Remembering my mother

 

In the UK we commemorate Holocaust Memorial Day next week and I have been giving a lot of thought as to why? The date is not arbitrary - 27 January 1945 was the date that Auschwitz was liberated but remembering this most horrific of places and what occurred there has not prevented us from going to war again. Remembering has not prevented genocides in Cambodia, in Rwanda, in Darfur, in Bosnia and so so and so on. Remembering on its own is sometimes a comfortable way for people to fool themselves into believing that they are actually doing something.

There is no doing involved in memory.
Memory plus action changes things.
Memory plus action honours those who died with the possibility that they will not have died in vain.  Maybe, just maybe,  we can use the spirits of the past to effect the spirit of the present and the future.

I  have been thinking a lot about my mother over the last few days. My mum died in July of 1998 when she was 75 years old. She lived most of her life as a fearful woman. Looking back at how she dealt with the world it was through a filter of anxiety. Everything she did and everywhere she went, the question she seemed to need answered was 'is this safe'? Is there danger here? Could this hurt me? my kids? my family?

In 1940 my mother was 18 years old. She, her brother and sister and I think, both parents were re-located to the Lodz Ghetto. Everything they had was taken from them and they existed in cramped impoverished conditions. Soon after this my mother's father was taken away never to return and at some point my mother's sister died. The remaining family lived in the ghetto with decreasing amounts of food, people dying around them and ever-worsening conditions till 1944 when they were deported to Auschwitz.  On arrival at Auschwitz my mother was separated from her mother and her older brother. She never saw her mother again. In January 1945 when Auschwitz was liberated my mother was 23 years old and completely alone. She had suffered from TB, typhus and near-starvation. She used to tell me she was one of the lucky ones since she was in Auschwitz for a bit less than a year.

At some point, after trying to find her way back to Lodz to see if any of her family had survived, she was sent to the Displaced Persons Camp in Feldafing, near Munich in Germany. This was run by the Americans and other allied countries and was the refuge for thousands of stateless, traumatised Jews.  My mother told me this story:

Feldafing was big, it was like a town. There were streets and housing and schools. Things were basic, but safe.  There were even postal deliveries.  One day a postman stopped her and asked if she could read the scribbled name on one of the letters. She looked at it and said "that's my brother's name. I will go with you".

And that was how my mother found her brother again.

My mother's brother, my Uncle Willie,  was the only one of her immediate family to have survived. My mother attended her brother's wedding in Feldafing and during that time met my father. My mum, her brother and his wife came to America by ship from Bremen in late 1946. My father arrived some months later and they were married. My mother and her brother were virtually inseparable for the rest of their lives and as I was growing up my aunt, uncle and my two cousins were a constant in my life.

My mother was not brave. she was not heroic. She did not do anything of any real note, but she was a good mother. Sure, I railed and screamed at her during my teenage years, but there was always great food on the table and a spotlessly clean home and actually, a lot of love. She cared deeply about my brother and me and made us feel like a family. I don't remember feeling deprived of much and yet we had very little. She made the best chicken soup ever and baked a super apple cake. Her gefilte fish was legendary and she took enormous pleasure from our enjoyment. She and her brother could talk about food all day and this came directly from their memories of having had so little.

The lasting effects of her Holocaust experiences were always there. She was a fearful, timid woman who seemed happiest in her own home. She had a dreadful time letting go of me when I moved to the UK and letting go of my brother. She suffered throughout her life with migraines, ulcers and lots of small nervous conditions and yet, she carried on. She never collapsed for long and was always there for us kids. I remember with sadness how little it took to make her happy. She had survived so much, simply being alive seemed more than enough.

And so, I remember her story. I remember my father's story and my uncle's story and my aunt's story and the stories of the parents of my friends - all of them survived and all of them raised beautiful, talented children, and all of us believed we would make the world better, that we would never, ever stand by and allow anyone, from any nation to go through anything like what our parents went through. And yet, and yet...it goes on again and again.


What can I do? Next week is Holocaust Memorial Day - what should I do? Through my work I try and make some difference. I try and honour again and again the memory of my relatives and ancestral community by treating people with compassion and respect. I try and bring kindness to my world and hope that it ripples outward to others.

There is a quote from a Rabbi that I particularly like:
"It is not for me to complete the work,
but neither am I free to desist from it."

As Holocaust Memorial Day approaches I honour and remember my mother with so much love. May her memory be a blessing. May kindness prevail in the world and bring peace to all of us.


The photo at the top of the page is of my mother's mother and aunt. It is the only surviving photo I have of any grandparent.