No matter how many times I have been to the Yad Vashem or the National Holocaust Museum or the Jewish Heritage in NY, or anywhere else, I still feel the wrenching of the soul. I always look at other visitors and think about what would have happened to them, just as I know what would have happened to me at various stages of life. There is always a new exhibit or fact or picture or even an old one that strikes me in a new way. but yesterday was something different.
Recently we have begun research into my family's roots, going back as far as we can, pushing the envelope and making a breakthrough at times which is exciting to the nth degree. It makes me wonder in awe at how so many couples, all through the thousands of years, no matter the situation, managed to find each other, marry and continue the line and here I am. It confers upon me the duty and responsibility to continue this chain, this line of links, between past, present and future. So imagine the emotions felt when I was able to find family members in the testimony pages of Yad Vashem, knowing their names now, and the blow to the heart when I saw a face that
was, and was not, my Bubby's. It was the face of her sister, a sister I had never known had existed, her older sister, one of five older siblings lost to the murderers of Hitler, along with spouses and complete families, down to the youngest babe in arms.
Now imagine the emotions roiling and boiling when we found a relative from an uncle who had managed to get out before the war, went to Israel, and established a family, which has grown nicely. I so wish my Bubby had known this, but my emotions were surely felt by her up there and the emotions of my cousin, Sholom, were intense as well.
There is a feeling of joy, of sadness, of f*&^+ you when I think of the plans Hitler and his murderous minions had and the fact that despite it all, despite the thousands of years of persecution, WE ARE HERE. And will always be here.
And yet, what do I think when I see the clouds of poison rise again over Europe, when I see the same poison here in my own country. What do I think and what am I supposed to feel when the President of the country welcomes right wing extremists who threaten me and mine, when bigots and haters on left and right, dare to speak out, to openly refer to hateful memes? And what do I think, do, when representatives in government repeat this murderous garbage?
So yes, Steven King was stripped of his assignments but what about the rest of those in government who speak out with hateful canards, timeless in their false accusations against Jews, calling for action against Jews and these are people who are in MY government. And what about when they are in the party I support, do it again and again, and yet get away with false and forced apologies. These apologies mean nothing, less than nothing, and are actually mockeries of true apologies. Are people afraid to criticize them openly to the true degree necessary because they are Moslem and want to be PC? Have certain members of the Democratic Party begun to lose their moral spines? They leave it to McCarthy, a true bigot from the Republicans to speak out against this? I recognize the irony here, the falseness of it, but still, the Democrats must put their firm stamp down on this, casting it out, if they are to maintain what they have gained.
And how am I to integrate all this modern day hatred and prejudice and anti Semitism, even unto the point of shooting and killing right near my son in Pittsburgh, right here in my country, with the hatred and its growth portrayed in Yad Vashem?
Actually, there is no way of integrating this for it should not be. I do not want a descendant of my family to one day be researching their lost past generations and see my face or the face of a younger generation and remark on the shocking resemblance, staring out of a page of Testimony as to when and where and how this person was murdered.
Perhaps this statement will make it more real to you. It is not that 6 million were killed, but that 6 million people were murdered and each victim murdered was a Jew. These were real people, people who cried, laughed, loved, worked, lost, won, raised families, had hopes and dreams for the future, who persevered through the hatred to live lives in a positive manner and who one day found themselves in a nightmare world such as could never be imagined. The bigger shock here, is that there are people right here in this country who would gladly take the jobs of chasing down, arresting, incarcerating, torturing and murdering and how do I know this? Because the same people who ripped babes from their mother's arms, who pulled screaming child and parent apart, who threw children into cages with cold concrete floors, who outlawed touching, even of siblings - these same people are the moral descendants of the guards of the camps, of the ghettoes, of the Einsatzgruppen. It is a small step from this to outright killing.
So yes, emotional stress yesterday about the past and what I discovered and uncovered. Emotional stress when I confirm that my great grandmother, for whom I am named, was indeed thrown onto a boxcar going to Belzec, an extermination camp, at the fragile age of mid 80's and most probably died right there in that damned and accursed railroad cattle car. I can only hope that it was quick, not after days of starving, of thirst, of cold, of fear. I can hope but is that not a pathetic hope. What does that say about mankind? About us, all of us?
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