I’ve just returned from a trip to Auschwitz. We were 70 women strong on a journey to this surreal planet of death and devastation. I was asked to lead a group to this place where man descended to the darkest abyss, even though I had never set foot here before. How would I feel? What would I think?
I was born upon the ashes of the Holocaust. I carried the name of my grandfather’s mother, my bubby, Rebbetzin Slova Channah. I never got to listen to her sing me a lullaby, feel her touch or see her smile as I grew. She left this earth walking into a gas chamber with her youngest grandchild in her arms. Her last words uttered before she was murdered were “Shema Yisrael.”
As I stood at the gates of Auschwitz, I knew that I was coming to the closest physical distance I’ve ever had with my bubby. Somehow I felt her soul hovering above. Was she waiting for me to call out to her, to tell her my story, to share what has happened to us, her children?
I wanted to scream out loud, “Bubby, I am here! I came to find you, to hear you, to feel your presence and bring it home with me.”
I strained to see the piles of suitcases encased in glass. Would my family’s name be written on one, as others had so innocently and tragically labeled theirs, thinking that they were going to settle down and unpack?
The mounds of hair, the thousands of glasses tangled together, and the endless mountain of shoes. Did they once belong to my bubby, my grandparents, my cousins, my aunts and uncles?
Fingering the countless names of those who died in Auschwitz, suspended from the ceiling above, I discovered pages and pages of my relatives. Hundreds of Jungreises, too many to count. My heart hurt. Where does all the pain go?
After walking through the rooms where heads were shaved, disinfectant sprayed, and poisonous gas dispensed, I finally stumbled onto the sunshine. It felt impossible to think that there were bright yellow rays in a place where ashes once blocked the light of the sun.
Now we are here again. Massacred. Vilified. Hated. Violated. Taken. Our children made to feel unwelcome and unwanted. Slogans shouting, “There is only one solution.”
We hear that “never again” is now. Has our world really changed since my bubby walked into the valley of death?
I gathered the group of women around and shared my emotions: Listen to me. I am a walking miracle.
If you would have been standing there, seeing my bubby with the baby in her arms as the Nazis in their uniforms, rifles in hand, marching Jews into the gas chambers, what would you have thought? If we had to take a bet, who would you think would live and who would disappear?
There is no way this elderly bubby will survive. Most would say it is the Jew who will vanish from the face of this earth. And yet here I am. I carry my bubby’s name with pride. She continues to live through me. She created a lifelong legacy. She triumphed. It seems impossible but this is the definition of faith. And those who tried to wipe us out are gone.
Our story continues. You can burn us. You can shoot missiles at us. You can shout at us. Spit at us. Falsely accuse us. You can try to destroy us, deny our culture, our roots and our heritage. But we defy you. I realised that I had found my bubby for whom I was named. Her spirit was living in my heart all this time. She is with me.
Our nation, the Jewish people lives. Am Yisrael Chai.
