IN MEMORY OF LIFE.

As the grandchild of Holocaust survivors, I will admit that I did some things as a child that were probably by all normal standards considered very strange.

For example, I remember spending the time that it took between closing my eyes and actually falling asleep brainstorming places that my family could hide if the Nazis came to find us. 

And while most childrens' first memories are about playing in sand boxes or riding on carousels, I have etched in my mind the first time I saw tattooed numbers on my great aunt's arm and the first time I realized that the girl in the picture in her den wasn't my father’s sister, but my great aunt’s daughter who was taken to a death camp with her younger brother and murdered.

My grandmother had a severe stroke when I was very young and it was often hard to read her emotions, because she couldn't speak or move the right side of her body. But, I will never forget the first and only time I saw her cry intensely as my dad told her that my brother was in a play about the Holocaust, and I remembering wondering if they were tears of pain or tears of pride or both.

 All of these memories are the ones that are deeply etched in my mind.

I’m sure that for many, this would all seem very strange. All of these memories were produced before I was even 8 years old.  And maybe it was too much. Maybe this transmission of pain through generations was wrong. As a young adult, however, looking back I wouldn’t trade these memories for the sand boxes or the carousels, because above all these memories gave me a distinct sense of hope.

Today marks Yom Hashoah, the Jewish day to commemorate the Holocaust, and the day is all about memory. Today, we, as Jewish people (though many Jewish people are probably unaware of this day) take a vow to “NEVER FORGET”.

All my life, in classes, in college, at Jewish programs commemorating this day “never forgetting” has been about ensuring that such an atrocity should never happen again, and of course, this purpose is meaningful and it is a purpose I deeply believe in.

My early college years were in the midst of the horrible genocide that wrought Darfur and so much of the Jewish student community rallied around the cause by remembering what happened in our past to change the present. And, so many Jewish advocates relay their intense feelings of angst for communities in pain with our communal pain that comes from remembering our own history.

But today, I am remembering the hope – a feeling I find much more difficult to draw out amidst the monstrosity that was the killing of 6 million Jewish people and 3 or 4 million more who were killed in vein and the suffering that came in between and after and the innocence that was stripped from the world.

As a little girl, while I saw the numbers tattooed on my great aunt’s arm, when I discovered that the little girl in the picture wasn’t my father’s sister, when I saw my grandmother cry, I also have simultaneous memories of looking at the survivors in my family and asking myself, even as a young child how they held onto life.

8 years ago, I went on March of the Living an international, educational program that brings Jewish teens from all over the world to Poland on Yom Hashoah to march from Auschwitz to Birkenau, the largest concentration camp complex built during World War II and then to Israel.

During my experience, my tour group was accompanied by two survivors – a husband and wife named Sam and Regina. I distinctly remember standing in Auschwitz where Regina had been 60 years prior and listening to her story.

Regina told us about a friend of hers who had given up on life. When Auschwitz existed as a death camp its barbed wire had electric current running through it and many prisoners chose to committed suicide by grasping the wires. Her friend was ready to face that same fate. It was the midst of winter, and they were literally freezing, with minimal clothing, blankets and food.

But on that particular day the sun was shining through the clouds and Regina could feel the rays heating her weak body. She told her friend to look up into the sunshine and said that as long as the sun still existed there was hope in the world, and she saved her life. A few days later the camp was liberated.

I’ve carried that story with me through life, along with the stories of my grandparents and great aunt and uncle, and I still can’t make sense of them. They are stories that make me pause and think about how much there is to live for – even in moments of immense pain.

I feel guilty on this Remembrance Day for turning my personal introspection and focus on life. Millions of people were killed as a result of senseless hatred. Nothing will ever negate that. It’s a burden we as humanity must carry with us every day. People are lost every day. But I can’t help but reflect on how, amidst this horror, people still found something to live for.

There’s difficulty in remembering painful histories. We don’t want to disrupt a carefree existence with the burden of carrying memories with us. But amidst the pain there is something incredibly meaningful about how deeply so many people wanted to survive.

I hope that while we make the pledge to Never Forget, we’re also reminded how to hold onto life, because after the tattoos numbered on arms, and the photographs of children who were taken and killed, and barbed wires, and tears there was a life worth living for. I learned that from the survivors.

 (I included pictures of my grandparents' life after the war.)