During this time of year, we long for examples that reveal good in the world. Here then, the story of how three lives changed when Morgan Miller became friends with Les and Eva Aigner.

They met at a senior living center.

Last summer, between her sophomore and junior years at Oregon State University, Miller, 20, worked at the center’s café.

The Aigners, who lived there, came by daily for vanilla lattes. Miller made the drinks and engaged in the kind of small talk people make when they recognize a familiar face.

They bonded two months ago during a trip to Washington, D.C.

They met again this past week in downtown Portland.

The tears shed Wednesday afternoon should be described as happy.

***

The Aigners suffered at the hands of the Nazis during World War II.

Les Aigner, 89, was born in Czechoslovakia, but fled the German occupation with his family to Budapest. But there, his father and 16-year-old sister were sent to a slave labor camp. Aigner, then 15, his mother and younger sister were deported to Auschwitz. His mother and sister were killed upon arrival at the concentration camp in Poland.

Aigner was sent to a work camp, where he and other prisoners were forced to build weapons for the Nazis. After he contracted typhus, he was sent to die in Germany’s Dachau concentration camp.

“It has stayed with me,” he said. “I have dreams. I saw the utmost brutality. Someone upstairs was looking out for me. I had no decision on survival. It was day to day. I became camp savvy, followed orders and never drew attention to myself.”

On April 29, 1945, he and other survivors at the camp were liberated by the 45th Infantry Division of the U.S. Seventh Army.

“I consider that day my second birthday,” he said.

Aigner weighed 75 pounds. It took him a month to walk again. When he returned to Czechoslovakia, he discovered most of his family members had been murdered. After regaining his strength, he moved back to Budapest, then occupied by the Russians, where he met, and later married, Eva, now 81.

She, too, had been born in Czechoslovakia, but fled with her family when the Nazis seized her father’s small business. They settled in Budapest, but her father was sent to a labor camp, where he died. Eva and her mother were forced to march toward the Danube River. There, at the water’s edge, Nazis began gunning down 800 people. Eva’s mother bribed the guard with her wedding ring and the guard let them out of the line.

When Russian troops finally liberated those held by the Nazis, Eva and her mother returned to Czechoslovakia to find all their extended family members had died in concentration camps.

“I try to live my life normally,” she said. “But the experiences I went through as a child changed me and are with me to this day. I have a hard time saying goodbye to my family who live elsewhere. I have this fear I will never see them again. When I see the children separated from the parents on our border, I cry because I see myself as one of those children.”

In 1956, the Aigners left Budapest and immigrated to the United States. They settled in Portland, where a distant relative of Les Aigner’s had come after the war. Les found work as a machinist. Eva worked as a cosmetologist.

Late in life, they moved into the Marquis Tualatin center.

They liked lattes.

They met Morgan Miller.

***

In October, the Marquis corporation paid to take a group of veterans to Washington, D.C., on what it called the Journey of Heroes to visit the World War II memorial and other national landmarks.

The Aigners weren’t veterans, but would they like to go? They responded in writing:

“Because of the bravery and sacrifice of the American troops, I was given another chance for life. They deserve all the thank yous and blessings for saving so many lives. This trip will give me great satisfaction and peace of mind.”—Les Aigner

“By being able to see the WWII veteran memorial, I will have a chance to thank the veterans for their bravery and get closure for the terrible years of that time.” –Eva Aigner

Meanwhile, Miller got a call at college asking if she could come on the trip to help the Aigners. She agreed, took time from her classes and flew east.

“No idea what I was getting into,” Miller said. “Not the logistics of the trip but the emotions.”

One day, the group toured the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, and Miller was with the Aigners.

“I had a general understanding of the war,” she said. “But they were taking it all in and telling me their stories as I pushed their wheelchairs. What had once seemed unreal and far away became personal. The people I was with had lived through it and survived.”

Les Aigner, looking at a photograph of a pile of bodies in a concentration camp, told Miller he could have been in that pile.

Eva Aigner, her memory stirred by photos and exhibits, told Miller about her life and fight to survive.

“She would listen to us, and then ask a question,” Eva Aigner said. “We were there for hours. We didn’t tell our story at once. When we left the museum, she told us she felt as if it had happened to her own family.”

The couple’s resilience after experiencing such horror and despair surprised Miller.

“They have every right to be bitter,” Miller said. “They aren’t. They are loving and kind. They went through something I cannot imagine.”

When she returned to college, where she’s majoring in human development and family sciences, Miller plunged back into her work. The final in her Latin American literature class required that she create her own piece of literature, or “obra.”

“I wanted to write about Les and Eva,” she said. “They changed my life.”

She called it “You Told Me.”

You told me you saw your friends

Lying on piles of dirt on the cold ground.

You told me they were like skeletons

With their eyes

Dark and hollow

Their bones protruding their skin.

And their mouths wide open,

As if their last breath tasted like poison,

And death tasted sweeter than life.

She wrote, page after page, five total.

Now I will share.

So, that we will never forget.

So that we will always remember.

My dearest Les and Eva,

Now it is my time to share.

Her professor gave her an A and included a note:

“Dear Morgan, I have no words. I am totally moved. You must share your work with as many people as you can. Thanks for sharing what you have learned. I cry for how sad it is to read it. Thank you.

Share?

Miller knew where to begin.

She wanted to give a copy to the Aigners, to surprise them by reading it to them out loud, a way to thank them for allowing her into their life.

***

On Wednesday, Marquis officials drove the Aigners from the living center to the Oregon Jewish Center and Museum and Center for Holocaust Education, telling them that Wendy Westerwelle, a Portland actress and center docent, would take them on a private tour of a new exhibit.

When they arrived, they found Miller waiting for them.

She explained why she was there.

She began reading.

Tears flowed.

When she was done, Eva Aigner thanked her.

“This is so good for the soul,” she said. “The trip you made with us, and sharing with you, made us strong.”

Les Aigner thanked Miller for carrying the story of the Holocaust forward so the younger generation will never forget “what hate can create.”

If people forget, his wife said, history can repeat itself and innocent people will once again be slaughtered.

Miller said the Aigners are the “most incredible people I’ve met.”

The couple, who have two sons, four grandchildren and a great grandchild, said the young woman is now part of the family.

“She adopted us,” said Eva Aigner. “And we adopted her.”

Miller’s poem will now be part of the museum’s archive.

--Tom Hallman Jr.

thallman@oregonian.com; 503 221-8224

@thallmanjr