Source : NEW INDIAN EXPRESS NEWS
Family devastated over loss of personal heirlooms, including jewelry of deceased Holocaust survivor
Anna Yeager said she and her husband agonized over going back to their beloved Altadena neighborhood near Pasadena after fleeing with their 6-year-old daughter and 3-year-old son, their two dogs and some clothes. A neighbor told them their house was gone.
Now she regrets not grabbing her children’s artwork, her husband’s treasured cookbooks, family photos, and jewelry from her mom, who died in 2012, and her husband’s grandmother, who survived Auschwitz.
When the couple returned, they saw blocks of only “chimney after chimney.”
“Power lines everywhere. Fires still going everywhere” she said, adding that when they walked up to their home “it was just dust.”
Charred grapefruits littered their yard around a blackened tree, a few still hanging from its branches.
Yeager’s neighborhood of Tudor homes was planning to celebrate its 100th anniversary in May.
“You build a world for yourself and your family, and you feel safe in that world and things like this happen that you cannot control,” she said. “It’s devastating.”
There were remnants of the front porch where Yeager had photographed her children nearly daily since 2020 and had planned to keep doing that until they reached high school. That gave her hope.
“The porch is still there and it’s to me, it’s a sign to rebuild and not leave,” she said. “You know, it’s like saying, ‘Hey, I’m still here. You can still do this.’”
SOURCE :- NEW INDIAN EXPRESS
