Holocaust Remembrance

Today is Yom HaShoah. If you're not familiar with the term, it can be translated to Holocaust Remembrance Day. This day is very important to me and it's a very special day. For my non-Jewish friends who have no connection to Israel or to Jews for that matter - let me paint a picture for you of how I grew up.

Every Shabbat, I would sleep at my grandparents house. My Bubba and Zeidy would host me (and my cousins). We were their future. They lived and breathed for us... because their families perished in the Holocaust. While most of my grandmother's family survived, most of my grandfather's did not. His little brother, mother, and father boarded a train to Sobibor and were never heard from again. He was young guy when this happened and it's lived with him ever since.

My grandparents are all Holocaust survivors - each in their own way. I was one of the only grandkids to ask "what happened?" It's not like my siblings and cousins didn't want to ask - they just didn't because they were told not to bring up the past. I was the defiant one. I asked. I chronicled. I learned. I wrote. I remembered.

I remember waking a up a few times during those sleepovers on the Sabbath and hearing my grandfather scream during a nightmare. As a kid, I understood why it was happening.

My Mom's parents - Gram and Papa - were also survivors. My Gram survived the horrors at Auschwitz. What she saw and experienced I can never begin to understand. She doesn't know what happened to most of her family. She had a sister who survived because her non-Jewish husband hid her. I discovered a few years ago that her brother died while "serving" the Hungarian Army. Jewish men in Hungary were sent to the front lines to dig ditches - most of them died there from inadequate clothing/food/supplies...etc. My grandfather was also among those sent to dig ditches. He was captured by the Red Army and sent to a Russian gulag. He was then traded for some money and went to die in Bucharest. He was near death anyway but he was nursed back to health by a cousin living there.

My Papa's family perished in the Holocaust. Nearly every relative he had was gone. Same with my Gram. When they came to the US, Papa had some family members but nothing replaces your parents. Nothing.

My parents essentially grew up without grandparents. The experiences I had with my grandparents, they didn't have. They didn't have grandmother's making chicken soup for them when their sick. They missed out on vacations to see their grandparents. They lacked Shabbat dinners and holidays with their families.

Does some of this make you sad? If so, do me a favor - never forget. Never forget what my grandparents went through. Never forget the horrors they faced because they were Jewish.

Just never forget.