Nila Friedberg is a linguist living and teaching in Portland, Oregon. She grew up in Vilnius, Lithuania, and her grandparents, as well as several of their neighbors, were Holocaust survivors. “Some of them were silent about it, and I only learned about their survival later in life,” says Friedberg. “But some were willing to speak, and as a child, I heard countless stories about the ways my grandparents and neighbors escaped death.” While on a run in a park in 2019, Friedberg was reminded of one of these neighbors by the smell of Oregon lilacs. “I realized that the most...