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Susan Young is the Bangor Daily News opinion editor.
My uncle Jack died last month. He was 88.
Because of a long and bitter disagreement, my mother had no contact with him for the last decades of her life. But, when she died eight years ago, Jack reached out to me. It was a blessing.
We reconnected and over several visits to Florida, I regained a part of my family. I heard about his teen courtship with Barbara, his wife of 68 years. I learned of their early hardships and later great successes, including his frequent awards as a top car salesman. I felt their pride and love for their children and many grandchildren. I learned the joys of taking advantage of life’s many opportunities, some of them unexpected. I learned the value of new beginnings, in life and with your family.
This Hanukkah, members of my family will celebrate without their husband, their father, their grandfather, their uncle.
Jack was my last close relative who endured the Holocaust. He was only 3 years old when his family fled Vienna, just after Kristallnacht. His memories were sparse, but they were filled with fear, confusion, loss and frustration.
He, my mother, their sister and parents, fled by train and boat to England. The children were separated from their parents and each other for two years. Jack was taken in by nuns in a convent. They and others who sheltered Jewish children and adults were at great risk of reprisals by the Nazis and their supporters.
By my mother’s account, when the family was reuniting, preparing for a voyage to America, the nuns did not want to relinquish Jack. My mother said simply it was because he was so cute. But I have since learned that there were sometimes more traumatic reasons that Jewish children who were sheltered were not returned to their parents, including demands for money and arguments that young children who were sheltered didn’t know their families.
Jack had stories of daring-do that I had not heard before. Apparently, when the family was scheduled to board a ship bound for America, the Germans were bombing London, which drove the family and others into bomb shelters. Fearing they would lose their opportunity to escape the war and begin a new life, Jack’s mother (my grandmother) — a resourceful and determined woman — bribed a cab driver to take them to the port, despite a mandatory blackout.
They arrived at Ellis Island in October 1940. Relatives picked them up to drive them to upstate New York, where they would live in a small apartment above a store. As they drove, they passed by the most horrible people Jack had ever seen. They looked like witches, wolves, monsters. It was Halloween, a holiday terrified Jack knew nothing about.
Like my mother’s, Jack’s life was filled with gratitude — for his long marriage, for his beautiful children, for life’s bounty and simple joys. He was grateful to America for taking in his family, although kids at his new school bullied him and accused him of being a Nazi because he spoke German. He did not yet have the English words to explain that the Nazis wanted to kill his family.
This gratitude doesn’t obscure the loss and horror of the Holocaust. Jack, my mother and many relatives survived when many of their family members and millions of others were systematically murdered by the Nazis. Yes, they were lucky to survive, but they were uprooted, they lost their homes, their possessions, their childhoods and their relatives simply because they were Jewish.
The number of Holocaust survivors, like my uncle Jack, diminishes each day. At a time when many downplay, and even deny, the impact of the Holocaust, we must share their stories — of loss and of hope. May their memories be a blessing.
