It's Holocaust Remembrance Day. Auschwitz was liberated 80 years ago. Both my bubbie and zayde survived Auschwitz, but neither was liberated there. My grandmother had been transferred to a labor camp, making Nazi uniforms, and freed by the Russian army there. 🧵
My grandfather was sent on a death march, where his job was to drag dead bodies to the side of the road. He narrowly escaped through a loose board of a barn wall, in which he'd been locked inside with other prisoners, just before the Nazis bulldozed the building. Only a few got out.
Jan 27, 2025 19:33But they both survived. And went "home"...to my grandmother's hometown of Uzhhorod (now in Ukraine). They met at a soup kitchen. They got married. They fled west. Had my uncle in a DP camp in Germany. Eventually got sponsored by the JDC and made it to the US and built a whole new life.
My grandparents have been dead many years now. I miss them every day. I wish more people could have benefited from knowing a Holocaust survivor personally. I look around now and I am just terrified we're walking into this all over again. And only some of us see it.
Epigenetic trauma is interesting. I don't really know how to explain all the ways their experiences still play out in my life. The subtle ways my father adapted to his parents' trauma, which now play out in how I engage the world as a Jew. I wish more people knew. It's real and not all in the past.
