Remember Who You Are

The State, Columbia SC – Special supplement from the Columbia Holocaust Education Commission

By Leah Greenberg Davis

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Hidden among all of the school and Bar/Bat Mitzvah family photos at my grandparents’ house are pictures of them shortly after they were married in 1946. In one of the first pictures that they ever took together, Bluma is shyly smiling and dressed in a fresh, white dress. My grandfather Felix looks quite dapper in a gray tweed coat and striped tie. We call him Tate (pronounced Tah-tee), which means father in Yiddish. Tate looks like a movie star. Think Michael Corleone in Godfather I. His thick, dark hair is combed back and, with a ballpoint pen in his pocket, he exudes young ambition.

Their blissful appearance belies the tragedy that they have just experienced. One would never guess that only a few years earlier they were starving to death. Both of my grandparents survived the Holocaust. Despite all of this tragedy, somehow, they look happy in this picture.

More than 200,000 Jews were in displaced persons camps after they were liberated in the spring of 1945.[1]  Most had lost their families and were confronted with the need to start a completely new life. In 1945, Bluma was brought to a displaced persons camp in Landsberg, Germany with her older sister Cela. Extremely frail and weak, Bluma and Cela were nursed back to health by nuns in a hospital near Landsberg. The nuns sewed Bluma a dress, the first item of clothing that she had worn other than a prison uniform since being in the camps.

In 1946, thousands of survivors were married in the DP camps. It was at Landsberg where Bluma and Tate met. A camera brought them together. A friend from Bluma’s hometown said to Bluma: “I know a guy that has a camera and I want him to take a picture of us.” The guy with a camera turned out to be Tate. Tate brought the picture to Bluma. Bluma asked Tate what she owed him for the picture and Tate said a kiss. Rumor has it that he tried to kiss Bluma and she slapped him. Shortly after that, they were married in a double wedding.

My grandparents have always emphasized the importance of sharing their story. When I was in seventh grade, Bluma and Tate came to my class. I am now 31 years old and former classmates of mine continue to tell me how meaningful it was. Hearing my grandparents tell their story personalized the Holocaust for them in a way that nothing else can.

My grandfather always used to say to me: “Remember who you are.” I was unable to appreciate the meaning of his words until very recently. This past summer, my husband Richard and I took a trip to Paris, France. On our anniversary, we arranged to take a guided bike tour. We were surprised to discover that our guide was Jewish. I shared with her that my grandparents are Holocaust survivors.

“My parents were in hiding during the war in Amsterdam,” she told us. “After the war, they completely assimilated into the Christian community. Growing up, we knew that we were Jewish, but that was it. We didn’t live as Jews. I moved to Paris in my twenties and married a Jewish man whose family had also assimilated. I wanted to raise my kids Jewish, but the rest of my siblings married non-Jewish people and don’t really care about being Jewish.”

We were not at all anticipating what she would tell us next.

“I’ve made the decision to leave Paris,” she said. “I’m moving to Israel with my husband later this summer. The anti-Semitism here and throughout Europe has gotten so bad. There have been other attacks like the one in Belgium. Many Jewish people are leaving.”

I knew that things in Europe had gotten bad. In Belgium, four people were killed in a shooting at the Jewish Museum in Brussels. We did not realize, however, that Jews were starting to leave Paris. I never would have expected in my lifetime to see anything close to what my grandparents have experienced. I thought about my grandfather’s words – Remember who you are – and I suddenly realized how lucky I was to be here with Richard – someone who completely gets it. He knows that this threat is not an abstract one, but a personal threat, to his family and to mine.

Remember who you are means never forget – never forget that history can repeat itself. Never forget that we have to tell the story of my grandparents to our friends, to our children and to the world, or we bear the risk of anti-Semitism rearing its ugly head once again.

[1]  The Holocaust Resource Center: Displaced Persons Camps. Yad Vashem. Web. 29 December 2014.