Grandmother’s Story
Today I’m signing work agreements with Austrian and German colleagues, I’m speaking with those in upstate New York about human connection, interdependence and reimagining the future. I’m sharing writing, and reflecting how we want to live and where my part is in hosting and answering the throws of that question. And I’m also alive with the memory of the Holocaust.
I’m sometimes a little bit afraid to share widely and broadcast about Holocaust Memorial Day — I think the trauma of the past lingers, and social media isn’t always the most hospitable place to be Jewish. In normal times, I’d mention it to friends and colleagues as I saw them throughout the week, but in these Covid times perhaps it’s a chance to share the relevant lessons more widely, especially because the day not only marks the Holocaust, but the genocides that followed in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Darfur. It is to remember those who were murdered just for being who they were.
Those of you who know me personally know how close I was to my grandma, and how much lightness she brought. This years theme is ‘Be the light in the darkness’ — I haven’t met many others who have embodied this so wholly.
My mum told her (our) story this week, and here’s the video recording of that personal journey — it’s surprisingly (perhaps) uplifting:
It’s for those who think they know, or want to know, or need to know.
I hadn’t quite grasped, even myself, that 90% of Jews in Poland were murdered and that just 1% of people survived the Warsaw ghetto. Anyone who wasn’t heteronormative, able-bodied, white, or politically aligned, was considered dangerous and sub-human. Apart from statistics, and although my grandma’s story is one of millions, in it, I think are some very universal and timely themes:
- The small (and large) kindnesses from strangers that helped her survive;
- The importance of treating everyone with respect and dignity, throughout culture but also socioeconomic, political and educational systems;
- The warning against conspiracy, fear and misplaced perception of threat, and how quickly these can escalate.
Somewhere in my body is the familiarity of genocide, and as I look out to the world today, I sometimes weep at the trends, and how each year it seems it becomes even more important to heed the warnings of history that show us, time and time again across cultures and contexts, what’s possible when we let division seep into our societies.
I forget that many people I interact with don’t always know this in such an intimate way, and many do. This day always connects me to my ancestors, and every year I live I learn more about how these connections inform our lives. How important it is to honour the ones who came before, so that we can honour the ones to come, in our actions today. It is the thread that runs behind and through our lives and bodies, and one many of us are discovering we’ve lost contact with.
It’s now very rare to get to learn directly from survivors of the Holocaust and so the mantle is being passed down from generation to generation. There’s some wonderful footage in the recording of my cheeky grandma speaking in her 70s. It feels so personal to share, and yet so vital. I hope you can take some lightness from this today, and some hope, too (and maybe call your grandma, or someone else’s).
(For those reading this on Wed 27th Jan, if you’d like to join the UK national ceremony, please do, at 7pm GMT here where you will be invited to light a candle at 8pm and to participate in the theme of lighting the darkness. Many thanks to Hampstead Synagogue for hosting this telling of my Grandmother’s story)
