Growing up the child of Holocaust survivors prepared me for this pandemic

[Behind the Aegis]

I was born in Dzalalabad, Kyrgyzstan, to Polish Jews who had fled Warsaw following the Nazi onslaught in 1939. When they met up with the Russian forces and refused Russian citizenship, my parents, like thousands of others, were shipped off to Komi SSR, a Siberian work camp where they chopped down trees, froze and starved along with the local population.

I know how blessed my life has been: I’m a writer, teacher, daughter, mother, wife, sister, mother-in-law and now a joyful bubbe.

But today I realize how deeply I’ve absorbed the trauma of my Holocaust survivor parents. As echoes of past hatred are reverberating from many sides, somehow blaming Jews for the coronavirus’ creation, I find myself also fighting those debilitating inherited memories and fears.

My parents and two brothers survived Siberia, and, in 1942, as Polish citizens, they were resettled in Kyrgyzstan, where my sister was later born. Hunger had no borders and they followed the Kyrgyz example, gathering weeds to cook a kind of “stone soup” to fill their stomachs.

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[Lars39]

1. Powerful op-ed

I’m a child of Great Depression parents.
Kinda the same attitude towards food.
I have been making huge pots of soup, huge casseroles, with no waste, because I don’t know what tomorrow will bring.

[agingdem]

2. my parents were Holocaust survivors

if one can be prepared, then yes I was prepared for something like this...I was born into chaos and fear..the horror of what happened and could happen again was real..do I take this virus in stride?..yes and no...my palpable loathing for what Trump and the GOP have done to us, the hate they have unleashed, the plague they trivialized that's now killing us that's what I can't accept...

[BigDemVoter]

3. My maternal grandmother was a survivor.

She NEVER talked about it even one single time that I heard.

[agingdem]

5. When I was a child

I thought all parents had numbers tattooed on their arms...I thought all mothers woke up screaming in the middle of the night...I thought trains were to be avoided...I thought Yom Kippur wasn't the day of reflection and atonement but the day memorial candles lit up the kitchen counter...I thought all Jewish kids were named after grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins who died in the concentrations camps...there wasn't a day I wasn't aware of the hell my parents endured...they talked about it bc they needed me to remember who they were and where they came from...

[BigDemVoter]

6. that is heart breaking

I have read a LOT about this over the years, and I understand that even the CHILDREN of survivors are affected in so many different ways. . .

It was only after my grandmother died that we found out a few things, but the information was very skimpy and only listed relatives as "missing" without determining their exact fate. Too sad.

[Neema]

4. My parents were born in the twenties, just before the

stock market crash. My father was the child of new immigrants and my mother was orphaned as a toddler and raised by extended family. I am one of a huge number of siblings. So I very deeply understand this. My mother was a terrible cook, but she never wasted food (much to our chagrin sometimes). My father planted a huge garden full of fruits and vegetables (the one thing that saved us from my mother's terrible cooking).

When I grew up I taught myself to cook and have gotten pretty good at it. I actually enjoy and prefer to make my own yogurt, jam, stocks, sauces, pickles, etc. I never buy a whole chicken without making several meals from it and then stock from the bones. My pantry is always stocked with rice and beans and canned tomatoes and sauces. Both my SO and I can make meals out of just about anything, joking that we could go on Chopped and do pretty well.

My SO is the child of relatively recent immigrants, who survived war and displacement. So they always have enough to feed an army at every gathering, and have enough in their pantry to survive for years.

Weeks ago, when people were starting to talk about it but not yet panic buying, without even consulting one another, we stocked up on any pantry items that were low, and on fresh food that could last, be turned into meals, or frozen. We stocked up on meds and herbal teas and things that make us feel better when battling a virus, thinking it might not be easy to get into a doctor if we got sick. We didn't panic buy toilet paper by the truckload, but made sure we had enough for a few weeks, along with disinfectants. We both just seemed to know exactly what to make sure we had.

It felt almost like muscle memory, passed down from our parents and grandparents.

[Stuart G]

7. K and R