Things I don’t want to write

Trigger Warning

I don’t want to write this. I didn’t want to write my grandmother’s Holocaust story either. I take that back. I didn’t want my grandmother’s story to be her reality, but once it was, I wanted to write it. My grandmother went through the unspeakable and yet she spoke about it, and she told me to write about it because she believed in a world that would take a moment for it, hear it, learn from it, and makes sure it never happens again. 

I do not want to write about what is happening right now. I tried these past few days, and I simply could not. I am trying now, and I cannot either, but I also can’t not say anything, so I am in a weird place. I am sure so many of you can relate.  There are no words for something like this. There are no words for a mother waiting for her baby to be returned from ruthless terrorists who just last week brutally tortured and murdered 40 other babies.

Less than 80 years ago, on a regular day, my grandmother was forced from her home at gun point, stripped naked and then sent with the entire Jewish community of her village to a ghetto she called worse than Auschwitz. In the ghetto she was forced to carry huge bricks back and forth all day, just for the entertainment of the Gendarme. She passed women and children hanging from the trees as she dragged the bricks.  Less than 80 years ago, she was sent from the ghetto to Auschwitz. Less than 80 years ago six million of her people were murdered for being Jewish. One million were children. 

Being Jewish means so many things to me. It is the meaning of my life, a great joy, an obligation, a light, and in the world we now live in, it also means these memories. The Holocaust was less than 80 years ago. When my grandmother heard the rumors, they called the people who spoke about it deranged. Nothing like that could happen in the civilized world. Expect it did, and it was worse than anything the human mind could imagine. It happened. And as children and grandchildren of those survivors, we must live with the knowledge that it did for as long as we live. It gives shape to our greatest fear. Maybe I should be embarrassed to share this but a few weeks ago, before the terror attack, I had a nightmare that there was another Holocaust. It isn’t some abstract idea for me. It is part of my story. Yesterday was my daughter Rivka’s 5-year-old birthday. She is named after my husband’s grandmother’s mother who had to make the heart wrenching choice of leaving her own baby with her non-Jewish neighbor so perhaps her baby could survive. 

My baby recently started eating solids. He makes faces of a seasoned food critic as he contemplates each new food I put in his mouth. I want to laugh but I can’t forget about the babies who were kidnapped from their cribs and taken to Gaza, scared and alone. I can’t forget about the babies who were left crying in their cribs for days, because their parents died to protect them. I can’t stop wondering how long it took for them to realize no one was coming for them. I can’t stop thinking of the unspeakable torture that was done to over 40 babies. Babies just like mine. Why were they murdered? Every hundred years, the reason will be posed differently, there will be another excuse. Is it because they are Jewish or they “caused the black plague” or because they were the “lesser race” or because they are “living in a place you don’t think they have the right to live in.” They are babies.    

Speaking of babies, yesterday, I clicked on a previous babysitter’s WhatsApp status. She wrote “1030 babies were killed in Gaza by the genocidal Israeli airstrikes”. She did not write anything and (claimed not know anything) about the slaughter of over a thousand innocent people and Israel’s job to defend itself. I can’t open Instagram without people bombarding me with comments how “Israel hit a hospital in Gaza” when there is clear proof that Hamas did it. The world needed proof when our babies were slaughtered on video, but in seconds they were ready to spread a rumor that Israel did something they didn’t. Words matter. You see, when you sit on the couch and post lies about Israel, but you didn’t post when over 1000 Israeli civilians were taken from their homes, raped, tortured, and slaughtered, you unleash more antisemitism in the world and it is my children, and not yours who need armed guards around their school.

What would you do if someone was coming to kill your baby? What would you do if someone has your baby hostage? Everyone has the right to defend themselves besides the Jews. This is not to say I don’t mourn for the loss of all life. I wish I didn’t have to write this. I wish we didn’t live in a reality in which people are numb to these words.  I wish innocent people, Palestinians and Israelis were not terrorized by Hamas. I wish Hamas would not use their people as shields. I wish they would return the hostages safely. I wish we didn’t have wars. I wish people could live in peace. I wish we didn’t live in this reality of hate and devastating loss of innocent lives.

But we do. We live in this reality and my grandmother was not one to hide from it. In fact, when I was writing the book, she strongly instructed me not to whitewash anything. She wanted the world to know the truth of what happened to her because she believed knowledge is power and even more incredible to me, she believed in a world that would know what to do with this knowledge and power. After this attack, after the blatant celebrations of this attack, I faltered in the belief she was right.  She wanted her story to make a change. She wanted people to see what hate can do and how much we need to fight against it with everything we have. She wanted people to stand up against terror. She wanted us to educate ourselves and not believe harmful propaganda. She wanted us to think critically. She wanted us to know we have one God. We are all one. There are more good people in the world than bad (how a Holocaust survivor was able to hold that view is beyond me). She wanted us to know we have the power of choice and that we can stand up for what is right in every little way we can. 

When she was in Auschwitz, her friends said they were going to heaven from there. They stood beneath the smoke that the Nazis said was all that remained of their babies, mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters, nieces, and nephews. The Nazis told them that is what will become of them next. Her friends told her she was going to heaven, and she said, “I am going home.” They told her she was delusional, that she needs to accept reality, that it was ok, heaven was more beautiful than anything, and she said, “don’t tell me where I am going, I am going home.” She did everything in her power to do that. She believed God would get her there. She snuck out in middle of the night to wash her body with lye to ward off disease she watched kill her friends. She hid in barracks to avoid working. She took countless beating to avoid going to the infirmary. She even switched lines to get a neater tattoo to prove to herself that it still mattered what she looks like because she was going home.  She was 18 years old. When I was 18, I visited Auschwitz and stood where she did, and I realized she was right. She went home. She had my mother. My mother had me. I had my daughters and son.

My daughter is named for a grandmother who was killed in the Holocaust, but still, I have a daughter. My grandmother had not only grandchildren, but great grandchildren and great great grandchildren. My grandmother went through the worst, and she believed in better. The trauma of the people before us is part of us but so is the resilience. We are a people that don’t give up.  Although my heart is in my throat as I think about the babies who were tortured, the babies who are kidnapped, the inability of people to stand up for getting those babies home, I will still cherish every face my baby makes as he tries each new food. I will sit on the rocking chair in his room and feel his weight against my chest as I rock in back and forth. And as much as I don’t want to write this, as much as I have nothing to say, I will try to use whatever words I have to fight for a world where we don’t have to write it because it won’t happen again.