Holocaust, "HaShoah" Thoughts after a Visit to Yad Veshem

I wasn't raised with any awareness of the Holocaust, the Nazi murder of six million 6,000,000 Jews during World War Two. It's not that they were hiding any past, not at all. My parents were born in the USA, born in Brooklyn, New York, the same place I was born. Their parents all immigrated to the United States early in the 20th century. After the war, no surviving relatives joined them in New York. From what we can surmise, close to eighty 80 years later, none of the family which had stayed in Europe survived the war. 

Until very recently I felt rather shut out of Holocaust memorials. You had to be a survivor, pre-death camps escapee or descended from them to have a story. Since those who had actually experienced the Holocaust are quickly reaching the end of their lives and their children are grandparents and great-grandparents, their stories of survival and revenge over the Nazis have become legendary and inspiration for the growing genre of Holocaust literature. 

Ever since I first began learning about the Holocaust, as a child when The Diary of Anna Frank became popular and a short time later when Adolf Eichmann was captured then tried in Israel, the Holocaust seemed no more connected to me than Judah Maccabee of the Chanukah story. 

My parents did have relatives who had been living in Europe, mostly Belarus, which was then part of the Soviet Union. After World War Two, nothing was heard from them; they weren't found. In recent years, when I tried to join the Holocaust talk, I was told that my family story didn't count. I'm not in the club, since none of my relatives survived.

Last week I met a visiting cousin and his wife in Yad Vashem. Yad Veshem isn't my favorite place. That's because during my last visit, quite a while ago, I found myself very upset by their use of words about which I blogged Words, They Were All People and Praying to a Non-god. Please read them and tell me what you think in the comments, thanks.

We were taken around by one of their guides and given a very good history lesson. We passed a map of Belarus, and I managed to find Rogachev the city where both of my grandmothers had lived before moving to the United States. 

My paternal grandmother, Anna Brynien, was the second of six daughters. The four eldest and their parents immigrated to New York early in the 20th century, but my grandmother's two youngest sisters had been enthusiastic communists so they stayed in the Soviet Union. My maternal grandmother, Ida Vishnefsky, was from a large, relatively wealthy family. Her father was what was known as a barber-doctor. Everyone stayed in Belarus except my grandmother and one brother, who had immigrated to London. My grandmother followed her first husband to New York with their eldest daughter after visiting her brother in London. When the war ended, no survivors from my grandmothers' families were found.

My maternal great-grandfather
Vishnefsky

my maternal great-grandmother
Vishnefsky

One of the exhibits we toured was the Hall of Names dedicated to the dead.  I'm not sure that any of my missing family members are included in the names, but our guide told us that there are still boxes waiting for more names. 

Doesn't that make me and my cousins and children and grandchildren part of the Holocaust story?

The greatest tragedy of the Holocaust is that so many Jews may have no descendants; they didn't survive. That's what happened to my parents' aunts, uncles and cousins. The survivors in my family left Europe before the Nazis were a power. That's how my family survived. 

Hitler's plan was to kill all Jews, not just European ones. He had envisioned conquering the world; thank Gd he failed. 

The Jewish People have survived and thrived. Despite the murder of Six Million Jews by Hitler, the State of Israel was established with the Help of Gd just a very few short years after the Nazi defeat. 

The Jewish People survived and that makes ALL JEWS SURVIVORS!

Thank Gd, because Gd is our secret weapon.

No Holocaust Survivors in My Family

Since moving to Israel in 1970, I've always felt rather fish out of water during this season. It's Holocaust Memorial time, and it has always seemed that I'm the only one who doesn't have a "Holocaust Story."

Especially, since moving to Shiloh in 1981, where there are large community commemorations, and so many of my neighbors have family stories that could even be made into films, I feel left out. I wasn't raised at all with any family awareness of the Holocaust. It was something I learned about in Hebrew School and on American television. It was "newsworthy" because of the play the "Diary of Anne Frank" and the Eichmann Trial, both which happened when I was still in elementary school.

I spent my childhood in Bell Park Gardens, Bayside, NY, which was a garden apartment neighborhood/public housing development built for United States army/military veterans. Also the private and two-family homes in my neighborhood were built as part of the same program. None of our parents, to my memory, had foreign accents; they had all been raised in the United States. Most grew up in the tenements/slums of Brooklyn, The Bronx and the Lower East Side. Moving to the new neighborhood in northeastern Queens was their escape from poverty and a chance to give us kids a new wonderful life.

I have friends of the same age, raised in very different sorts of New York, and other North/South American and European neighborhoods in which all of the parents were Holocaust survivors. You could say that we lived in parallel universes.

My grandparents were all born in Europe, my paternal grandfather from Neshelsk, Poland, my maternal grandfather from near Kiev, Ukraine, and both my grandmothers were from Rogotshov, Belarus. All of those areas were seriously affected (meaning that the Jewish communities were decimated) by the Nazis and their enablers during the Holocaust, so how could I have been so far removed from Holocaust awareness and stories?

All of my father's grandparents, almost all aunts and uncles, too, made it to the United States well before the Holocaust. He grew up in a large extended family on both sides. Only after I was married did I hear that two of my grandmother's sisters stayed in the USSR; they were great believers in their country, and since the war there hasn't been any contact.

On the other hand, my mother was raised without any aunts, uncles or cousins. Her parents were alone in America, and she has no idea what happened to the rest of her family.

Great-Grandmother Vishnevsky

 of Rogotshov, Belarus

Great-Grandfather Vishnevsky
 of Rogotshov, Belarus

After the war, no relatives searched for my grandparents on either side, and whatever searches they did for surviving relatives were unsuccessful. There may be distant cousins alive someplace in this earth, but I don't know them, at least not as cousins. When the big Russian FSU aliyah made it to Israel over twenty years ago, I told my family story hoping for some miracle to find long lost relatives, but I failed. My father's two missing aunts were called Milka and Nechama Brynien, born in Rogotshov, Belarus, and my maternal grandmother's family was the Vishnevsky's of Rogotshov, Belarus. From some old pictures, there probably were family members in Minsk, too, and other nearby cities. My maternal grandfather was Abraham Shankman, born an orphan, raised by grandparents without any siblings.

That's why, at least to my knowledge, there were no Holocaust survivors in my family.