Holocaust Remembrance Day
I know that the chaos feels daunting, but it is not insurmountable and we are not powerless.
Dear friends,
Holocaust Remembrance Day lands on Tuesday, January 27th this year. For me, every day is Holocaust Remembrance Day. Really. Not a day goes by when I am not thinking about my grandparents whom I never met because they were murdered by Nazis in concentration camps. Their names were Sam and Finka, and it is for them that I refuse to be silent in the face of injustice.
Every year on Holocaust Remembrance Day, I post photos of my grandparents, not because I want y'all to boohoo for me, but to put real human faces to the stories of this heartbreaking piece of history. Every single victim of this genocide was someone's mother or father, son or daughter, sibling, would-be grandparent, friend, loved one, beloved. They had names. They had lives. Their lives were stolen, or utterly destroyed, completely shattered because of hatred, ignorance, and inaction.
By sharing the names and faces of these victims of genocide, the hope is that we might be more inclined to learn from this tragic moment in history, rather than repeat it.
Who were these murdered grandparents?
From my father's memoir:
"When she was young, Finka worked in a bank and then in a travel agency and, being fluent in several languages, did some foreign-language announcements on radio. Sam had a business in Beograd, wholesale paper, called Jugopapir. With a lot of hard work, he made the business prosper. Things were going so well that, not long before the war, Same and Finka bought a fine home, with a large garden. There was a piano in the house, and many books. I started going to school and, at home, learning French. Sabbath candles were lit and holidays were observed but the family was not very religious and did not keep kosher. This was a comfortable bourgeois family, enjoying a peaceful and prosperous life."
"When Yugoslav armed forces were mobilized in 1941, Sam – a reserve lieutenant – reported for duty. When Yugoslavia collapsed, he became a prisoner of war. After some time – probably a month or two, I don’t really remember – he was released and came home. We did not know then how unfortunate that was. Had he remained a POW, he probably would have survived the war.
But Sam did not survive. Some time after his return from POW camp, Sam did what all Jewish men in Beograd were ordered to do. On the designated day, he went to the designated place. From there, German occupiers put those men in a concentration camp and used them for forced labour. A 1959 letter from The Jewish Community of Belgrade summarizes his fate: “Sam was taken by Gestapo to Topovske Šupe concentration camp in the first half of October 1941, and from there to an unknown destination in November of the same year.” Subsequent historical research indicates that the men held in that camp were executed by Wehrmacht firing squads in late October and early November 1941."
All Jewish men in Beograd were ordered to gather at a central location on a specific date, from which they were taken to the Topovske Šupe concentration camp. My grandfather Samuel was among them.
"I have a faint recollection of one occasion when my mother and I saw Sam briefly at a place where he was doing forced labour – I think the crew were unloading some barges – and one occasion when Mother and I had a brief visit with him at the camp. I cannot describe the horror, fright, pain, and infinite sorrow that I feel when I try to – and, of course, cannot – imagine what Sam and Finka thought and felt at those times.
Finka did not survive. The same letter that I mentioned states the cold facts: “Josefina was taken by Gestapo to Sajmište concentration camp on 10 December 1941, and was taken from there with other Jewish women to an unknown destination in May 1942.” When the German occupiers ordered Jewish women and children and old persons to come to a designated place on a designated day, my mother Finka and her mother Irena did what they had to. According to the Germans’ orders, I should have been with them – but I was not. They perished, I survived."
My grandmother and her mother were taken to Sajmište Concentration Camp in December 1941. Exactly 6 months later, Finka died in the last gas van to leave the camp.
"While nobody could imagine the horror that was coming, it was clear that the times were dangerous and the already brutal treatment of Jews could easily become even worse. That made everybody very nervous and apprehensive. Finka’s burden was great: the fear of disaster was ever-present, her husband had disappeared, her economic resources were evaporating, her mother Irena – who even in peacetime was an extremely nervous person – was now living with Finka, and I, an absolutely impossible child, was driving her crazy. To ease that burden a little, Finka and my aunt Ruža (who had converted to Christianity when she married a Christian in the 1920s) decided that I should stay with Ruža for a while. And that is how it happened that, when Finka and Irena were taken to Sajmište, I was not with them. I was at Ruža’s house, where I remained until 1946."
Courage in the face of danger.
Despite living upstairs from Yugoslavia's foreign secretary who had signed the treaty with Hitler, and across the street from the German embassy, Ruža and her daughters did not think twice about hiding my father, knowing full-well that, if caught hiding a Jew, they would all be executed. By all accounts, Ruža, Vera and Ivanka were fiercely committed to my father's wellbeing. They divided my father's education between them. They made special birthday gifts for him. They hid him in a linen storage chest during Gestapo raids. They made sure he survived.
I've known this story all my life. I've known the story of the absolute horrors of how the Holocaust unfolded, and how it affected my family. And I've also known the story of the incredible heroism of my father's aunt and cousins who risked their own lives to save his. I've known these stories all my life, but could never fully fathom how anyone could be so courageous in such dangerous circumstances. I think we are seeing some of this courage emerge again, just as the fascist violence is also re-emerging.
This is why we fight!
When we say that the current US government is a fascist regime, we are not exaggerating. When we say that ICE are the Gestapo, we are not exaggerating. When we say that we know how this goes when people remain silent, we are not exaggerating.
Not a day goes by when I don't question how things might have turned out so differently if in 1930's Germany, when that horrific nasty little man first started railing against Jews, enough people told him to just fuck off and made sure he went back to his slimy little hole of hatred. Not a day goes by when I don't remember that it is my obligation as the daughter of a Holocaust survivor and as a human who cares to do whatever I can to prevent such atrocities from happening to others. My family history is why I speak up in the face of oppression, why I refuse to shut up.
Perhaps you too are the descendant of a Holocaust survivor. Perhaps you too, have relatives who were murdered by Nazis. Or, perhaps you have relatives you never met because they died as young men in the trenches, fighting fascism. What would you have wished others had done to protect them, to stop the events before they turned into the bloodbath of WWll? This is what I feel we must be doing now to protect our neighbours from the violence of white supremacists, to protect our planet from the destroyer, and to prevent WWlll from being launched by lunatics.
When people ask me how I keep going, my answer is that I can't not keep going. My answer is Sam and Finka. My answer is, I am only doing what I wish more people had done for them. And, my answer is, it is the very least I can do to honour the tragic murder of my grandparents, and the heroic courage of my great aunt Ruža and her daughters who are the only reason I am here to fight this fight today.
I know that the chaos feels daunting, but it is not insurmountable and we are not powerless. Each of us has a role to play in protecting our neighbours and stopping this fascist takeover before it is too late. Each of us has a voice and we cannot remain silent while Nazis kidnap neighbours, while idiots seize power, while the Israeli government commits genocide in the name of Holocaust victims. We may never know the results of our efforts, but we know that, without them, everything falls apart, more people suffer, and we surrender to evil. We know that making an effort to protect others is the right thing to do, and so we do it.
Shalom,
Jessica (she/her)
p.s. I typically compose these essays over the week and, typically, the idiot regime goes and commits some new outrage(s) after I've finished writing my essay. If the atrocities committed by ICE & CBP this week aren't conjuring up images of Nazi Germany and setting off all the alarm bells, I'm not sure what it will take to convince everyone that the time to take action is now.
