Dear Friends,
Tuesday night was wild. Dianne Schwager came to speak about her family’s Holocaust story and it was intense. I feel like it was much more understated than other accounts I’d heard of. There was no hiding out in a barn. No wandering through the woods. No detailed accounts of concentration camp life. And the banality of the whole thing made it so much more wild to hear about: A wealthy-ish family, living in the city, into hiking and skiing and concerts and beer with friends. German WWI vets and business owners. Reform Jews. Teens ran track in the Maccabiah games, with Jewish star jerseys. And then, just a few years later, swastika banners on government buildings. Crazy laws like Jews can’t swim from the shore – so this wealthy, fun-loving family buys a sailboat so they can legally swim. The story is surreal. They stay and stay and stay because their business is thriving and they figure life as immigrants would be way harder, and Hitler’s administration won’t stay in power for too long, right? Eventually the young men (including Dianne’s dad) left for America and Palestine, but the middle-aged adults and women and kids stayed, because it was easier, and they had money, and then eventually, because there were too many bureaucratic loopholes to leave. Eventually they started trying to emigrate, worked on it for three years, and kept striking out – and then, one day, they were loaded into a train, loaded out of the train, and shot into a ditch with nearly a thousand other Jews.
I got an email from one of you asking about the language choice of “second generation survivor” as opposed to “child of a Holocaust survivor” (and grandchild of victims). I asked her which she preferred, and she said either one fits – but, she said, she doesn’t think it’s only a question of intergenerational trauma. She clarified – she definitely knows people who are estranged from their parents because their parents, survivors, were so messed up by the Holocaust that they were painful to be around. She’s definitely witnessed intergenerational trauma first hand. But, she said, when she thinks about herself and her daughters, it feels less like intergenerational trauma and more like intergenerational inspiration. She and her daughters live their life incredibly focused on human rights, justice work, and looking out for people who are oppressed. I completely understand how an experience like that would make you want to hunker inward, sort of living your life in a spiritual fetal position, but she says the opposite has been true for them. She’s not about protecting Jews – she’s about protecting people. She’s not about making sure her family is okay – she’s about making sure that marginalized families, period, are okay. She used the word “inspiration.” It kind of blew my mind.
Catching up on email post-vacation, I can’t count the number of emails I’ve gotten from various organizations and individuals about Gaza. About 75% are unequivocally condemning what’s happening to Gazans right now – the starvation, the killing – and about 25% are explaining how Israel is actually trying its best, and it’s not their fault, and Hamas is to blame. I haven’t really known what to do with any of this, until I heard Dianne’s story and her reflections on it. Where I’ve landed is this: As Jews, there’s no way around it. When we read these accounts – and we have to read them – there is nothing to feel but pain, horror, and activation. When our fellow humans starve, when our fellow humans die, it helps nobody – not Israelis, not Jews. It matters why it’s happened – but it matters way more that stops immediately. It’s a disease on our earth and a disease on our souls. I know that my writing this, I know that my thinking this, doesn’t actually save any lives. But if we don’t lift up the conversation, who are we?
My blessing for all of us this Shabbat is that our intergenerational inspiration strengthens, motivates, and heals – ourselves, our communities, and maybe, eventually, collectively, one day, our world.
Shabbat shalom,
Rabbi Hannah