Contrast Analysis - A True Family Story

Excerpts below from the book, Kristallnacht, by Martin Gilbert (Winston Churchill's Biographer)

… in Hanover (Germany), a schoolgirl, Lore Pels, was walking to school with her brother, Erwin, when she passed a bedding store and was surprised to see policemen present. Windows were totally smashed, broken, Lore recalled, feathers were all over. My first thought was that a burglary was in progress!! The next block was our school. We were NOT able to go into the building; instead we were greeted by police, or Nazis. They told all the children upon arrival to go back home.

Lore said, Erwin and I had no idea what could have happened. Slowly word spread that our beautiful synagogue was burning… I remember being totally shocked, speechless, since we children spent so much time in the synagogue.

Returning home, Lore saw paper shreds - the burnt fragments of prayer books from the synagogue – flying in front of our windows. Her father Joseph Pels, switched on the radio, and turned the dial until he could hear a foreign radio station, something strictly forbidden for Jews. That was how her family found out that there was no burglary at the store and that the synagogue was burned, destroyed. A few days later, Lore, her parents and her brother were forced to vacate their apartment and to leave all their belongings behind. They were moved, with many other families, to a former Jewish school, with little more space than a bed for each person.

As for all those who witnessed Kristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass), that night and day were a grim prelude. A cousin in the United States offered affidavits to Lore's father, Joseph, for all four of the family to emigrate. Her father refused, stating over and over, as Lore recalled, that he had served the Germans during World War One. One of his brothers, Ivan Pels, had been killed in action in that war, fighting for Germany. He and his family would be fine.

During the first heavy allied bombing raid on Hanover, Joseph had a heart attack. Unable to be taken to hospital because Jews were not treated at hospitals, Lore’s father died. A few months later, his wife and two children were deported to (the concentration camp), Riga. His wife and (Lore) survived; his son Irwin died shortly before the end of the war in (the death camp) Dachau, to which many of the surviving Riga deportees were taken.  

Lore was my 2nd cousin

Lore Pels, the schoolgirl who endured being uprooted from her home, who was relocated to Riga, a concentration camp, who saw death everyday wondering when she would be next, and who miraculously survived and eventually came to America after the war… was my 2nd cousin, my mother’s first cousin.

And here’s the thing. If Lore’s father, Joseph, had accepted the affidavits for all four of the family to emigrate, it would have been my mother who would have not emigrated with those affidavits. 

The moral of the story

When I contrast my current situation with what my cousin Lore and her family had to endure, and what my mother (at age seven), her sister, and my grandparents had to endure escaping from Germany... I have "no problems."

Contrast Analysis does NOT make problems or challenges go away. But this technique does empower us to appreciate what we have, in contrast to others who have, or have had it worse than us. And from this grateful perspective, we can better navigate the problems we are faced with... to better manage and successfully overcome our challenges.