Later this week, I'm going to meet up with my aunt again to get another photo album, probably the most important one, with old pictures of her family from her childhood before the war, her yellow star, and other artifacts. Before they left their home, my grandma's family gave some belongings to a few neighbors they trusted; the Schneiders, the Danys, and one other family hid photo albums and other belongings in their homes through the war, and returned them safely to my grandma when she returned.
As I started to get everything together, the fact that I'm leaving on Friday for this trip really started to sink in. All through the evening, as my aunt and dad revealed details I didn't know about my grandma's life before and during the war, I found I had a difficult time holding myself together. I know that when I get to Berlin, and I am sitting in a room with these other people--half of who share similar stories, and half of who fill in the other side of the story--the reality of the fact that this is actually my family we are talking about, my grandma who went through these things, is going to hit me. Very hard.
I'm taking a lot of these things with me--copies of photographs, written testimonies, letters--but there are two things (one of which I always carry with me anyways) which really make up the most powerful components of all of this stuff:
The first is a sworn statement stored in the archives at Yad Vashem. I knew this existed, and when I went to Israel last summer with Building Latina Jewish Bridges on Campus, I went into the hall of records and printed a copy. It's a testimony from a man named Alex Salm stating that my grandma, Irene Wolff (now Wolf) died in Theresienstadt. Again, I knew this was out there somewhere, but to actually have it with me and see it on paper was a whole different matter. I can't exactly verbalize yet why this affects me so much, but we'll see if that changes by the end of next week.
The second is a silver ring, which I didn't know existed until last night. When my grandma and grandpa Charlie went back to Kobern (I'm not sure at what point after they reunited--sometime between 1945 and 1947), they went into the remains of the synagogue that my grandma's family helped to build and dedicate. On the ground, they found a few silver coins, and they had them melted down and made into rings, which they brought with them to the US. My dad had one, which is gone now; my aunt has the other, which I'm taking with me.
That's a whole lot of rambling--hopefully as I gather my thoughts more concretely, these posts will make more sense.
Almost forgot--the title. Last night, my dad told me another story that I'd never heard before. In 1944 (I think), my grandma was transported from Theresienstadt (Terezin) to another camp, packed into open train cars. On the trip, there was an Allied air raid--bombs were falling all around them, and they didn't know until the bombs were almost on the ground where they would land. Shrapnel exploded everywhere, and some people in her car were hit and died. As they kept moving, they worried about what would happen when they opened the doors at the station, and how mad the guards would be. When they got to the station and open the doors, the kapo casually indicated where to pile the bodies: this was routine. That is when she realized that they were in trouble--they were not being relocated, they were not just being transported--and the full scope of what was to come hit her. Just that she understood. I asked if she was afraid, because the way he told it, it didn't sound like she had been--just aware. He replied, "she's not afraid of anything." And she's not. And that's part of why I'm going. I know the things I'm going to find out on this trip, both in terms of historical facts and personal revelations, are going to be intense. This whole trip is going to be intense. But if my grandma can come out of those years of her life and be the person she is today--compassionate, willful, clever, and above all, fearless--I can do this.
ARL
You got this!
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