This evening was the culmination of a dream, years in the making, turning out even better than I could have anticipated. It is a dream which arose out of Jewish history, longing, and tragedy. It was a dream born from love for a grandparent and a deep curiosity as to exactly where and what happened to family, disappeared in the evil winds and minds of WWII. It was a dream which, though fulfilled, left even larger holes than before, holes which apparently will never be filled in.
It is one of the biggest answers to COVID and lockdowns. People began to fill their newly acquired downtime by researching family roots and at times, made astounding discoveries. Mind you that whole world is rife with errors with people entering misinformation unknowingly, and with good intent. The information must be sifted several times and confirmed even more times, with a necessary strength to take the setbacks and begin over. Again and again.
But payoff is there, finally, at some point down this road of discovery. For Jews, it is often quite difficult to trace the thread back, beyond the imposition or requirement of last names, beyond the destruction of records, beyond the demands necessitated by conditions. For example, due to excess taxes on Jews and forced conscription for terms of 25 years into the armies of countries, particularly the Russian Empire, expressly meant to kill the Jew in these boys, Jewish boys often were registered as births of girls, or parceled out, to other families with exemptions for single sons or second sons. And, of course, the overwhelming numbers of those fleeing danger often snapped the ties to family members left behind.
All this was exacerbated by the tragedies of the Holocaust, the Shoah, wherein literally millions upon millions of people of Jewish ancestry were simply gone, just disappeared, gone up in smoke, coating the sky and the ground with their ashes and bone remnants. Gone. Not there. Entire villages, city populations more than decimated by the horrors of Naziism and fanatical hatred of Jews. By greed. By indifference. By apathy. Entire huge extended families simply wiped out, erased from memory as there was no one left to remember. Americans of Jewish ancestry, when trying to trace roots back, were stymied by the death, destruction, the burning of records, by the masses of Jews simply shot and buried under heaving mounds of earth, their names unrecorded save by photos taken by the murderers.
For their entire life after the war, my grandparents lived under a great burden, almost unbearable, of sadness so deep that it burned its way deep into their souls.
For years after the war they searched as best they could under bad conditions. The disaster that was Europe with huge numbers of displaced people, with inadequate methods by which to list survivors, at time being simple lists of names tacked onto walls, or by word of mouth. Has anybody seen so and so? Has anybody any knowledge of what happened to so and so after the camp was evacuated? Does anyone know anything!! A tragic remnant trying desperately to find anchors for unbearably destroyed lives.
Neither of my grandparents were able to find anyone, left with unanswerable voids, they barely spoke of families, especially my grandfather. On the other side, my grandparents knew what had happened - the Nazis, aided by Lithuanian sympathizers simply herded them into a ravine in September 1941 and killed them all, or had them fall into gasoline storage pits in Ponar Forest.
Was it better to know for sure or not? Was there an ability to hope that no news was good news, maybe someone was there, just difficult to find? I cannot answer that, have no right to answer that, nor to ask those questions of them. And then a miracle! We actually found modern day miracles, survivors of the family who never were able to find each other, even those who came to the the State of Israel. Some were able to find connections after decades. Others not.
Here is where we came into play. Desperate to avenge my grandparents, to make up for their anguish, we began to search through documents, old illegible records, impossible darkness of deed and soul. I promised my grandmother I would find out the fates of her sisters, her mother - for whom I was named, her nieces and nephews. Members of her extended family. I promised her, as she looked down from above that I would do my best. I promised the same to my grandfather.
And we found them! We found survivors. We found several nephews. We found some cousins. And a photo of my great grandmother, records of the families. We read historical documents. I called up to the heavens, to my grandmother that I had kept my promise; I had found the truth, and miraculous life. Bubby, I did it for you -and for me and the kids to follow. To know from whom we come, to know our family history.
There remain many unknowns, many walls to climb to delve deeper into the family. As for my grandfather - no one. Not a soul. Nary a one. We finally located his small village outside the city of Vitebsk and in a Yizkor Book, a memorial book dedicated to a city and community that once was, we found his family. Page after page of names - all murdered or hauled off to Siberia with retreating Russian soldiers, there to survive or not, in a brutal world. Bogorad. Bograd. Bogyrad. If only I can find someone, anyone.
The dream? Yes, to have a gathering of families from all sides. Plans destroyed by COVID, but last nite it came into fruition. Close to 30 of us, gathered, talking, hugging, crying, regaling each other with our histories and lives. Exchanging emails and promises. And there I was, knowing that Gerry and I had done good! With, G-d willing, more to follow.
A dream come true, albeit the laughter and joy were diluted with tears, with tragedy, with thoughts of what might have been, what should have been. A dream, polluted by tragedy of infinite depth and horror. of an irreplaceable and non understandable, unimaginable loss - and yet there it was. And there too was my grandmother's great nephew, my first cousin, and his grandson.
I am determined to fill out this dream. We vowed to do this again in a year or so. I hope and pray we do so, with more family joining, and in the meanwhile tighten the bonds of family, of a people seeking only peace, respite from horror, a reliable home. Habayta -to home, the eternal prayer of the Jewish nation.
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