Holocaust Remembrance Day
Apr. 19th, 2012 06:09 pmI was reminded by ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
batdina's post bearing witness that today is Yom ha Shoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day. The Holocaust is immediate personal history for my German Jewish family.
My father was 2 years old in 1939 when he and his mother left Germany for Chile, the country that would let them in. My grandfather followed a few months later on the last boat that got out at all. My mother's parents left a couple of years earlier and also took refuge in Chile. If my grandparents hadn't uprooted themselves, I wouldn't be here at all. Everyone fled again when Allende was elected in Chile, scattering to Europe, Israel, and the US.
Growing up, I heard my parents speak of Oncle-Kurt-who-died-in-the-Holocaust and Tante-Hilde-who-died-in-the-Holocaust. When we traveled to visit family, we went to every Holocaust memorial within range.
My next door neighbor lives in the house her grandmother bought fifty years ago. I suppose my sister's children have a chance at that kind of rootedness, but I never will. I long to have grown up surrounded by extended family.
The Holocaust leaves behind holes, emptiness, losses that stretch across the generations. I feel like I should make this worn, frayed story prettier and more engaging, but this is all I have.
batdina's post bearing witness that today is Yom ha Shoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day. The Holocaust is immediate personal history for my German Jewish family.My father was 2 years old in 1939 when he and his mother left Germany for Chile, the country that would let them in. My grandfather followed a few months later on the last boat that got out at all. My mother's parents left a couple of years earlier and also took refuge in Chile. If my grandparents hadn't uprooted themselves, I wouldn't be here at all. Everyone fled again when Allende was elected in Chile, scattering to Europe, Israel, and the US.
Growing up, I heard my parents speak of Oncle-Kurt-who-died-in-the-Holocaust and Tante-Hilde-who-died-in-the-Holocaust. When we traveled to visit family, we went to every Holocaust memorial within range.
My next door neighbor lives in the house her grandmother bought fifty years ago. I suppose my sister's children have a chance at that kind of rootedness, but I never will. I long to have grown up surrounded by extended family.
The Holocaust leaves behind holes, emptiness, losses that stretch across the generations. I feel like I should make this worn, frayed story prettier and more engaging, but this is all I have.
