“Welcome to Europe, Farah,” the woman said kindly

The motel in Frankfurt, Germany, was far more modern than the motels that we stayed at in Iran and Pakistan during our final week in the Middle East. The rooms were all squeaky clean and fragrant smelling, and the general atmosphere was one of calm and tranquility.

The proprietor seemed truly happy to host us. “You know,” she said, on the first morning after our arrival, holding out a tray of freshly squeezed orange juice and bread as she spoke, “you aren’t the first Jews to stay in my motel. Forty years ago, dozens of Jews passed through here. But I was the only one who knew that they were Jewish. No one else was allowed to know.”

Forty years ago… in the year 1940. The Holocaust.

This woman had allowed Jews to stay in her motel without revealing their identities. That meant that she had saved their lives.

“In Israel there’s a museum called Yad Vashem. It commemorates the Jews’ World War II experiences, and my name is on one of the walls there.”

Wow.  So this woman was one of the Righteous Among the Nations, and we, a family of Iranian refugees, were fortunate enough to find our way to her house.

Talk about history repeating itself.