A lot of time has passed since my last post . . . in between, there have been brookside strolls, concerts, get-togethers with friends, a murder-mystery party, cleaning up and organizing, wasting time and being really sick for a week and basically hardly being able to do anything at all!
I heard on the radio a Holocaust survivor tell her story about how she, her mother and father, made it through the war, saved at the end by Raoul Wallenberg. I found it very disturbing - at one point she seemed to be saved and in a children's home, when she got scarlet fever and had to go to the hospital. While she was away, the other 26 children in the home were gunned to death by Nazi airforce men on a drunken rampage. A miracle that she survived - yes! But the 26 other children, shot dead, when their parents were thanking God that their children at least were safe? The mother, by an incredible twist of fate, arrives at a prison, and who should she see upon arrival but the father, who soon after slips her a vial of liquid she drinks which makes her faint. She is carried off to the infirmary (after another near miss with fate) and while she is there, everyone else in the transport except for four (out of hundreds) is herded outside the prison and shot to death. Mother and Father saved miraculously - hundreds shot at a minutes notice. And then Mother, Father, and daughter are reunited by Wallenberg months before the end of the war. Again, it seems miraculous, but not for millions of others . . .
I know this is hardly a new question. I know I am not being profound. But hearing the woman herself tell the story mesmerized me, and the horror juxtaposed with the miraculous
told of a world where there is nothing you can do that will necessarily have the consequences you intend. Good luck is bad luck, bad luck is good luck. We are clueless about our destiny and the outcome of our actions. How can one not believe in God? How can one believe in God?
The woman who spoke has my deepest admiration. She endured as a child what I cannot imagine anyone enduring, and she is alive, with a full life and a sense of gratitude.
I was haunted as a child by the idea of the Nazis coming to get us. Being Jewish in Princeton then wasn't as easy as it is now. I was an oddity in school, and it wasn't helped by my non-observant, name-only Jewish mother going on and on about how the goyim hated us. That meant they hated me, which meant all my school-mates hated me. Great. I remember asking her once in fear that if the Nazis had knocked on our door and asked if we were Jewish, what would she do? I think I was eight or nine. And my mother said proudly that she would never deny being Jewish. I said to her, inwardly terrified, but wouldn't that mean they would take us away and kill us. Her reply was indistinct.
The mother of the woman who spoke would have done anything to save her daughter. She wasn't going to announce that she was Jewish and get her child murdered. She hid, she bargained, she asked for favors, she begged, she did what she had to so she, her husband, and her daughter could survive.
I hadn't thought of that exchange in some time, although as you might imagine it had quite an impact on my life. Let's just say I didn't feel that safe with my parents. But why would I have? I had already been physically abused several times without my mother or father laying down the law, and sexual abuse had probably begun. And I remember when I was talking to my mother about the sexual abuse, and asking for help, she retorted, "My friend A--- was actually raped in the concentration camps during the war. That's much worse, and
she's okay."
So obviously everything got stirred up by hearing this woman tell her story, including terrible sadness for all those who suffered and died.
It's mystery how we live in this world. How do we understand the horrible tragedies that occur everyday, and the beauty alongside them? The simple answer is, we don't. And how do we go on if not by limiting our awareness? The answer again, we don't. We must forget, the impact of tragedy must fade, or we would not be able to take a step forward, and then another. That is a large part of what our work is in this world, just to keep going, just to take one more step forward.
