Israel: Yad Vashem

I don't want to write about Yad Vashem. While I was standing there, emotionally obliterated by some trees, others tried to soothe me by telling me the memorials at Auschwitz or Washington were worse. And all I could think, was, 'dearest G-d, can it get any worse'?????"

I have always been an emotional coward about memorials to the Shoah. It took me forever to watch "Schindler's List". When I did, I burst into tears at the instance when the chidren's children walked past the graves of the survivors. I found it all insupportable.

Throughout my history growing up I had heard stories, from my grandmother(obm) especially, of my great uncles, her brothers, who had been Polish partisans. I had heard stories, so matter-of-factly told, of my mother and father who had respectively ended up in Siberia and the Gulag as children, in the Russian labour camps. My father and granny and grandfather and other relatives had sojourned in Arkhangelsk. I could not watch a simple film such as "Dr. Zhivago" without noting the cattle cars, and the boiled potatoes, straight out of my granny's remembering. I could barely watch it. And my mother had told me about being transported to Siberia in the cars, and of the people who died in them, the events, and she spoke of it just once. I remember that she played barefoot in the snow.

My family lived in Poland and the Russians came in the night and took everything, their farmland and possessions and animals away from them. I have never known most of my family because they died, either through battles, or through the tragedy of being in the wrong place at the wrong time or for simply being, inconvenient. I have always thought that that was even more humiliating than being targetted as a Jew- to be so insignificant and disposable, to die only for convenience's sake. Just, in the way. To not matter. They became DPs- Displaced Persons.

My granny used to talk of "the war" (WWII). Once in a while, she would speak of her brothers, my great uncles. A younger brother, a partisan. The older brother, who was so bitter because often no one would listen to him, i.e., the Jews- during that terrible time. He was a partisan leader,and my family lived close to Treblinka. They were peasants, they were farmers, they knew the lay of forest and land.

Understand. In my family, rescuing Jews was a footnote in the family history. It was always spoken of casually. And I took it that way- casually. No big deal.

I remember stories from my family about the early days- it was a given that growing up you would stone the houses of Jews and you would harrass; it was a way of life. A given. Yet when it came to rescuing Jews from Treblinka, my great-uncles' answer was: they are human beings.

I heard from my granny that her eldest brother, back in Poland, remained bitter (till the day he died). Remained bitter because there were so many Jews that they tried to rescue before Treblinka who did not believe the partisans. They rescued some but it could never be enough. There is no documentation but I know it to be true, because I grew up with stories way before there was documentation, and even now, my parents don't know about legitimising it, and in a way, why would they want to?

I entered Yad Vashem, the "Avenue of Rightous Gentiles" and I lost it. I looked down at a plaque beneath a fresh tree and dissolved into tears. I could not go farther and did not though I made it into the building, remarked the wall-sized photos of Jews on their hands and knees scrubbing a street while everyone else looked on. I took pictures, waited for the others, and listened to their experience of the Children's Memorial and broke down anew. I don't understand how anyone can bear it. I know that the 'Avenue of Righteous Gentiles' reminded me of the denouement of my family's life, of my great-uncles' stand, of my great-uncles' bravery and bitterness. Of my history.

When Yizkhor comes around, I remember it all. But especially, I am convinced that it is due to the merit of my great-uncles, whom I never knew, that I became a Jew, me who had always felt displaced. I was rescued also. It is a fact.

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