Something I need To Get Of My Chest!
Dear chaverim (friends). I’ve been struggling with something for the last two days. Yesterday I wanted to share it at the prayer meeting at my church but then I thought better of it, thinking, “it’s just me, Andy Bendzin, dealing with this issue that is more personal than all the other prayer requests that deal with people in need.
I am reading a book by the daughter of a Holocaust survivor. Her name is Leslie Gilbert-Lurie. Former executive at NBC where she worked on shows as Cheers, Family Ties, Saved by the Bell and The Fresh Prince of Bel Air. Today she has served as president of the Los Angeles County Board of Education. The name of her book is “Bending Towards The Sun.”
As Gilbert-Lurie states herself at one point in her bookwhens she talks in her own voice, that of her mother Rita’s daughter, it took her another 25 years before her mother could sit down with her and really talk about what happened in that tiny attic in a farm house in Poland, that served as a hiding place for two years. Never being able to speak above a whisper, never being able to get out and enjoy the sunshine and the rain. Having her mother witness the passing away of her younger brother Nachum and her mother Leah. These events left a deep mark in her mother’s life, constantly thinking that it is her fault that they died. Never ever did anyone in her family talk with Rita about her mother’s death. Her dad’s, Isaac’s,, second wife Clara, who survived Auschwitz didn’t make things easier. As a stepmother she never showed love and affection to Rita. It also stifled Isaac’s relationship to his own daughter. Instinctively, Gilbert-Lurie took on from youngest age, the role of the protector of her mother Rita, to never make her feel sad, to be here when she needed her. This instinct had a great impact on Gilbert-Lurie’s life in the struggle of attaining her own independence beyond her deep ingrained fears of abandonment and possible death.
As Gilbert-Lurie describes her family life as a young girl, she mentions how, after her mother hasn’t seen her father Isaac for more than eight years, her dad came to visit her and her family in Los Angeles. Her mother wanted once and for all talk about her childhood years and the happiness and affection she lacked. All she could elicit from her dad was a puzzled look, saying, “Happy. Happy. What’s happy?”
When I read this, I just broke down. Tears came rolling down my eyes. Why this personal pain, why the inability of father and daughter to work through traumatic events, why did the Nazis do what they did, why were many Germans alright with Jews being deported, aside from those who were too afraid to stand up. Why even then, when certain newspaper editors welcomed the exterminations in the East did most Germans not raise a single voice. Why, why, why?
I’ve read a number of books on the Holocaust, but this is the best! It is one thing reading about numbers, it is wholly different when you can put a face to it. It deals not only with what Rita went through, but also the affect it had on her daughter Leslie and even on Leslie’s daughter Mikaela. This does not just end with the children of the survivors, in many cases it gets passed down even further.
Do I spend incessant time dealing with this subject? Maybe. Would be my love for Israel and the Jewish people less if I came from a different country, especially America? Maybe.
I always cry for the underdog. It tears me up the suffering of those who wanted to escape Soviet controlled East Germany and many dying in doing so. It drives me nuts learning how the British treated the Irish no better than serfs, compelling many to respond in hostile violence against the British and those who collaborated with them.
So what’s different about the Jews, many European countries hated them, especially in the east. But it’s Germany who became the instrument. it is Germany that egged on other nations to do their bidding. It is Germany who made genocide into an assembly line, void of heart, soul, and mind. And above all when we turn against the Jews, we turn against God.
Today, I bristle over no other subject like anti-Semitism. It makes me sick to even find out that my best friend of 40 years hates the Jews. I still love him as family and yet he refuses to listen to my case. Now it is not an abstract matter anymore, it also became very personal even in my life.
The one thing that is missing in the equation of Germans dealing with their past, “the sins of the fathers will be visited on the next four generation.” It is a heart felt repentance that is missing in the public discourse in Germany.
To my Hebrew class and Joseph, thanks for letting me share that.
