Picking Up the Pieces

I am the granddaughter of Holocaust survivors.

Both my father's parents were in the Holocaust, and both lost all of their families. Like all children with such a background, I am very aware of the fact that it is possible that I may have never been born - at least not to these parents.

My first personal encounter with the Holocaust was during my final year of high school when we were taken for eight days to Poland to try and somehow understand the horrors that our people went through (which is, by the way, impossible). It was the most powerful week of my life. I just stood there at each camp and tried to re-create the pictures in my mind, tried to understand what happened. I kept thinking, would I have had the will to survive, or would I have given up and died?

My Zeida's infant daughter was killed in his armsMy Zeida's (grandfather in Yiddish) infant daughter was killed in his arms, shot straight into a pit in the ground. He fell in as well, but by some miracle stayed alive and was able to crawl out into a new life. Would I have had the power to survive such a thing?

My Bubby (grandmother in Yiddish) was hiding in a cave with her sister for most of the war. One night she had a dream where her father came to her and told her that she would survive the war, but did not mention her sister. One day, after thinking the war was over, her sister left the cave and was shot by a Ukrainian.

Fate played an awful trick on my grandparents. Yet they somehow found some inner source of power and faith to stay alive. They survived, but everyone else died. They married, and had my father.

It is hard for me to understand how they had the strength to move on, and bring new life into the world. A world that probably seemed, at that moment, so cruel and unfair.

My father tells me that he did not grow up in a non-religious home, but in a non-observant home. There is a big difference. G‑d was always there. But my Bubby was angry with Him, because she knew G‑d existed and there was no doubt in her mind that G‑d was behind everything that happened. That's why she was so angry. She just couldn't get it. She couldn't understand how such a thing could happen, how the G‑d she knew existed could allow such a thing. What my Bubby had was a very different thing from non-believing.

It was the exact opposite.

She saw G‑d in front of her eyes each day.

My Zeida, on the other hand, didn't express whatever anger he might have felt towards G‑d. In fact, one of the biggest reasons my father became observant was my Zeida. My Zeida became very ill a few years after my parents got married and when he was close to death, my father asked him if he should put on tefillin (phylacteries). He replied in Yiddish: "A yid bedarf es," meaning, "A Jew needs it."

Then my Zeida died, and my father decided to say kaddish, the mourner's prayer, each day. He did this not out of any religious conviction, but because he knew he owed it to my Zeida's memory. And that was the start.

He knew he owed it to my Zeida's memoryMy father then decided to keep kosher, and very much wanted his mother, my Bubby, to do so as well. But there was no convincing her. Then one day she had a conversation with a rabbi. No one is exactly sure what they discussed, but he was somehow able to take my Bubby back to the days before the war, when she and her parents kept kosher, and all was well. He managed to get her to understand that just like it was a great thing back then, it would be a great thing today. For her, as well as her son.

I never try to understand why the Holocaust happened. How can anyone give a reason for the murder of six million Jews? Only G‑d Himself can answer.

What I do try to understand every day though is the force that helped so many people survive and have the will to build new, productive and happy lives. I try to understand the people that kept finding G‑d, and just wouldn't let go.

G‑d - and yes, their struggle with Him - was the force that helped my grandparents pick up all the shattered pieces of their lives and make out of them a beautiful continuation to their legacy. And I am grateful for that every day.