Yom Hashoah 5773 Family and Familiarity

For a long time, I went looking for a story to "never forget" - this is my Yom Hashoah story... along with all the other peoples who I promised not to forget along the way.

Growing up, I would always say that my family didn't have a direct relationship to the Holocaust. 3 out of my 4 grandparents were born in America and my Polish born grandfather was brought to America early enough that, were his feet not flat, he'd have been serving in the US Army during WWII. It's good that he was home. They lost a brother/son during that war. My would be great-uncle. His plane was shot down over Italy. WWII related certainly. But not the Holocaust.

My paternal grandfather cleaned up Nagasaki and again, not the holocaust. I was always proud to meet survivors, to have friends' grandparents tell me their stories.

I remember the first partisan I met. I remember the first French woman, I remember meeting Yossile Hoenig who went back to live in Poland and was the cemetery care taker when I visited on a teen tour in 1998. I remembered.  I researched what JTS did for Jews during the holocaust and felt it was too little.

My mother told me what she remembered too. That as a child, her grandfather, a rabbi who held Shabbat minyan in their upstate home, brought over and helped house as many immigrants as could be taken care of. Records hadn't been kept. Or if they had, they hasn't been maintained.

In December of 2007 we sat shiva for my zayde, my mom's father. The flat-footed one born in Poland. The photo albums came out, of course, and there were pictures of my grandparents sitting on a bench in front of the family home.

An elderly member of my parents' congregation approached my mom with the album. He asked her about the house. When she explained it was her grandparents home, he explained it was his first home in America too. That he had been brought there during the holocaust. Saved by my great grandfather and whomever else he was working with to get Jews out of Eastern Europe.

When I started my Jewish journey, I didn't know I had a holocaust story. I don't know who my family protected or how many individuals they saved, but I know of all places in the world, my great grandfather's house was a safe-haven for new immigrants making their way out of Eastern Europe and that blessing isn't wasted on me. 

Modest though it may be, it's my family's story. And the chances that my mom would sit on the board of her synagogue (one of many in her very Jewish town) only to discover that one of the other members of the same congregation made their way here by means of her family, that's the small Jewish world I love so deeply, even though I wish we were at least double in size... I can hope that all of the stories I've promised to remember are recounted for generations to come, and that we go from strength to strength.