A blog about the Holocaust? Partially. You’ll soon understand. Or maybe you won’t.
Maybe you have your mouse hovering over the “exit” button.
I get it. It’s depressing.
Sometimes I’d rather just watch mindless videos about pasta cooked in a wheel of cheese. Nevertheless, I challenge you to learn. Jew or non-Jew, we all share the collective responsibility of remembrance.
This blog will guide you through my past, present, and future. I will keep you updated on my new life in Israel as well as the motivations for my decision. As I outlined in my Facebook post from July 28, 2020, those motivations aren’t exactly milk and honey.
I am still proud of who I am.
A Jew.
And now ~finally~ an Israeli! Some of you may have been confused.
Didn’t you already make Aliyah years ago? You’re always there!
It’s been a long time coming, but I’m finally here. Sort of.
Yes, I am in Israel, but I have been in quarantine for nearly two weeks now.
That’s ok. I keep reminding myself:
“Today would be the greatest day of my ancestors’ lives.”
This isn’t some phrase I keep repeating to make myself cope with everything. It’s true. Let me show you why.
I always found it interesting when told that many Holocaust survivors didn’t speak about their experiences.
My babushka would share stories of her youth with me every time I would make the bike ride over to her home. These words, and similar stories, would haunt, yet encapsulate my childhood.
Seated at her kitchen table, my babushka and I would discuss life and history over dark, hearty Russian tea. Sadly, no matter the subject, most of the conversations would lead to the Holocaust, her horrors, and eventually my responsibilities as the grandson of Holocaust survivors.
My tea would always turn cold before I remembered to drink it. My absolute attention was directed toward the hero in front of me.
Let me backtrack. She doesn’t speak about it publically. She doesn’t speak to groups at Holocaust museums or go to schools. But to me, I was told everything.
I wanted to know everything. Everything.
I created an autobiographical Youtube video of her story when I was a senior in high school in 2016. I then wrote my undergraduate history thesis on her and her city in 2020.
Her story is worthy of a Spielberg directed film. This was the best I could do.
Here’s an inappropriately short version of that story (more will come in future posts):
My babushka was born in 1938 in Kamianets-Podolsky, Ukraine, just before the Nazis invaded her cobblestoned and largely Jewish town.
It is a story of pain.
My newly single great-grandmother decided to flee, on a whim, with her ailing mother, son, and my grandmother to fight to survive in a barn in Kazakhstan... then Uzbekistan.
Shortly after their departure, Kamianets-Podolsky became the site of the first mass killing of the Holocaust. The city’s Jewish residents, Jews from the surrounding areas, and 16,000 imported Hungarian Jews were stripped of their belongings, forced to dig mass graves, and then murdered. 23,600* people (reported officially). Many survivors claim upwards of 80,000 people.
Much of the killing was done by my babushka's non-Jewish Ukrainian neighbors, the parents of her former classmates.
My babushka’s (and my) relatives’ bodies are still trapped at the bottom that cursed pit.
“Can you imagine, Jonny?
Can you imagine if Israel would have existed then?
If we ALL had somewhere to go?”
Today we no longer have to imagine.
Summer of 2014
I finally got to travel to this place of miracles!
My summer camp, Camp Livingston, sends campers to Israel for a month when they are 16. This is one of the best investments we can make in Jewish youth. It certainly paid off for me.
The first week of our trip was la-la land. We traveled through the desert and stayed on a beautiful kibbutz. We explored the Eilat region and had our obligatory stay in “traditional” Bedouin tents.
One day, we woke up before sunrise and climbed Masada. We had a quick stop at the Dead Sea and then we were off to Jerusalem.
We were all exhausted after a long day. We were also all horny teenagers.
Everyone began to break off into their couple groups. I finally gathered the courage to talk to a girl I had been interested in. I awkwardly approached her and somehow succeeded in making plans to hang out after dinner.
We sat on a bench in the garden just outside of the hotel.
I probably just bumbled some phrases together: “So… do you like Mac Miller?”
Then we heard a large rumble.
“Probably just thunder, right?”
“In Israel? In the summer?”
“I don’t know.”
“Whatever…”
We continued to stay outside for a few more moments.
“Well… almost curfew. We should head back in.”
I walked one way, she walked the other way. Surely no one would see and embarrass us!
I strutted into the lobby with a shit-eating grin on my face.
That quickly changed.
I began to hear sirens. I was confused. Where I come from that means a tornado. There are no tornados in Israel… right?
Worse.
“Follow me to the shelter!”
I followed my startled friends and unit head to the hotel's safe room.
Hamas terrorists were launching rockets at Israel.
All of us squished into the room. Some people were crying and hyperventilating. Others sat silently.
After a while, the sirens stopped and we were dismissed. I called my mom to let her know that I was ok.
Then I called my babushka.
I hadn’t really absorbed the gravity of the situation until then.
Within seconds of speaking to her, a knot pulsated in my stomach. It grew.
Here I was. A Jew. Running from someone wishing to kill me for being Jewish.
While the rockets were launched at Israel, they were intended to kill anyone living in its borders, especially Jews.
An American Jew? Doesn’t matter. Just another dirty Jew.
I remember speaking to my babushka, her story rushing back to me. Tears rolled down my cheeks.
I was never the same.
I have lived a very privileged life.
I never have experienced the horrors or antisemitism that my grandmother and others did during the Holocaust… and even after.
I received an education, never had to worry about food, and I was free to express my Judaism.
That doesn’t mean that I am free from antisemitism. I learned that before 2014, during 2014, and continue to every single day.
I am also constantly reminded that I should not be alive. There is no reason that my grandmother deserved to live any more than the other Jews in Kamianets-Podolsky.
She told me:
“You see what happened with all Jews? Rich and poor, educated and non-educated? They all had the same Holocaust.”
“I thought that I would be one of them who was killed. And then, later on when I had my own kids, when I had...my grandkids, I always thought that we would [have been] killed. Always thought about that.”
It’s not just the 23,600*, or more, that were murdered. It’s also their would-be children, and their childrens’ would-be children, and…
So why?
Why did she live? Why was my mother born? Why was I born?
There is no reason.
So let’s make one.
And that’s why I'm here. Yallah.