Holocaust Remembrance Day
Apr. 19th, 2012 06:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
soniaI was reminded by 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.
no subject
Date: 2012-04-20 02:22 am (UTC)Too many of the popular remembrances of the Holocaust make it easy to understand.
My grandparents were in the US by 1905. As a socialist activist, my mother had many contacts and newsletters from 1935 on, and her inheritance was a lifetime of paranoia. Is it paranoia if they really are out to get us?
no subject
Date: 2012-04-20 03:35 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-04-20 03:59 am (UTC)thank you for bearing witness today too.
no subject
Date: 2012-04-20 04:07 am (UTC)