Hanukkah Light in the Darkness - Day 2

We need more light in the darkness.

The following essays are my inner thoughts in these dark days, published for the celebration of Hanukkah, the holiday we, Jewish people, celebrate for the past 2187 years (yes, in 164 BCE the Jewish people, in the Land of Israel, also known as Zion, were able to yet again have their religion freedom in the temple).

Day two - Why am I alive? The second part.

(see part one on Day One )

My maternal grandparents were not so lucky. They did come out of Europe alive, but had to go through so many hardships, that I always wondered, how these fragile, old people (they looked so old to me when I grew up), could have survived that? How did they have the power, and the will?

When the Nazis declared war on Poland and split it with Russia, my grandparents lived in a small town in the south-eastern parts of the country. They had two small girls, my aunts, and my grandmother was pregnant with their third child. The family was small - my great-grandmother and great-uncle were living with them. A cousin with her family was nearby. They had their community, their synagogue, their friends. My grandparents had different jobs and were able to provide for their loved ones.

My grandmother gave birth to my uncle, her third child, on the first day of Rosh Hashanah. The next day, the Nazis arrived in town, and ordered all the Jews to gather up at the synagogue. My grandparents decided it was time to flee town. Luckily for them, the river that ran by the town was the new border with Russia. The little family, with a day old newborn, with their grandmother and her son, and with the cousin and her family, fled on the holy day. They were able to pay someone to get them across the river.?

The Jews who stayed in town, those who obeyed the orders of the Nazis and came to the synagogue, were all locked inside and set on fire by the devils. None of them survived.

My grandparents became refugees in Russia. They roamed as far as possible from the border, and remained there throughout the six years of the war. I’ve heard stories from them, mainly my grandmother - heroic stories of not eating for days so she can feed her little children. Of jumping off running trains so they don’t get separated from their loved ones. Of working in the forests cutting wood, for a bit of food.

But they survived.

When the war was over, my mom was born, still in Russia. By then, they were allowed to come back to Poland. But they had no place to come to. Their houses were taken by the locals. The graveyards of their loved ones who were buried there for centuries were destroyed, the tombstones used by the Nazis as paving stones. The friends they left behind were all dead.?

Poland and other countries around Europe were now home for refugee camps. All over the continent, the few Jewish people who survived the nightmares of the war, were trying to find their loved ones. But they mostly found nothing. Their loved ones were ashes in the death camps.?Or they were buried in unmarked mass graves throughout the continent. So my grandparents and their family settled in one of the refugee camps in Poland.

In 1948 they were all in awe for the creation of the State of Israel, the legitimate creation, supported by the United Nations.?The legitimate one, as it was voted by the UN council in the prior year. The legitimate one, as this was the land of the indigenous Jewish people, for 3500 years. The legitimate one, as the UN also decided to provide for a state for the local Arab population. Two states.

But immediately the awe changed to fear for the lives of the Jewish men and women, who had to fight for the existence of the newborn modern state, being attacked by no less than seven other countries surrounding them - Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Yemen - all Arab, Muslim countries

And then they were in awe that the new state survived against all odds.

In 1950 my grandparents, with their 5 kids by now (the youngest brother was born in Poland in the refugee camp), my great-grandmother and her son, and my grandmother’s cousin with her little family, decided to move to Israel.

Originally, my grandfather wanted to go to America. He felt that the family will have better chance in an established country with many Jewish communities. And many of the survivors in Europe did immigrate to the USA. But it was my grandmother - who by sheer willpower held the entire family together all these years, and who saw hope in the place of despair, baring two more children after the atrocities that happened to her people - who insisted they go to Israel.

This is our place, she would say. This is the place where they accept us as we are. This is where we pray, three times a day, to be. This is where our ancestors came from. This is where the future of the Jewish nation is.

So they packed their little belongings, and boarded a ship to make Aliya. My mother was five years old. She remembers the bunkbed where she slept on the ship. She remembers the rug-doll her dad made for her from leftover cloths. She remembers the Ma’abara - refugee camp they were brought to in Israel - where they lived in tents for a couple of years.?

She also remembers all the wars Israel was forced to fight since then.?

My mom is turning 78 this month. Israel is the only home she knows. And she still prays and hopes for peace. She prays and hopes for all neighbouring countries and communities to live in peace, and let her and the family she created to live in peace.?

My grandparents are long gone by now, may their memory be of blessing. But their legacy goes on. They were brave and hopeful and moved on, with all the trauma they had to endure.?

So I must, too.