to those who lost their lives. All in all, the Nazis murdered 340 innocent Lidice villagers, 82 of which were children killed in a gas chamber. The exhibits at Lidice’s museum emphasized the intense pain many women in the town felt as they were separated from their children without warning or explanation, and I carried a little sliver of that pain with me as we journeyed back home.

But encountering the woman and her son above at the Wallenstein Gardens provided time for even further reflection. The love with which she kept her son safe on the edge of the pond was tender; her actions spoke louder than any words I could have exchanged with her. Her son bore a look of pure awe on his face the entire time, captivated by more by the scene in front of him than her. The two were tourists, spending the day in a new place. She stood steadfast behind him the entire time, holding him with gentle arms.

Observing this mom brought me back full circle to the stories of the mothers from Lidice, but I felt more encouraged than sad walking away from that scene. I would likely never have thought twice about such an unassuming exchange without the gravity of history at the forefront of my mind. Acknowledging the significance of even the simplest human interactions is a skill I hope to hone, so today a personal victory emerged from the pain.