The details are a little bit fuzzy, and seem to get fuzzier by the year.
There are, of course, the basics:
Both my grandparents, born in Poland in the first few decades of the 1900s. Growing up very modestly in Jewish homes and communities.
Dark forces swirl through the land, and before they know it, educations and lives are interrupted.
My grandfather started this time with two parents, seven siblings, and a wife. By the time it was over, there was only a brother left.
He was subjected to forced labor. He was beaten. He lived in foxholes and scrounged for food.
There were some good souls. They gave him food and shelter when they could and no one was looking. Several times he narrowly escaped being taken to concentration camps. In the end, he survived, living with physical and mental scars for the remaining of his ninety-four years.
My grandmother was one of the “lucky” ones. She made it through with false papers and the company of a couple siblings. But she lost her parents when she made it out of the ghetto. She worked for years assuming the identity of a non-Jew. Forever fearful of being found out. She spent several formative years of her life not knowing what the future would hold, if there would even be a future. Once, she accidentally used the Yiddish word for chicken while serving German soldiers staying at the farm where she worked. What was her response to the potentially life-threatening hackles she raised? Something that in any other context would be so minimal and benign? “Those damn Jews from my town, they have me using their word for chicken.”
My quick-thinking grandmother, she survived too. And when I visit her to this day and look in her eyes, I feel a deep, abiding love and admiration, but also an indescribable poignancy knowing the sadness and mystery behind what those eyes have beheld.
♦◊♦
Why does this all matter now?
Because I’m here. But just barely.
There’s a foggy scene of an intruder trying to kill my grandmother when she was eight months pregnant with my mother, in the hospital with a potentially dangerous rash. My grandmother was in a room with another Jewish woman: the war was over for not even a year, and Jews and Gentiles still did not mix. A doctor saw the man with a rag in his hands covering my grandmother’s mouth. He chased him off.
“You were in grave danger,” my grandmother was told.
My grandmother returned to the refugee camp outside of Munich and my mother was born weighing only about 3 ½ pounds because my grandmother didn’t have enough to eat to put on the necessary weight. My grandmother couldn’t breast feed because her body wasn’t strong enough to produce milk. Formula wasn’t an option: my grandfather rode his bike each day to get breast milk from another woman willing to share her own.
After several years living as refugees, my mom, her brother and my grandparents were sponsored and made the transatlantic journey in the steerage section of a ship. They were some of the last immigrants to be processed through Ellis Island. They made it through the tenements of the Lower East Side. Through a chicken farm in Southern Jersey, with a home that lacked indoor plumbing for the first few years. My grandparents scraped by and sent my mom and her brother to college. They eventually had two grandchildren, including myself. I excelled in school, made my way through an Ivy League university, and graduated from law school. You know the rest of this story. This is the story of American immigration, integration and eventual success.
But there was one problem with that narrative as I was growing up and becoming aware of the world, and its history, and my family’s place in it.
There was one little, inconvenient fact: my grandparents, those symbolic sources of love and tenderness that so many of us cherish as we grow, had suffered a sordid, soul-crushing experience. They had lost many loved ones to brutal deaths. They had lost their homes and sense of place. They had lost that ability to live in suspended disbelief at an age where it comes so naturally to so many, to feel wholly secure in the fact that they would live to face another day. They lost all of this to hate, and all the evil that comes from it.
I was aware of this reality at a very young age. It shaped me. And it shaped the environment of the home in which I grew up in innumerable and pervasive ways, ways I am even now only coming to understand.
The world could be a very dangerous place. A place filled with hate and anger. A place where people can seek you out and destroy you, simply for who you are. And what you believe.
♦◊♦
So what did I have to cling to?
What was the narrative that my parents put forth to me when I was still a young girl, trying to come to terms with the fate my family had endured?
It was this: that we were finally safe from hate. We were in the United States, a country that might not be perfect (and admittedly I certainly received a rosier account than was accurate), but a place where we as Jews could feel safe and secure knowing that no one was coming to get us, ready to destroy our lives and threaten our safety. Sure, anti-semitism still existed among many, but starting from the top, from the legitimate sources of our government’s power, we knew we could feel safe from the worst kinds of animosity. And hatred.
Flash forward thirty-odd years.
I now am married with two elementary age children of my own.
Sitting here today, as I think of how far my family has come in the past eighty years, when I try to describe who I am today as the beneficiary of that story, there is a concept of self that means more to me than anything. It is not about any accomplishments I can list on a resume, or any of the trappings that some would use to measure success. It is the notion of myself as “Mom.” Now I am that giver of love, support and nurturing to my family. I am here to let my children know that they too have a safe and secure place in this world. Just like my parents tried to convey that feeling to me.
Now suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere (though with further evaluation that is certainly not in fact the case), a divisive, hate-spewing character arrives like a clarion from the dregs of half-rate reality television, trying to downplay the stories of his failed real estate deals and casinos gone awry.
I want to think it’s all an anomaly. That anyone who freely and publicly calls Mexicans rapists, women disgusting pigs, makes fun of the disabled, suggests that 2nd amendment supporters assassinate the other presidential candidate, who borrows tweets from Neo-Nazi websites, whose advisers suggest a “bloodbath” will occur after the “rigged” election results come out in November, and whose recent campaign hires are cheered by a former Grand Wizard of the KKK, that that person cannot possibly have a shot at winning the presidency of these United States of America. Thirty-eight percent of my fellow citizens cannot possibly be on board with voting for a candidate who espouses those views, no matter where they fall on the Democratic to Independent to Republican spectrum. No matter what their other policy concerns may be.
Not my friends.
Not my neighbors.
Not my Americans.
That simply can’t be.
But it’s true.
The hate is there. It festers. It percolates. More and more people are comfortable expressing it. More and more it becomes part of the norm. It spreads and grows and morphs.
Suddenly there is no shame. People let loose. They call for bloodletting. They mock the suffering of others. They sink to the lowest common denominator. And it seems to make them feel good, so good.
I see it in the comments. I see it in the tweets. I hear it in the stories of people who try to call them out for their hate, their blind hate and malice towards anyone, anything different from them. They attack those people. They will stop at nothing to take them down, both in the Twitter-sphere and in the real world. They will come after anything and anyone that might challenge their self-righteous sense of self and their place in the world.
It makes them feel good, very good, because it is serving a very specific need. Just like Trump’s lazy insults and instigation feed his fragile ego and quell his self-doubts.
But to me, it doesn’t feel very good. Quite the contrary. Exposure alone feels like a poison, a virus that is taking over my body, my mind, taking away all that I feel is good in this world. This hate: it sows fear in me, and it germinates a deep sadness. Deeper than I could ever put in words.
Because my family, like so many others, we came here for a better life. We came here in our escape from persecution and death.
My parents told me I was safe from hate. I’d like to be able to look my children in the eye and tell them the same.
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Photo Credit: Flickr Creative Commons/Daniel Norris
Thank you for sharing your family and your survival story, it is heartbreaking but incredible at the same time. USA is the only country in the world that gave people of all backgrounds the ability to coexist in peace and focus on creating good life for themselves and their children. This is the first November that I will vote, and I choose peace and equality for all, I vote for future without prejudice and persecution.
Rebecca, thank you for sharing this extremely powerful story and relating it to today’s choices.
Incredibly written, thank you for sharing!
Beautifully written, Rebecca. Thank you for sharing your story. I hope we can all rise about the hate and negativity taking hold in our country. If enough brave souls can come forward like you have done, I know we can make it through this dark time in our country. We are better than this.
Your story spoke to my very soul. Thank you. As Black woman who grew up in a diverse community and didn’t really know about racism until I was a teenager, it has pained me to live in a world where my children see and hear about it EVERY day! My husband and I have labored to help them filter what they learn in our outside world. But I am fearful, especially for my two sons. We cannot hide our skin to protect ourselves. I am sad, very sad, by the state of our union. I am praying for a better… Read more »
It’s a heartbreaking story. I’m glad you exist. I suppose I could say something similar. My family experienced World War II from the Philippines so it wasn’t the Nazis, but the Japanese. My mother’s village was raided multiple time by Japanese soldiers. Several of those occasions my family was able to flee into the hills. Once my oldest uncle hid on the roof while Japanese solders held a bayonet to my oldest aunts throat. My grandfather wasn’t able to escape during one of these raids. The Japanese soldiers beat him to death. I look more like my Irish / Scottish… Read more »
A powerful plea from the heart for tolerance in an increasingly hate-filled world.
You must not only vote, rather also encourage your neighbors, friends and those who may sit out of the election, due to transportation, voter IDs or other roadblocks to exercise their right to vote. We are either engaged or just prisoners of those who get out a vote..
Your wisdom and personal story are equally powerful. Those who are unmoved are unmoveable IMHO.
Beautifully done.
Thank you Rebecca.
Beautifully put.
truly amazing thank you for sharing. proud to know you!
Thank you Becca for telling our family’s story. People who haven’t experienced this level of bigotry and hatred don’t understand the damage done for generations. In this political climate all “minorities” should be very concerned. It CAN happen again. Our voice is our VOTE! Don’t waste this hard won Right to protect future Americans.
Yes!!