On Remembering

Today is International Holocaust Remembrance Day. 80 years ago today, Auschwitz was liberated. 

My grandmother was sent to Auschwitz when she was 18 years old. She was with her mother, her little sister, and little brother. Her mother was sent left to the gas chambers. She was sent right with her sister and brother. Her mother didn’t want her young son to separate from her. She didn’t know where she was going. She called frantically to him and he ran back to her - to his death. He was 13 years old.

The next day, my grandmother stood in Auschwitz, beneath a cloud of smoke that the Nazis said was the only remainder of everyone they loved. Her friends said, “We are going to heaven from here”.

She said, “You can go to heaven, I am going home.”

When she got home, she was passionate about remembering all the people who did not. She was passionate about the world knowing her story. Unfortunately, now more than ever, when history is being perverted, and changed to fit an agenda, I understand her.

In the last lines of her book, I wrote:

So, remember. Remember a redhead who was just skin and bones who said she would live. Remember, and make it a world worth living in.”

But it is not easy to remember. It isn’t easy to remember her little brother who was murdered. It isn’t easy to remember her mother who was murdered too. It isn’t easy to remember 6 million Jewish lives taken so systematically and brutally. It isn’t easy to remember, now more than ever. How many times can a heart be broken?

My only comfort for that is to remember the other things too. That is one of the reasons I alternated each chapter of the book with a chapter of her childhood. I wanted to remember the love of her family. The kindness of her mother. The sweetness of her brother. I wanted to remember the joy she had dancing and reciting poetry on stage, the fun she had skating on the lake, and the peace she had on Shabbos. I wanted a memory of the community life she loved in her little, beautiful, mountain town Krasna. I wanted a memory of the friendships they had with all kinds of people there. These are some the things I wanted to remember too. 

Then there are things I don’t have to remember because there are things I never forgot. Some things surpass memory. I might have to remember the Holocaust, but I do not have to remember my grandmother who survived it. Her smile is in my heart. Her song is in my soul. Her blood pumps through my veins. The love that she chose to perpetuate after all the hate she was given lives on in everything that I do. She is in the books I write, the clothes I wear, and even in the manicures I get to cheer myself up. She is in the love I give my family. She is the strength in my bones.

Remember a redhead who was skin and bones and who promised to live. Remember and make it a world worth living in.

I stand by these last lines of the book but I have something to add. Remember, it already is.

That for me is a comfort, and I hope it can be a comfort for you.

On Holocaust Remembrance Day, and every day, thank you for remembering her story!

I would so appreciate if you share it!