Being the Grandchild of Holocaust Survivors

Growing up, I was never particularly close with my paternal grandparents. Though our sparse interactions included the occasional trip to New York, where they lived, the majority consisted of checks sent to my brother and me on Hanukkah and birthdays and a phone call every few months. They had a history of being closed off, first with my father and then with his family. It wasn't until four or so years ago that I really began to grow closer to them. For much of that time, I was the only one that spoke with them. 

My grandfather died in 2013, just a few days after the start of the new year. My grandmother died just over three months ago, and with her went my last living grandparent.

A large part of my grandparents' lives were a mystery to me growing up, and my knowledge of them today is still patchwork at best. But there were always a few constants. My grandfather's German accent. My grandmother's Hungarian one. Their reserved natures. The knowledge that they had survived the Holocaust.

We learn about the Holocaust in school, in lectures and in books. But for me, it has always felt personal. It is personal. My grandparents were swept into the madness and came out the other end with nothing except the clothes on their backs and their lives. Even my grandmother's name was taken from her at Ellis Island, when Muntzi became Maria. 

What I know about my grandfather's experiences during the war comes from little bits of information that I have collected over the years and pieced together into a loose and potentially faulty account. His father left when he was a child, and his mother later remarried. But his birth father had been Jewish, as my grandfather was informed when he was called into the office one day at school. So he was taken to a work camp. While there, I think he might have had to act as a translator for non-German speakers, though I don't remember when I was told that.

My grandmother's experiences, I know a little more about. That is, I know the story that she told my father.

My grandmother was among the group of Hungarian Jews deported to Auschwitz during the last year/year and a half of World War II, along with her sister. 

The Jewish members of Hungary were herded into ghettos. Then they were taken in trains to the concentration camps. My grandmother and her sister spent twenty-four to forty-eight hours in one of these cattle cars. When they got off the train, they, along with everyone else, were marched in a line to a German officer who was separating the ones deemed strong enough to work and thus would be permitted to live, from the ones who would die. 

My grandmother was sorted into the "live" side, but her younger sister was put into the "die" side. Somehow, miraculously, her sister was able to make it over to the live side, and they stayed together. They labored together in a work camp in Birkenau, a compound adjoining Auschwitz, making some sort of war material. 

When the Germans began retreating from the British and American forces, they rounded up everyone in the concentration camps and marched them to Germany. But my grandmother escaped. She said that she and her sister were among a group of women who hid one day or one night in a barn in Germany. The farmer who owned the barn found them the next morning, but he didn’t betray them. They were discovered by the liberating armies. She was around nineteen years old.

My father has a hard time believing this story in its entirety. I choose to believe her. Even if parts of it didn't belong to her, they surely belonged to someone. 

In recent years I often wanted to ask my grandparents more. I would visit Holocaust museums and watch videos of survivors describing their experiences and think about the fact that I am descended from two. That I would probably learn more from the people in the videos than I would from my own grandparents. But I was afraid of the consequences, afraid that my newfound connection with them would be broken by dragging up what they had clearly wanted to keep in the past. Understandably. So I let them keep their secrets and accepted it.

My grandparents had their faults. Our family had its issues. There was not always a happy relationship between us. But I'm quite proud to have had them as my grandparents. I am proud that I come from a history of strength in the face of unbearable cruelty, and determination in the face of uncertainty.

The last time I saw my grandmother, she was in a medical center waiting to receive her next treatment. She suffered a lot in her last years of life, not only from various illnesses, but from the treatments intended to make her feel better. She must have endured immense amounts of pain. Not exactly fair for someone who had already been dealt more than a lifetime's worth of pain.

But she was so happy to see me. She told me my hair looked good short; I had always kept it long in the past. She made sure I stole enough graham crackers from the waiting area to keep me stocked for a long time. She wore a silky pink blouse, a scarf, and a very soft, delicate white sweater, the picture of elegance. She smelled of vanilla.

So on this day, the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, I remember my grandparents. I am finally writing the post I have been wanting to write for the past three months. And when my next birthday rolls around, I'll be thinking of my grandmother then too. We had the same birthday.