After the war, my grandparents belonged to an effort to locate survivors of the holocaust in Russia and bring them to America. Every year, a new Great Aunt Sophia or Second Cousin Hershel (25 times removed) would be introduced. They were the old country family (roughly, doubtfully family). The few who had witnessed genocidal horrors and somehow survived. They wore that survival on their sleeves. Tattoos imprinted on their forearms with purple ink stains that showed through their starched white shirts.
Being a child who questioned, who needed to know, and considered “way too nosy for her own good,” I kept asking, pointing, staring at numbers. Why, I just had to know. “Why do you have numbers?” I asked, reaching up to touch the ink blots and see if they rubbed off.
If they answered, it was in their own strange language. Not understanding their words, but going so far as to try to memorize the Yiddish phrases spoken by Great not-Uncle Isaac and then to run to ask real Uncle Louie what the words meant. I clung to the shards of facts even though over and over I was told, “you don’t want to know such bad things.”
But I did want to know — then I tried to unknow. We all tried. Whole communities tried. Entire countries tried. Even in Israel, the sanctuary, the promised land for the despised, refugees were told to learn Hebrew and live in the future, forget the past. Leave behind victimhood, and, if necessary, become victimizers, be the soldiers and fighters who wrest a home land for yourselves. Build muscles. Build missiles. An atom bomb. Erect Yad Vashem, a great memorial to remembrance and to honor the dead, but be true to the living. Hunt down, capture and indict Nazi war criminals and seek retribution by way of justice. So okay, don’t entirely forget but don’t talk about it.
And what about now — us?
Where will we be when the snow melts, when the trees bud, when the forsythia brightens, when we have our vaccines, when the impeachment procedures are months in the past? Will we move on? Will we talk about it?
Will we once again have dinner with our children in the warmth of our dining rooms? Will we go to the beach? Will we feel safe again in a crowd, among others we don’t know?
Will we forget the images of those Jan. 6 violent mobs in the Capitol screaming threats, waving Confederate flags, assaulting the police and guards with fists and racist bile? Will we forget that those mobs came within inches of senators and their staff? Or that currently elected officials in our country have espoused conspiracy theories that date back to the Middle Ages, claiming that Hillary Clinton and Huma Abedin, an Aide are said to drink the blood of children, preserving an ancient anti-Semitic trope.
Will we forget this year and the five years of Trumpian trauma? U.S. House Rep. Ocasio-Cortez, a survivor of childhood sexual assault and of the Capitol assault, talked passionately about how trauma compounds trauma. Will we be able to heal and overcome the months of quarantine, of shuttered schools, of communicating via Zoom and of the years of inflamed rhetoric that makes enemies of neighbors ?
Where will we be when the snow melts? What will we say, you and me?
Ruth Charney is a resident of Greenfield.