WebKittyn Warbles
Friday, January 28, 2005
“Those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it” (G. Santayana)
Every Sunday from my earliest memories as a child we would spend down in the city at my Grandfather's apartment. It was a 23rd floor apartment in the heart of the Village with a terrace looking right out at Washington Square Park.
It wasn't just my parents and I, my uncle and his wife and their brood of four would also be there as would my
step-grandmother's (whom I called Aunt Valerie, sounds better than step grandma) daughter from her first marriage, her second husband, their 2 kids and Aunt Val's mother all were a part of it. My father, the token non-Jew used to call it the "Sunday Afternoon Jewish Fish and Shit Fest" as there were always tons of bagels with lox, herring, all sorts of nasty fish.
They were comfortable Sundays, my cousin Evan and I would disappear into the bedroom to watch tv and talk and torment Matthew and Seth (Aunt Val's daughter's kids). Evan was cool, he was the cool one in the pack.
Aunt Val's mother was a sweet old lady who after all her years in America still carried a heavy Austrian accent. She always wore long sleeves, I was a kid and never paid it any mind, don't old people always say they're cold? Week after week spent with all of them and never did I see her without her long sleeves.
Until I was 10. I was pretty sharp at 10, I was happily getting educated at Riverdale Country Day and was already a devoted reader.
It was just another Sunday at the Fish Fest, there was a King Kongathon on channel 11 and Evan and I were turning Matthew and Seth into rats with makeup and string for whiskers. I went out in to the kitchen to get some more soda and Aunt Val was in there talking to her mother. For the first time in my short life I saw this woman with her sleeves pushed up. And I saw the numbers.
Without a clue or a second thought I asked her why she had written on her arm. She blanched and pushed he sleeve down quickly and then stopped. She looked at me and she rolled her sleeve back up and she motioned me to her.
I went to her and Aunt Val dropped a bomb on my head as she showed me she also had these numbers, I found out later she spent 30 minutes each morning covering them flawlessly with pancake makeup. She told me the numbers were not drawn on and showed me her arm closer. Of course I was full of 'what' and 'why' and to her credit, she
held her own.
I spent the next few hours sitting with her in the bedroom. Evan stayed, the two rats were sent out of the room. Evan was a few years older and a practising Jew, he knew what the numbers were. She told me as much as one can tell a 10 year old without destroying the veil of childhood innocence.
She told me of their being taken, a train ride in a cattle car leading to the gates of the camp, this place called Auschwitz. She told me how families were separated and some were immediately led off, never to be seen again. She told me of having nothing of her possessions left with her, of the young Valerie, of the place they were led to 'live' in. She told me of cruelty and horror and death, so much death. She told me of who these men were who committed these horrors, the "Nazis." She cried as she told me of her husband and son who were in a group she watched walk away, knowing it was the last time she would see them.
I remember Evan sitting there silent the whole time, his face red with anger and intensity. She continued, she continued right up to the day it went quiet in the camp, followed a few days later by the 'day of return to life.' The day the soldiers showed up speaking a language other than German, the day some realised the Nazis were gone and they had survived. She didn't speak of it with joy, it wasn't the celebration of liberation the media has made it. It was the day the horror stopped. She and Valerie had survived Birkenau.
She hugged me when she was done and whispered the above quote and urged me to read and learn and never forget. Her sleeve rolled down once again, she hugged Evan and apologised to me for having to tell me that such things as "Nazis" and "camps" existed.
We left soon after that, spent the ride home talking about it and making my father promise to give me some books to read about it all. I changed that day. Nothing cliche but something inside me became more aware that day.
I've always wanted to visit the camps, to walk on the soil and see for myself. I learned tolerance and acceptance on that Sunday only I didn't know it then. As I grew and matured, whenever I found myself inadvertently slipping into any sort of prejudice I would see Aunt Val and her mother and the numbers.
As the world reflects now during this week of memory right in the middle of this time of terror I too reflect. Reflect on hatred so burning and based solely on religion or race (or any one of a million other actors) and the horrors of having this hatred personified. As a world, we seem to be doing a good job of forgetting the past.
I'll never forget that Sunday and the numbers.
<-- Steal me!
