Today is the International Holocaust Remembrance Day, and for the first time in my life, I feel compelled to share some thoughts on this day.
Like many of my generation, I am the granddaughter of Holocaust survivors, and my childhood was marked with distinct scars. For example, we never bought German manufactured products, my German-speaking grandfather refused to speak the language and as kids, leaving food on our plates was forbidden. I learned only years later of the poverty my father grew up in as the child of refugee survivors. It took many years for them to be able to even talk of their stories.
But we are glad that they did. Today, in the moral confusion we are facing in the world, it is more important than ever for us to recognize the critical lessons of Holocaust history.
My lessons came from my grandfather, Sam. Born in 1914, Sam grew up in pre-war Austria (which later became Poland) where antisemitism was rampant in his life from a young age. “Baiting the Jews was a national sport”. His own father would say ‘never run away. Never cry. Never give in.’
And this is how his survival instinct was born.
He spent his whole life studying, completing his fifth degree well into his 70s. One of the most profound stories he shared with us was a conversation with a professor preparing him for university entrance in 1936. “He told me, in beautiful German, ‘Herr Schmidt, I have nothing against the Jews, I have nothing against you, but the Jews are weeds in our garden. And we have to pull them out and destroy them’. That was his warning, and I knew there was no future for us here”.
War broke out in 1939, and by 1942 my grandfather learned that almost his entire family had been murdered. By good timing, luck, determination, and scruples, he and my grandmother escaped and were saved.
Education became the theme that kept his spirit alive. As young refugees in England – where they fled to escape Hitler – they established a boys hostel in Oxford for German Jewish boys – who had been sent away by their parents to escape the war. He said of that time that he understood “we are doing something worthwhile: to save and raise children – because there’s an old saying ‘the future life is not in your own life. The future life is in your children, your pupils. They carry on your life”.
To my grandfather, Jewish education was vital. He describes how he had to get rid of the English teacher at the hostel because he wanted the boys to forget that they are Jews. My grandfather believed just the opposite: that “we have to remember that we are Jews and that we should never lose our roots”.
Many years later at my grandfather’s shiva (week of mourning), several of these men, then in their 70s, showed up to pay their respect. They shared their appreciation for their early Jewish education by my grandfather and acknowledged their strong Jewish identity to those formative years.
After closing the hostel and reuniting the German boys with surviving families (or finding homes for those orphaned as many now were), he finally pursued his dream. With his young family he came to Israel when the State was formed in 1948 (where they lived for the next 10 years). Ironically, as an occupational psychologist and Holocaust survivor himself, among other occupations, he worked for Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem helping concentration camp survivors integrate into society and find suitable jobs. Read this again. It seems … unimaginable. But this was his role.
I cannot help but draw comparisons and think of the good work he may have done today supporting the survivors of October 7th.
My grandfathers’ fervent Jewish identity and deep love for Israel, and the understanding that its existence is vital for the Jewish people’s survival, was the narrative of my childhood. No one could have been happier than him at my decision to make my life in Israel.
There is an expression in Hebrew: “zar lo yevin” which literally means: “a stranger wouldn’t understand”. How can you explain that we have been persecuted in every country we have settled for more than 2000 years and that this tiny “haven” of a country is the only place we can feel safe? EVEN surrounded by enemies, in the face of rockets attacks from the north and south and murderous terrorist infiltrations.
Because we have nowhere else to go. And the world is showing us this truth right now.
Today, as I look at pictures of my dear grandfather I know he would be right here, volunteering, defending, arguing, debating, teaching, praying… surviving and thriving. Because this is what we do.
Am Yisrael Chai
puttingitfrankly 