I was the first person in my family to come back here in three generations and the only person in my family ever to come here willingly. I began to reread the letter that my great-grandmother, Bubbie Hilde, had sent to me for the dozenth time since my plane took off. “Your mother told me about your forthcoming trip to Poland. To begin with, I must tell you that I am so proud that you are undertaking what is not an easy or pleasant experience. You are going to see lots of graves and, unfortunately, also the ones of many of our family members. It is a somber experience, but also a very important one, since you are representing yet another generation that is returning to the place of their destruction to say loudly: We are here! You have not defeated us!”

I stepped out of the Warsaw airport and almost dropped the letter which was bring clutched firmly in my knit gloves; never before had I been completely enveloped by a single color. The buildings were all emotionless grey, the way they were left from the country’s communist era. The snow-covered ground was the same empty hue, the way that snow starts to look when it sits on the pavement for several weeks while trampled on. Even the sky was an indecisive grey to the extent that I could not tell if the day was destined for a bitter storm or just to be a peacefully chilly day. I slowly made my way onto the tour bus to join the rest of the group on our eight-day trip around a Jewish cemetery the size of a country.

I marveled at the German ingenuity when our bus—I can’t recall if it was a Mercedes or a Volkswagen—bursted to life. At that point though, I was unaware just how efficient German engineers could be. Soon enough, however, I would stand inside of rooms masterfully crafted to apathetically murder thousands But at that moment, I sat comfortably oblivious on the bus while driving along the path of my great-great grandparents. “I would like you to remember especially the town of Lodz,” my Bubbie wrote, “That is the place where my dear parents were sent to from Vienna, Austria. My beloved father, your great-great grandfather, Yehudah Weidenfeld died of typhus in the Lodz Ghetto.” Folding the letter along its defined creases, chills danced up my spine as I thought about where I was about to go.

The Lodz cemetery initially looked like a seemingly endless maze of snow-covered tombstones. Our tour guide, who had obviously been here before many times, carelessly walked in a straight line without looking or even attempting to avoid stepping on any graves. “Zev, I don’t think any of us would mind walking a little bit slower if that meant we could show a little more respect to the souls resting here,” I told him, wondering to myself if I was especially nervous knowing that my great-great grandfather could be one of the graves that he would trample on. Zev turned to face me with understanding eyes, speaking slow enough that it was obvious that he was carefully thinking about each word. “Daniel, I used to feel the same way. The sad reality of the situation is that almost anywhere that you walk here, you’re walking on a grave. Most of them don’t have tombstones because families could not afford them and bodies were often unrecognizable after being left out of the streets to decay.” Zev kept on talking but I could not hear him. It was almost as if my ears were full of the cool snow around us. Coming to the realization that I would likely be unable to find the resting spot of my great-great grandfather was dreadful. One of the main reasons I came one this morbid trip was to visit my family patriarch and matriarch on the behalf of my Bubbie who was never able to bring herself to come. When I then realized that I might not be able to do that, I started sprinting like a mad-man, scanning the names on each of the tombstones within distance trying my best to will one of them into proudly displaying “Yehudah Weidenfeld.” But none of them did. Unwilling to bear the mockery, I turned around and trudged slowly back towards the group, my head bent down in defeat so far that I could have made a walking trail through the snow just by shaking my head. Zev greeted me, a doctor with the cure for my anguish, and handed me a Yartzheit Candle, a candle used by Jews to commemorate the death of a loved one. Lighting the candle and saying the prayer for the deceased, I felt like my great-great grandfather would know that I came back for him. When the last tear rolled off of my cheek and disappeared into the snow, I got up and walked with composure back to the bus preparing myself for what would be the next emotionally draining stop in the trip.

“From Lodz, my sweet mother, your great-great-grandmother, Yehudith Geller-Weidenfeld was sent on the first day of Rosh Hashanah 1941 to the extermination camp of Chelmno. She was murdered that same day.” Each time I put down the letter, I felt as though I had actually been talking to my Bubbie in person. Each word had the magical power to jump off of the paper to greet me with her heavy Austrian accent and made me miss home that much more. When we got to Chelmno, we were greeted by piercing winds and a dense snowfall as if the weather was mimicking my rattling anticipation. This time, I knew before we arrived that there would be no tombstone bearing my great-great grandmother’s name. Just rows of mass pits stuffed with countless lifeless corpses, robbed of their lives. The fresh coat of snow covering these pits of death allowed me to get off of the bus without my stomach surrendering my lunch. As we approached the memorial, it felt like we were pushing down the temperature with each step, making me more and more grateful for each of the layers that were engulfing me—layers that I know my great-great grandmother never would have had. Zev had asked me the night before if I would be able to lead us in a song to commemorate the fallen so I had taken along my ukulele with me. The group got in a circle and started singing the words to the Hebrew song, “Kol Berama” (“A Voice is Heard” – Jeremiah 31: 14-6). In order to play, I had to take off my heavy gloves, and, in doing so, allowed the ravenous winds to feast on my exposed skin. Trying to distract myself from the sharp pain, I started singing with a commanding intensity: Thus said the Lord: Restrain your voice from weeping and your eyes from tears; for there is reward for your accomplishment—the word of the Lord—and they will return from the enemy’s land. There is hope for your future—the word of the Lord—and your children will return to their border. Though my bare hand was strumming up and down, I soon noticed that no music was coming from the sound hole on my ukulele. With a shock, I quickly realized that my fingers had gone numb from the white, burning cold and were unable to bend fast enough for the tempo of the song. Before I allowed this to upset me, I concluded that this was a much more appropriate tribute to the dead; the ukulele is known by many as the instrument of peace. A crime site hosting hundreds of thousands of soulless bodies does not deserve to hear its uplifting melodies. Upon return to the bus—and the slow, painful, return of feeling to my fingers—I firmly grasped the letter in my hands, eagerly anticipating my return to New York where I would be able to tell Bubbie Hilde of the way I honored her parents. But I had one more stop to make first.

After leaving the bleakness of Poland, landing in Austria felt like diving head first into a rainbow. Colorful cottages seemed like the ubiquitous choice, themselves encompassed by vibrant flowers. This is where my family was from before World War II, before they were violently torn from their homes. It seemed kind of fitting to end my trip of seeing the way that my ancestors died by seeing the way that they had lived. I was pleasantly surprised when I realized that my stay in Austria happened to coincide with the Jewish holiday of Passover. Passover celebrates the freedom that Jews have today after our persecution in ancient Egypt. There are a lot of parallels between the Passover story and the Holocaust and it felt more than appropriate to celebrate my freedom as a Jew in the very place that threw out my family just for being Jewish. Going into the first night of Passover, my Bubbie’s words played on repeat like a broken record player stuffed into my head, “you are representing yet another generation that is returning to the place of their destruction to say loudly: We are here! You have not defeated us!”

After the second night of Passover was over, I turned my phone back on which immediately palpitated with buzzes to tell me of the calls I missed from a myriad of family members. I immediately felt a wave of guilt: I forgot to call my family before the holidays! I quickly dialed my mom’s familiar phone number. My mother didn’t even let the phone ring once before answering it, as if she had been waiting, phone in hand, for the call. “Mom, I’m so sorry I forgot to call you, I know you’re….”
“Daniel, it’s ok,” she cut me off abruptly, “How is Austria?” She asked nervously.
“It’s beautiful Mom, you would love it. is everything ok? You sound scared.”

“Daniel…. On the first night of Passover…. Bubbie Hilde had a stroke. She’s gone, Daniel. She died peacefully in her sleep in the hospital surrounded by family.”

Or at least, that’s how I imagine she would have said it. After stroke slivered out of my mother’s mouth, my phone leaped out of my hand as if the floor was a giant magnet forcing it away from me. I had embarked on this whole journey for her sake. Now that she was gone, what was it all for? Did I visit the graves of her parents just to tell her own grave of the story? I opened up the letter which had guided me for the last week to seek guidance once more from my Bubbie. “How happy and proud my parents would have been to have met you. How they must delight looking down from Heaven seeing how their children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren have not forgotten them and are seeking them out to honor them. How assured they must be that you walk in the path that they could hardly have envisioned during their inhumane suffering.”

Of course, it’s my duty to continue her legacy, to make sure she is remembered in our family just as she wanted to me to do for her parents. It’s my duty to live the lives they never could, to finish celebrating Passover, the holiday of freedom, in a country that offered them none. I closed my eyes, imagined her next to me, and finished the letter for the last time.

 

Love, and a big hug,

Bubbie Hilde

 

 

Daniel:

This is a moving story, a bit reminiscent of Cynthia Ozick, and it has a perfect frame in the form of the great-grandmother’s letter.  The image of trying to play the ukulele with frozen fingers, the phone repelled from the narrator’s hand, as well as the many suggestive images of snow—all are memorable descriptions.  Indeed, your use of imagery was so good that there were times I wished the language was a bit streamlined, or explanations stopped shorter, so your reader could experience the imagery more immediately and with less interruption.  You also did allow a few too many typos and comma blips to survive your revision process.  But dramatically and symbolically, this narrative is quite powerful.  As a non-Jew, and with all due respect to the special trials the Jewish people have endured, I still feel that the basic fact of the living walking inadvertently over the dead, of feeling unsure exactly how to memorialize them—that tenuousness of ancestors who could easily disappear unless we honor their names—that is universal to human experience.

 

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