My great auntie, an Auschwitz survivor, called my mother up today.
“this is how it began, before they put us on the trains”
And then hung up.
She’s 95 years old and she has never admitted to being Jewish, to being a survivor. I was 7 years old when I overheard my dad and mom talking about, I just learnt about the Holocaust in school, we saw photos of those skeletal humans. My small kid’s brain couldn’t grasp it. You have to understand that in Jewish elementary school you learn about the Holocaust before you hit grade 3.
I am 30 years old now…and she still denies her Jewish heritage. The trauma was too great, the horror too massive. The fear so deeply ingrained.
Until today…today she said it out loud.
Her story is incredible, how she came to be a part of my mom’s family is a pretty magical story. I hope that before she dies, I can hear it from her mouth and not just the secondhand telling from my parents and grandmother.
Can you imagine what kind of trauma it must have been for her to be watching the news and see all this white supremacy bullshit?
It’s been 72 years…72 years of saying nothing. The Holocaust was a taboo subject if she was even remote hearing distance…Even after she heard that I’d been assaulted by a group of skinheads…she said nothing.
It was the newsreels of what happened in Charlottesville, Virginia that shook something loose.
Let that sink in.
This shit has to stop. We have to refuse to allow history to repeat. We have to refuse to be disunited.
72 years waiting
Published
The Paradox Machine 