alltheyoungjews

My grandparents were Holocaust survivors. This has always been a part of my family history and the pictures and stories are our family tree. While other families have names that date back generations hanging off each branch, we have my grandparents and the vague memories the war didn’t rip away.

This year on Yom Hashoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day, I heard a woman give hear testimony, as she called it, of her experience. After many years of hearing stories of my grandparents’ struggles I never cried even though I tried to force myself. It wasn’t until I heard this woman speak of her childhood in Czechoslovakia and the trials she both witnessed and endured, that I broke down, in a small, crowded classroom and cried. As I listened to her words I saw my grandfather’s face, as an older man, on the speakers’s body as she fled the gas chamber. I felt the heat of her eyes as she spoke. She pleaded with her audience to never forget what we had heard.

As an adult these stories shook me. The stories of my childhood seemed almost like fables my mother told me. I realized I never understood the degree of tragedy that my grandparents had survived. But now, after hearing another survivor speak, these stories brought up many questions about my family and our past. I began to ask my mom where my grandparents came from, what was their life like before the war? What was their daily routine? I needed answers! I wanted to know who I was, what were our family roots? Would the little town of Ludz,Poland pre-1940 provide these answers? My mom certainly didn’t agree and most likely my grandparents wouldn’t have either. My mom told me as my grandmother had told her we are Jewish not Polish.

Since the Diaspora Jews have found homes all over the world and most of the time in places where they were or are the outsider. By visiting Poland and seeing where many of our ancestors perished I would be no closer to my heritage. My heritage is in Judaism. It is in the Blintz soufflé my mom makes, in the latkes my grandma fried over the stove, and it is in the Yiddish spoken between my mom and her father. It is in the traditions of our family, and the stories our mothers tell us. Being Jewish is about family and heritage and our heritage moves with us as we move. Our history is within us and not confined to single period in history or contained in a single place.

Check out this website: about children of Holocaust Survivors, very interesting.

http://www.agenerationapart.com/

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