Sixty-seven years ago, my father and mother along with my uncle Zvi and aunt Vita moved from Trieste, Italy to Bat Galim. Bat Galim was a small beach area in the heart of the port city of Haifa in the then British colony of Palestine. The four of them took up residence in a one bedroom apartment because it was all they could afford, and that barely. The two best of friends, having fought side-by-side in the Palestinian unit of the British Army against the Germans for 6 years, were still part of the British service but had to work at night driving taxis to make a little extra money for their fledgling families to survive.It was a difficult life in the post-war middle-east territory. The dream of all Jews after the Holocaust and World War II - to have a place to call home where Jews could live in peace for the first time in nearly 2000 years - was a struggle. As a British colony, the spoils of victory over the Ottomans in World War I, the region was controlled by British "occupiers" whose soldiers and service workers didn't want to be there and were dealing with constant conflict, both politically and physically.
Despite a commitment by the British government through Lord Balfour in 1917 of developing the territory as a homeland for the Jewish people and the mandate of the League of Nations to divide the land into Jewish and Arab regions, politicking had usurped promises and World War II had taken attention away from this mandate. But, in the shadow of the Holocaust, Jews who were now desperately trying to move to the region despite strict quotas by the British, were more determined than ever to re-establish their identity as a people in their ancient homeland.
Less than one year prior to their move from Italy, my father along with his best friend Zvi and their battalion had finished sweeping up the boot of Italy and cleansing it of German troops. They had been camped at their new base in Trieste, a northern port town near the border of Italy and Yugoslavia. The Jewish boys, part of that Palestinian unit of the British Army, had been befriended by a small group of local Jewish young adults. It was a moment of destiny for those two boys - my father and his friend Zvi - in many ways.
At an evening gathering at a local club, Zvi had met Vita, a beautiful Italian-born Jewish girl whose family had escaped the pogroms of Russia two decades earlier. It didn't take long for him to fall deeply in love with this brash and fiesty 22 year old. Three months later they were married in a civil ceremony attended by his fellow soldiers and many of the small local Jewish community that they had befriended. Of course, my mother, Vita's sister - her bride's mate - attended the wedding with her then fiancé. Sadly for her fiancé, who wasn't much of a dancer, Zvi's best friend was also part of the group reveling in the celebration.
My father and mother met on the dance floor that night and for three hours danced until the blisters on their feet cried out for mercy. The rest, as they say, is history. The next day, my mother returned the engagement ring to her poor former fiancé, and began spending every moment she was able to with my father. They planned on marrying some time soon. Unfortunately, the joy of that moment of providence was short-lived.
It had been seven years since my father had escaped Czechoslovakia during the German occupation of
The Sudetenland after his mother put him along with a dozen other Jewish 14 and 15 year old boys on a train to Denmark. That event foretold an ominous future for the Jews of Eastern Europe. Soon thereafter, although they desperately tried, it was impossible for the Jewish boys to return to Prague and my father and his group made the fateful decision to attempt the journey to the Palestinian territory where thousands of other Jews were attempting to go. After multiple harrowing experiences during their three month journey, they arrived in the middle east, soon after joined the British Army and fought for nearly six years against Rommel in Northern Africa before being moved to the European front.
So, after seven years, Czechoslovakia was finally liberated from German control and my father was granted a weekend pass from his unit in Trieste to return to Prague to find his family. My mother, with memories of her father being arrested by the SS and having found out not long before that he died on a train to one of the German death camps, had a very foreboding sense about this trip, but could not - would not - let my father know about her feelings. He had to go. As my father left in his British Army Jeep, my mother suddenly felt very alone. The memories of her own six years of terror were running through her mind - hiding from the SS with her mother and Vita in rat infested attics, sleeping in barns, narrowly escaping capture time and time again.
Three days later there was a knock on my mother's door. She opened it to find my father, exhausted from no sleep, tears streaming down his face. They fell into each others arms, both crying uncontrollably - he didn't have to say a word. She knew.
For the next several hours they locked themselves in the bathroom and sat on the cold tile floor crying together, my father too embarrassed to allow anyone else to see him in this state. He told her the story, from arriving in Prague, finding no one he knew in all the old houses in the Jewish neighborhoods he grew up in and ultimately, going to the city hall and researching the records of his family. You see, the Germans kept meticulous records.
And there, his worst nightmares were revealed. His mother, father, two sisters...his brother-in-law and niece...his aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents...all gone...taken to Auschwitz-Birkenau...gassed, burnt...dead. He alone was left. My father was never the same after that. Although, he and my mother did eventually marry, moved to Bat Galim, and began to put the pieces of life back together.
In partnership with my uncle, my father was part of the underground - helping to obtain and hide weapons for the Haganah and Palmach in their struggle for independence from the British and against Arab terrorism. They helped to establish the fledging State of Israel during its war of Independence and thereafter. My brother was born in 1948 and soon after, my cousin Ruthi was born. The two families living together at times to make ends meet, raising their children together...surviving with memories...and with a hope that never again will the Jewish people be defenseless against evil and tyranny.
My parents eventually moved to the United States to be with my grandmother who had moved to the US from Italy after the war. I was born not long after. My aunt Vita, uncle Zvi, and my other aunt and uncle - Olga and Jackie, who had moved to the region before World War II had ended - remained in Israel and each raised two beautiful children, several grandchildren and many great grandchildren. They went on to endure more bloodshed, wars, terrorism, and grief. My oldest cousin was killed by a mine around the time of the Six Day War.
My mother is the sole surviver of her family now, her mother, sisters, brother - who all survived the holocaust - all since have passed on to their eternal home. My father has passed also, having lived with a grief that no one should ever have to bare...a survivor's guilt that a boy emotionally entrenched at the age of 15 could never begin to understand. He was a man who quietly, constantly ruminated over the question...if I was only there, could I have saved my family...could I have protected them? His best friend, my uncle Zvi, has also passed on, leaving a legacy of strength that will never be forgotten.
Today, Israel commemorates a national holiday - if one can call it that. It is Yom HaShoah (literally, The Day of The Holocaust) - the date on the calendar that we remember the Six Million men, women and children whose lives were prematurely taken by evil in human form. It is a day filled with grief - to most it is a collection of stories, of distant memories one, two and three generations removed from the event. Nevertheless, it is faithfully commemorated and will be for as long as Israel exists throughout generations to come.
But, it is also a day filled with thanksgiving and hope. We give thanks for and honor men like uncle Zvi and my father, women like Vita and my mother, who didn't just survive the holocaust, but fought through and somehow transcended the grief and the living memories...to build a nation from dirt and rock into what is now "a land filled with milk and honey." We have hope that the children of the survivors, the grandchildren and great grandchildren can one day live in peace, focused only on how they can help the world become a better place and less on surviving the next onslaught of anti-semitic treachery.
Today, Holocaust Remembrance Day, reminds us that our Creator, the G-d of this universe, is not a puppet master. He has given us out of His great love for us, the free will to choose...we have the capability as a race and as individuals to do enormous evil. We also have the capacity to do tremendous good. The Torah says in the book of Deuteronomy, "I call heaven and earth to witness today that before you is life and death, the blessing and the curse. Therefore, choose life, so that you will live, you and your descendants, loving Adonai your G-d, clinging to Him..." WE have been given the ability to choose between good and evil, between life and death, between becoming a blessing or a curse to others, to be beneficent or malevolent.
Yom HaShoah also reminds us that even if others have chosen evil over good, the curse over the blessing, death over life, we still have the capacity to survive even the most vile onslaught to our humanness and to rebuild in hopes of a better day. Today, we traditionally say, "Never again...never forget!" But, we also say, "The nation of Israel lives" - Am Yisrael Chai!
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