International Holocaust Remembrance Day
International Holocaust Remembrance Day will be observed on January 27 to honor the six million European Jews who were exterminated by the Nazis and their accomplices. These official remembrance days are of tremendous importance, but I personally never need a reminder. As the daughter of two Holocaust survivors, a day doesn’t go by when I don’t think about that horrific time in history. The Holocaust lives inside of me, and my whole being is perpetually trying to come to terms with it.
Myra took this photo of her parents, Edith and Mendek Rubin, in 1982 in the parking lot of JFK airport upon her return from a semester abroad in India.
My mother, Edith, was stuffed into an airless cattle car at the age of fifteen and taken to Auschwitz, where she lost her parents, her dignity, her self-confidence, her joy, and any secure sense of place in the world.
My father, Mendek, persevered through more than one thousand days of starvation and brutality while imprisoned in seven different Nazi slave labor concentration camps over the course of three interminable years. He lost everything, except one of his five siblings—my aunt Bronia, who also survived.
Before writing Quest for Eternal Sunshine, I knew virtually nothing about my father’s life before the war. It was as if the Holocaust had been my entire origin story. Now I know that my roots pass through that enormous black cloud of horror into the small town of Jaworzno, Poland, where my ancestors had built a rich life. I now know enough about my murdered grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins to finally able to mourn for them.
My daughter, Marea, is beautifully ripe now, pregnant with my first biological grandchild. I am filled with joyful anticipation, yet the pain of the Holocaust is always present. Marea’s pregnancy has had me thinking about my parents as teenagers in concentration camps—how some spark of life drove their starved bodies forward, making them put one foot in front of the other despite excruciating pain, hopelessness and abuse. Their primal urge to live gave me life, and now their great-grandchild will soon be born.
My father’s commitment to heal from his vast suffering eventually freed his inner light to shine so brightly that he always brought joy to everyone within his orbit. “I searched for love as someone else might search for buried treasure, with everything I had in me, every day of my life,” he wrote. Witnessing the delight he took in life will always be a priceless gift. It is helping me welcome my new grandbaby into this challenging world with a tender heart that is not imprisoned by darkness and fear.
Honoring Holocaust Remembrance Day as we live with daily evidence of how far hatred, prejudice, and scapegoating can go feels especially urgent. I’d like to mark the occasion by sharing a chapter from Quest for Eternal Sunshine called “The Walk,” which describes events that took place in 1942, when my father was seventeen. It begins in a coal mine, where he was forced to work by the German soldiers who occupied his hometown of Jaworzno, Poland. The scene my father describes haunted him for his entire life.
Quest for Eternal Sunshine—A Holocaust Survivor’s Journey from Darkness to Light
Chapter 6: The Walk
One day, while I was working at the coal mine, a commotion nearby caught my attention. A few hundred yards from where I was standing, I saw some workers huddled together, agitated. Their eyes were directed towards the highway just outside the confines of the mine.
I stopped loading coal into a railroad car and stood sideways between the cars to see what was going on. A group of two hundred Jewish men and women of all ages were walking on the open highway leading to the next town. Gazing at the scene in front of me, I was overwhelmed with dread.
The people were walking slowly, in total silence, escorted by German soldiers carrying machine guns. Among the many walkers were the very old and the very young. Infants were being carried in their mothers’ arms. Little boys and girls were staying close to their parents. One man was limping and could only walk with a cane.
I watched from the rear since they had already passed by. If it had been five or ten minutes earlier, I would have seen their faces. I had been working right next to the fence but hadn’t known to look. Now, I was so petrified I couldn’t move.
My worst fears were coming to pass. For months, we’d been hearing disturbing news about the Nazis targeting one city after another for evacuation of all the Jewish inhabitants. We lived in dread, not knowing when our turn would come.
Jews were being rounded up and deported by trainloads. None of us knew to what destination, but there were all kinds of rumors. The most prevalent one was that the Jews were being shipped toward the eastern borders of Poland or Russia. The Germans managed to keep the real destination a secret. Perhaps no one really wanted to find out. In my heart, though, I knew their destination was death. Perhaps everyone knew, but we never talked about it.
I later learned that these Jews had been on their way to Auschwitz. It was only fifteen miles away, but at the time, we had no idea it existed, or that the systematic extermination of all the Jewish people in Poland had begun.
Our shift ended at two o’clock in the afternoon that day, but we were too terrified to go home. Only in the evening, after word came that the coast was clear, did we dare leave our place of work. When I finally got back to Jaworzno, I was comforted to learn that none of my immediate family had been among the marchers.
Watching that walk has haunted me my entire life. It evoked feelings of rage, helplessness, and humiliation that I desperately wanted to forget. Instead of focusing my rage outward towards the perpetrators, I turned it inward.
In the years to come, my mind went over this episode again and again, pondering the apparent calm of these people in their encounter with destiny. The pace of the march was relaxed, as though it were an everyday event. They looked like people on their way to a picnic. Even the German guards seemed relaxed, their machine guns hung loosely on their shoulders. They knew nobody was going to run away.
It was the stillness of the marchers that felt so terrifying and unbelievable. Even the children were silent. None of them cried. It was as if they, too, sensed the gravity and inevitability of the situation, and quietly submitted to their fate.
Poland often had delightful weather that time of year, and it had been especially beautiful on that particular day. The land seemed overjoyed with the coming of spring. The sun had been warming up the ground for a few weeks, melting the snow and causing the earth to come alive and reawaken from slumber after the long, cold winter. The trees and bushes were in full bloom, perfuming the air. The deep blue sky extended as far as my eyes could see, embracing the world around me. Birds were singing in celebration of the season, announcing the eternal cycle of renewal. I did not want to die.
As I stood there frozen, watching these people moving into the shadows toward disaster, I knew that their hours and days were numbered. They would never see another springtime in its glory. I feared my turn was next. I felt my selfishness deeply. I wanted to survive at all costs.
A few weeks later, our town’s Jewish council was told that the Jews had to deliver forty people to the labor camps. Every family had to pick one person to go. No one was expected to return alive. My parents had to make this choice. Because I wanted to save them from having to choose, I volunteered.
In May of 1942, at seventeen, I found myself on my way to a slave labor concentration camp in Germany. I was part of a group of thirty-nine teenagers and young men from my hometown that had been forcibly separated from our families and led to the railroad station. Escorted by armed guards, we were taken to a depot in another town from which Jewish inmates were distributed to labor camps in Germany.
On my way to the station, I was surprised to see my parents standing on one of the side streets. I passed them in silence. A few moments later, I turned around and our eyes met again. I felt their love and concern for me. When I was already quite some distance away, they were still standing there. It was the last time I ever saw them.
The truth is, I was glad to be leaving. I sensed in my bones that going to a slave labor camp might be my only chance of survival. We still had not heard of Auschwitz, but I had a premonition that my parents, and most of the people in my hometown, would be killed off before this war was over. When I looked at my parents’ faces, I felt guilty for wanting to live. My selfishness was a constant weight upon me during those three long years.
It turned out that I was right—leaving is what made it possible for me to survive. But of the thirty-nine men and teenagers that left Jaworzno that day, I was the only one still alive after the war. All the others died from starvation and hard labor.
Several months after I was taken, my parents must have walked that very same road, heading to their deaths in Auschwitz. Except for a handful of survivors, the Jewish population in my hometown was completely decimated.
