Revisiting My Mother’s Holocaust Experiences
- 9 hours ago
- 2 min read
International Holocaust Remembrance Day, or the International Day in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust, was January 27, commemorating the genocide of two thirds of the European Jewish population by the German Nazis. This is the day which aligns with the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp in which over 1.2 million Jews were murdered.
My Mother was a Holocaust survivor of five work concentration camps in Poland. She survived the unspeakable, and screamed of it in her daymares which I heard, other times overhearing what was thought I could not hear, and being told some. After visiting Branszczyk, Poland, 72 kilometers northeast of Warsaw, where she grew up, and Wyszkow Memorial and Wyszkow Forest last summer I found out much more about her life experiences, her survival, and how she survived. I have decided to write a memoir of her and my father’s Holocaust experiences and the impact upon me, born in Germany right after the war while they were in Bergen Belsen Displaced Persons camp.
In 2020, my granddaughter was taking a Holocaust class and would get extra credit if I wrote what I knew about their experiences. It took me months and with great emotional difficulty then, here is the blog post I wrote, published November 25, 2020.
I learned this year that due to the Eric Erickson psychosocial stage of development I have reached in my life, I am now able to begin to address the intergenerational Holocaust trauma I experienced in my life. Again, it is not without emotional difficulty to revisit.
As I embark on a memoir writing retreat in Guatemala, I know that my exploration into their life and their Holocaust experiences will bring new light to me. It is my intention to share what will fill in the pieces of “knowing and not knowing” as a child of Holocaust survivors.
It is a responsibility to be a witness, and by reading this post and sharing it, you too are part of those who acknowledge the evil and horror so that it does not happen again.
I have not yet been able to read my mother’s book, but I will before I finish and publish
my memoir. Thank you for bearing witness. Thank you for sharing this journey with me..
Mema
