Hope
This post was written as part of a special holiday Blog Carnival hosted on Blog Nosh Magazine and was sponsored by the Tide Loads of Hope program (Hi FTC! *wave*). It is the only sponsored campaign I have ever said yes to in all my years of blogging. I support the cause, I respect the people who organized it, and the only creative requirement was that I write about what hope means to me. Frankly, I was glad for the opportunity to answer the question for myself on the heels of a rough, rotten week.
***
They march into his home, the law on their sides, and rip him and his father from their family like scabs. It is November 9, 1938, Kristallnacht. The “Night of the Broken Glass,” the night of the breaking family tree branches, all crushed beneath the German soldiers’ boots. Obliterated.
At night he lies on an eight-foot plywood “bed” with seven other men and he thinks, This is the end. The crisp, frigid air is as merciless as his captors and so he gives his own underwear to his father to give him just one more layer of warmth. He watches men murdered in a manner too wretched, too unbelievable, to be written casually by a stranger here. He notes that the officers are hardest on the most devout of his people, the ones praying on broken knees each night for a saving that never comes.
Seventy years later he will stand, shaking, a 92-year-old Jewish great-grandfather, an honored guest in our tiny church, and in a thick accent he will tell the congregation that he left his faith behind in that concentration camp’s latrine. That he associates the idea of faith with certain death.
Ironically, his very presence will fill me with hope.
***
I grew up in the famed Driftless Area, a particularly beautiful patch of Wisconsin passed over by the glaciers and snatched up by blond haired, blue-eyed Scandinavians. My small town was 99% white, 105% Christian. I had dark hair and eyes, olive skin, and a nose not nearly as button-cute as those of my friends on the dairy farms. I knew my last name ended in –berg, but I had no context for what that meant and I didn’t think a thing of it. Every year we put up our Christmas tree. We wrapped gifts, hung stockings, told stories about the baby in the manger. I don’t remember when I figured out my dad was Jewish; he never went to temple. He eschewed all religion, hadn’t attended services since his Bar Mitzvah, fled New York at the age of 17, met my mother (a Wisconsin farmer’s daughter) at 19, and never looked back.
I was in sixth grade social studies class the first time I ever heard the word “Holocaust.” We watched a movie called Escape from Sobibor and it was so powerful that when the screen flashed to a line of people headed to the gas chamber, not a single sixth-grader giggled at the sight of all those naked bodies. It was the first time I ever thought, That could have been me. That’s what Jewish means. I called my grandparents that night to talk about what I’d learned in school. They told me I was never to bring it up again.
For a long time I struggled with this mystery of my heritage, with an identity I couldn’t claim. In a way I’ve remained ignorant, and in other ways I probably overcompensated. In college I studied History, specifically Nazi concentration camps. Twice in high school I visited Auschwitz. I saw it all for myself, the claw marks on the cement walls, the piles and piles of eyeglasses and human hair. Afterward I tried again to talk about it with my grandpa, a U.S. World War II veteran. Normally a kind, gentle, laughing man, he was uncharacteristically furious with me. He said, “Why would you ever set foot in that place willingly, Maggie Snow?”
He has since, all these years later, softened about the subject. He speaks more freely now about his friends from the tennis court with the Auschwitz tattoos on their arms, about the refugees that slept in his childhood bed, about the china he and grandma passed on to me 12 years ago, a wedding gift that survived Hitler though its original owners didn’t.
Sometimes I think about the kind of faith my distant relatives must have had to send their precious belongings on ahead like that, certain they’d arrive later to claim them. Or, maybe they knew they were doomed but they just didn’t want the Nazis to get even one more beautiful thing, who’s to know? All I know is that we’re all here—my grandpa, my father, me, my children–because of that hope.
***
I refuse to look away from hard things, and so many come into view around the holidays. For me, the holidays are still magical, filled to bursting with love and riches both figurative and literal. For others, though, the holidays are wicked reminders. I feel like it’s our responsibility to recognize that, to somehow honor both.
I know all this can seem a little gloomy. I know my loved ones worry about me now and again, that my husband knows not to read me the sad headlines because I can’t let them go. I know some of you have told me you can’t look at the stories posted on Violence UnSilenced, and I empathize with you but I’m gonna keep looking—not because it makes me some kind of misguided martyr, but because it actually gives me hope. I said in my last post that faith is hard work, that I’d taken some blows lately that made me doubt. But today I woke up hopeful, because the threat to faith and the dawning of hope are deliciously intertwined for me.
I have seen battered women find and believe in themselves again. I have helped Hurricane Katrina victims rebuild their homes from the ground up. I have witnessed my family members bury children and husbands, and then watched in awe as they gathered around the Thanksgiving turkey, trimmed the Christmas tree, made tentative plans for the New Year. I have seen people fall down and get right back up again, and then again, and then again. The way I see it, it’s not for me to figure out why people keep finding reasons to believe. It’s for me to follow suit.
***
I stopped obsessing a while back over whether or not I should be marking Christmas or Hanukah. I started celebrating instead, with the intensity of a true revival, the Religion of People. I lie here prostrate to the brave survivors all around me and I do my best to learn from what they teach, whether they know they’re teaching or not.
That 92-year-old stranger may believe he’s lost his faith, but the fact that he was standing there after everything was, to me, a pretty powerful argument otherwise. And maybe it would have seemed a better story, a sure six-figure deal with the Hallmark Channel, if he had preached that day of his own unwavering belief. But this isn’t TV. In real life bad things happen every day and they can crush your faith, but if you are still standing at the end of the day then you are a person of hope.
Look at him, still standing. Look at you. Look at me, still standing, still pushing forward, still loving the guts out of my family over these holiday meals, still reaching out to you all with these words. Hope lives here, whether I invite it in or not. Hope is my kid taking my face between her hot warm hands and smashing my cheeks up so before I know it I’m grinning. Faith is hard work, but hope is so much easier. If faith is what we work so hard to give, hope is that reward we all get in return.
And I’ll take it.
####
Loads of Hope for the Holidays
Please join us at Blog Nosh Magazine as we share stories of hope this holiday season in support of the Tide Loads of Hope program, a mobile laundromat offering laundry services to families affected by disasters.
Share your own stories of hope, along with Blog Nosh Magazine, Velveteen Mind, and a gathering of inspiring bloggers, and enter your own post link in the blog carnival below. Visit Blog Nosh Magazine to explore featured bloggers as well as three featured posts selected from carnival participants listed in the linky (that could be you!).
Lend your voices now, then participate live during a two day event in New Orleans, Sunday and Monday, December 13 and 14, as we tweet stories of resilience from laundry recipients and volunteers on the ground. Follow along on twitter via #loadsofhope and be sure to follow @TideLoadsofHope.
Learn more about how you can extend hope to families affected by disasters by visiting http://tideloadsofhope.com
Blog carnival hosted by Blog Nosh Magazine, sponsored by Tide Loads of Hope.
How do the holidays fill you with loads of hope?
headbang8 says:
Maggie,
A beautiful piece. It reminds us that hope is the goal, and faith may serve to get us there.
If one can get to hope without conventional faith in the divine–simply believing in the power and energy of the human spirit–then the faithless are as noble as the believers.
So much religion seeks to deny hope–to the faithless, that is. How many religions seek to limit the numbers to whom hope can be afforded, by building walls around the faithful, narrowing the boundaries of belief, and making salvation into a buyable secret?
How can this stand next to a commitment to charity? A “Religion of People” should be the goal of every creed.
December 10th, 2009 at 8:55 am
Mr Lady says:
Oh, Maggie, that’s a beautifully tragic story. Thank you for posting it, and I have to agree…if I were EVER to do a sponsored anything, it would be the load of hope thing.
maggie, dammit Reply:
December 18th, 2009 at 8:04 am
Thanks babe. I was a little worried about how a sponsored post would be received, not gonna lie. I turn down PR pitches every day but you never know if people realize that or not. This was a campaign done really, really right. I’m proud to have been asked. It means a lot to me that you said this.
December 10th, 2009 at 9:00 am
Secret Agent Mama/Mishelle says:
Thank you for writing this. It’s such a great reminder that faith has an insurmountable strength, even when it’s buried deep down.
xoxox
December 10th, 2009 at 9:01 am
pamela says:
Your post made me cry a lot. Ever since the I read “It is November 9, 1938″ The Holocaust is really a touchy subject and even though Im not exactly Jewish it still makes me cry to think of all the people that were HOPEFUL that they were going to get out of their alive and then only some did..
Thank you for sharing this. Theres always hope
December 10th, 2009 at 9:04 am
Erin says:
This is so beautiful that I don’t really know what to say. Faith is faith, wherever and however you find it, and it’s so often there when we think it’s gone.
Your grandpa’s feelings on going to Auschwitz are so thought provoking. I went to Dachau in high school and found it to be so powerful, yet I can see his point-of-view.
[I was so taken by this post and the need to comment, if just to tell you how I loved it, that I forgot to fill in the Name and email fields!]
December 10th, 2009 at 9:06 am
V-Grrrl @ Compost Studios says:
I think when Emily Dickinson wrote that Hope is a thing with feathers, she got it right.
Hope is light and fragile. It can fly or be crushed. It can fall and rise again.
The older I get, the more the line between faith and hope blurs. A mystery that I have fewer and fewer answers and yet I feel more grounded now than ever.
December 10th, 2009 at 9:32 am
Jeanette says:
Maggie, you are so beautiful. That left me with tears, and full of hope.
thank you.
December 10th, 2009 at 9:36 am
ExtraordinaryMommy says:
Maggie – I too, have that EXACT same memory from Escape from Sobibor. I am not Jewish, but have always been incredibly moved by stories just like the one from that gentleman.
This was so beautifully written….I am both buoyed by your love and hope and so touched by your heart and honesty.
December 10th, 2009 at 9:40 am
Tabatha says:
My maternal grandfather is a Holocaust survivor, and the first I learned of it was in school as well. I have the luck(?) of living in Ohio around an Air Force Base, so we don’t all look too much the same around here anyway — and the fact that I’m fourth-generation Italian on my dad’s side made my olive skin and sometimes-when-its-humid-kinky-wavy hair make more sense without me even really knowing.
My parents divorced when I was in high school. That holiday season, I bought a menorah and put it on my mom’s mantle, not far from the Christmas tree or nativity scene I’d known since I was a child. She looked at me, surprised, and asked me when the first night of Hanukkah was. I told her, and each night we lit those candles together, that first year.
When I moved out with my now-husband and took my menorah and hand-made dreidl and various Jewry, I bought her a replacement. And she still puts it out, as far as I know.
I’ve only been to temple once, oddly to receive an award for a Holocaust writing competition. I’ve been to church a lot more than that, but I’m not religious either way really. My menorah is on my mantle, next to my Christmas tree, and there are eight presents wrapped underneath it in shades of blue paper for my nine-month-old son to open starting tomorrow. My equally-non-religious husband asks if we’re going to have a bar mitzvah for him someday, and I tell him we’ll figure it out when we get there.
For me, it’s not about the religion, but about the heritage. This is a part of who I am, and who my son will be. Six million didn’t die so I could ignore my crazy hair and be grateful for a more demure nose. They died so I could exist, so my son could exist. And that’s why I do Christmukkah — each part just as important as the other. Because some day, all we’ll have left is the history books and it will be our responsibility as the children and grand- and great-grandchildren of the survivors to carry it on, and to always remember. That’s the faith I hold on to — that the generations beyond us will not forget because we won’t let them.
Happy Hanukkah, Maggie, and Merry Christmas too.
maggie, dammit Reply:
December 18th, 2009 at 8:06 am
You’re so right–it’s not about the religion, but rather the heritage. This comment really made me think. I’m going to start incorporating Hanukkah into my kids’ lives more. I don’t know why I didn’t see it this way before. Thank you, seriously, very much.
December 10th, 2009 at 10:04 am
Julie Pippert says:
Look at us still standing. What an extraordinary perspective that really puts it all into, well, perspective. There was this church in Beverly, MA where we lived that I drove past all the time. It was a tiny, white clapboard sort of thing and the sign never changed (unlike most churches that rotated messages on their marquis). Their message always was, “Heart to God, Hand to Man.” I loved that. No idea what religion it was, but loved that. Thank you for a wonderful post.
December 10th, 2009 at 10:10 am
Nicole says:
WOW. Speechless. The whole post, but this line in particular, socked me in the gut: “… wedding gift that survived Hitler though its original owners didn’t.”
It’s amazing to me how people don’t want to talk or think about the past, not realizing how much of themselves they’re giving up and hiding away, because of something too painful to confront.
Sounds a lot like VU …
December 10th, 2009 at 10:32 am
Camille says:
This is my favorite thing you have written, and that is really saying something. Thank you.
December 10th, 2009 at 11:09 am
melissa says:
i used to wonder why i had to be born jewish. being a jew comes with some burden. being a jew means hatred directed at us. and i didn’t want this. but then there are stories such as this that make me proud. and…give tremendous hope.
this was beautiful. thank you.
December 10th, 2009 at 11:16 am
pamela ~ the dayton time says:
i want you to know i was here and read this and that the tentacles of your words wrap around my heart. oh, the squeeze of them!
December 10th, 2009 at 11:38 am
Sugar Jones says:
I’m amazed always at the resilience of humans. That pulling in our heart that tells us to hang on when all we want to do is let go. I’m amazed by the kindness of strangers in the face of the cruelty of man. I’m just amazed that we all stand here as proof that hope will bring us the comfort we need when we need it.
December 10th, 2009 at 12:14 pm
Issa says:
I am shivering right now. I could have written so much of this. Sigh.
Beautiful post, just amazing.
December 10th, 2009 at 12:25 pm
Mojo,NC,USA says:
You are one of the very, very few people who can leave me nearly speechless. Because I read this and it’s not that I don’t have anything to say, it’s just that I don’t want to spoil it by trying to add anything. You said it all, sis.
Love you girl. I just do.
December 10th, 2009 at 12:30 pm
HaB says:
“If faith is what we work so hard to give, hope is that reward we all get in return. And I’ll take it.”
Me too Maggie…Me too! …..
I have never looked at it that way before. Just beautiful and inspiring – inspiring enough to make me comment on a blog that I read often but have never commented on before.
maggie, dammit Reply:
December 18th, 2009 at 8:08 am
Thank you for delurking! I’m glad you’ll take that hope, too.
December 10th, 2009 at 12:41 pm
Ann says:
You articulated a piece of me here.
My strong need to bear witness, to companion the bereaved–to hold the hope.
Wow Maggie. Wow.
December 10th, 2009 at 12:50 pm
Melissa says:
I don’t have anything to add at the moment Maggie, but I wanted to thank you for this post. ♥
December 10th, 2009 at 4:02 pm
Corinne says:
This is what its all about. Powerful stuff. Thank you.
December 10th, 2009 at 4:38 pm
sweetsalty kate says:
Beautiful and stunning and profound and so artful and more.
xo
December 10th, 2009 at 7:44 pm
Liz says:
“He watches men murdered in a manner too wretched, too unbelievable, to be written casually by a stranger here. ”
Wow. I’m a historian, or almost. I’m a PhD Candidate, whatever that makes me. And right there, in that sentence, you’ve captured something that I occasionally grapple with. Who am I to do this, to read people’s letters, to tell and interpret their stories? People I don’t know. People long dead, or not so long. Sometimes still living. What a responsibility, not to be taken lightly. And I don’t even do the really heavy, soul draining stuff. I can’t imagine being a historian of slavery, of the American Indian circa 1500, of the Holocaust. I occasionally come across stories in my own research that turn my stomach, that make me wonder how to do it well, and how to do those living breathing human beings justice, in good faith.
But I think that writing history is an act of hope, too. Because no matter how detached or scholarly we’re supposed to be, history is always written in service of the present, in the hope that we can avoid catastrophe or listen to the voices of wisdom hard won by those who have already gone.
I guess what I’m saying is, I hear you. I think your take on hope rings so very true.
maggie, dammit Reply:
December 18th, 2009 at 8:10 am
Thank you, this means a lot to me. I only got my BA in History, but I often feel this same sense of responsibility to the sources with my journalism career–which, obviously, is a no-no in journalism itself. I think it’s the History education that made me this way, that gave me this reverence and need to get it just right for them (and in turn, for us.) To me that’s so much more important than headlines.
December 10th, 2009 at 8:32 pm
Jett says:
Look at you. Look at me.
Oh man did I need this perspective today.
(I wish *all* ‘sponsored’ entries were of this caliber)
maggie, dammit Reply:
December 18th, 2009 at 8:11 am
Thank you, babe. Like I said to Mr. Lady up above, I was very nervous about the sponsored aspect of this post. It means a lot to me that you said this.
December 11th, 2009 at 10:17 am
daysgoby says:
This was amazing. AMAZING.
I think I need to call my grandparents. I know my great-grandparents fled Germany to escape Hitler, but – now, I need to know more.
Thank you for this.
December 12th, 2009 at 6:27 pm
amber says:
Maggie, I think I may bookmark this post as a reminder…of all there is to celebrate in life.
I’ve been absent from violence unsilenced too long (too wrapped up in my own pain. It’s time to pay those ladies a visit).
You have, as always, inspired me.
December 12th, 2009 at 7:03 pm
Robin ~ PENSIEVE says:
Maggie…
Stunning work, penned with heart and soul. Hope transcends circumstance, a gravity that draws us unto itself. Your words here remind me of the resiliency of the human spirit, sometimes at great cost.
You make me want to be a better writer and challenge me in ways you’ll never know. Thank you
.
December 13th, 2009 at 1:03 pm
amy @ bitchin' wives club says:
I loved your description of the town you grew up in as 99% white and 105% Christian…. I grew up in a similar place, but in MO, not WI.
Faith is a strange and beautiful thing for those who have it and even more magical to those who strive for it, but can’t quite give themselves over to it. I envy the thought that you have put into it, but glory in the sharing of it.
Miss you.
December 13th, 2009 at 1:59 pm
Darryle says:
14 years past my battle with breast cancer that I was not expected to win, I’ve often tried to define what it means to hope, and to be a survivor—whether that word is applied to cancer or concentration camps or anything else. Your amazing words just articulated that more powerfully than I could ever write, or imagine I’d read—
For the few minutes I spent reading this post you took my breath away—but you gave me back so much more. Thank u.
December 13th, 2009 at 5:11 pm
heather says:
Faith and hope, sigh, I can’t say anything helpful. I will tell you that offering the belief in hope and faith to those that can not grasp these things makes their isolation less bearable.
December 13th, 2009 at 10:39 pm
Rachael says:
What a beautiful post. Thank you for this story.
December 13th, 2009 at 11:28 pm
mamie says:
today we took our boys to a place called the Skirball Cultural Center in L.A. We were there to visit their Noah’s Ark installation but the whole place has been designed to promote interaction with Jewish culture. A lovely old old man directed us as we entered, his heavy accent pronounced as he told us where to go and what to see. He teased our little boys, laughing a little. I could not help but wonder his history as we stood with him on this second day of celebration.
The place itself radiates goodness…the energy there was incredible. I cannot wait to go back, for them and for us.
December 13th, 2009 at 11:57 pm
MK says:
Gorgeous, as always. I struggle to find ways to share certain things w/ my children. I know they’re too young just yet – to learn about The Holocaust or Slavery – but I also know that teaching them empathy and sympathy and to be kind is a good start.
A few years ago I watched a documentary on The Paper Clip Project [8th graders learning about the Holocaust] and knew it was something to put in the arsenal of ‘things to show my kids’… someday…
I wish I had the words to write of hope right now. I have hope. I do. But it doesn’t always come to ‘print’ as freely as I’d like.
December 14th, 2009 at 8:34 am
Erika says:
I can’t keep track of where I comment on which posts anymore. I think I tweeted this one. Or maybe it was on Facebook. Anyway, this is incredible, you are an extraordinary soul, and I am inspired by all the good work you do here and on VU.
December 14th, 2009 at 8:04 pm
Velvet Verbosity says:
You ever read a blog for a while, but never comment? Yeah, that’s me, with this post, and the one before. I’ve read both a few times, but didn’t comment. I guess they brought up a lot of things, and I needed to process.
I’m curious how you got involved in the Violence Unsilenced cause? Whatever the reason is, I just want to say thank you for speaking up. It takes courage. Not everyone wants to hear, or see, or think about these things.
I share your inability to let the headlines go. I can’t read the news every day. Every headline adds something to my list of things I don’t have enough time to change. Not that I believe that one person can’t make a difference, just that I feel overwhelmed with all the many many things that need help. It all sets my mind reeling, and as a single mum, I have to focus first on my own family teetering on its various edges.
So thank you for not looking away Maggie. I won’t either.
maggie, dammit Reply:
December 18th, 2009 at 8:01 am
Back in 2008 I wrote an article for a city mag in which I met, interviewed, and grew very invested in seven survivors of domestic violence. The whole experience changed me, and some of that bled over onto my blog. Readers reacted very positively, and so I sensed a niche that could and should be filled.
I just want survivors to feel validated by speaking out, and I want the rest of us to really understand that abuse touches our lives when we don’t think it does (this is especially powerful when you read a VU story written by someone you thought you knew through blogging.)
Thank you, too, for not looking away. We all need to own this.
December 15th, 2009 at 12:07 am
Coleen says:
Maggie, I always love your posts and you get inside my head and I think and think and rethink about your words and how they manage to prod me into examining my own feelings on a much deeper level than I normally do.
Faith and hope and religion and this time of year are so deeply intertwined for many of us. Losing faith and hope are things I am familiar with as well. This is always a hard time of year for me. So much in my life has changed from the time when the holidays were so magical and so many of my memories of this time of year are painful because of those changes.
I was only 13 when I lost my faith. I had a less-than-positive relationship with my father to say the least. My grandfather was the positive male influence in my life. He was the antithesis of my father. Strong but gentle. Smart but humble. He guided me and taught me and adored me. He became very ill with cancer. The summer of my 13th year I spent mainly between the hospital room where he lay dying and the hospital chapel. I was, at that point, going to church every Sunday with my family. The preacher gave a sermon one Sunday regarding the power of prayer. “Ask and you shall receive.” I got the message loud and clear. I prayed so hard my head hurt. I prayed for his recovery. I prayed for him, for me, for my grandmother. I prayed terrible things. I prayed for God to take my father and leave my grandfather on this Earth. I prayed for forgiveness for wishing such things. On Christmas Eve, the hospital called to say last rites were being given and we should come quickly. I felt it would be the ultimate punishment to lose him on Christmas. God was surely punishing me for my prayers. My grandfather made a stunning albeit temporary recovery from death and I still regard that wonderful few days as the best gift I was ever given – he could sit and speak and open gifts and my heart had hope. We buried him on New Years Eve.
I lost all faith in God and lost all hope in prayer and, frankly, for my life without him in it. I cannot pinpoint a time when I got my faith back, though it may have been directly related to the birth of my children. I don’t spend a Christmas that I don’t think of the loss, the gift of a few days’ time, and the painful realization that Christmas would never be the same for me. My faith and my hope and my Christmases are different now. But they exist. And I grow from the pain, and it gives me hope.
Thanks, Maggie.
maggie, dammit Reply:
December 18th, 2009 at 7:56 am
Wow. That’s a beautiful post in itself. I’m so glad your faith and hope still exist, in whatever necessary metamorphosis.
And, thank you.
December 15th, 2009 at 12:31 pm
Postmarc says:
Hope is a funny thing, a tragic thing all wrapped up in a squirmy “you’re not gonna define me all nice and neat” package.
When Hope is born from sorrow and horror, then it is a seed a thousand times stronger in its will to grow, despite the odds and those who would try and crush it.
After the first time I went to the Holocaust Museum in DC, as I exited the elevator to the gathering area, my face must have shown what I was feeling. An elderly woman, a survivor, touched my arm, and asked if I wanted to talk. To put a face with one of the darkest periods of inhumanity was overwhelming, and through the tears and the why’s, I realized that true Hope is energized when something moves you so deeply, you do not question your call to action. I cannot begin to imagine what it was like in the camps, but I know that I can fiercely fight to add action to the words, Never Again.
Hope resurrects itself through good, kind and compassionate people who believe in it. But Hope grows exponentially when those good people choose to share their belief in it will all of use. Thank you, Maggie.
December 15th, 2009 at 2:30 pm
Jack says:
Maggie,
This was well done, very well done. My son is about to turn 9 and has just begun to ask me questions about the Holocaust, why it happened and how many people in our family were murdered.
Just recently we learned about more family that died. We learned of relatives who gave up their faith or gave away their children. Those relatives are alive, but they aren’t practicing Jews. I don’t claim that we are better or any more special than others, but it makes a part of me sad to hear such tales.
The survivors are dying, fewer and fewer remain. People have such short memories and the further away it gets the harder it becomes for some people to believe that such a thing can happen.
It is hard to look my son in the eye and talk about these things. We have taught him to judge people based solely upon their actions. These stories confuse him and it makes me sad to see his innocence disappear.
Anyway, this was a beautiful post. Thank you for it.
December 17th, 2009 at 1:11 pm
bejewell says:
I hate being just another small voice in the sea of masses who adore you, but I have to tell you. I absolutely ADORE YOU. Beautiful thoughts, beautiful story, beauttiful writing, from a beautiful lady. Whatever holiday you should choose to celebrate, I hope it’s as beautiful as you.
December 19th, 2009 at 8:09 am
Jennifer H says:
Damn, Maggie…I’m crying. You are a force, my dear.
December 19th, 2009 at 11:18 am
Robin says:
Thank you Maggie for reminding me about what it’s all about. You can’t image the way you’ve touched me today with your wonderful writing, allowing me to remember a loved one we lost and still try to honor.
Love ya, girl!
December 21st, 2009 at 2:20 pm
Katharina says:
Maggie,
Thank you for sharing such a profound story. You touched my heart.
I believe that your grandfather believes very much, otherwise I don’t think he wouldn’t be here to tell about it. My parents were also concentration camp survivors, but their story is different. They were Germans, living in Yugoslavia during WWII, and taken to Russia into Siberian camps. They had violent murders of thier siblings and parents, laboring, and being tortured for years with nothing to go back to after the war. No home, fragments of life before the war, scattered like leaves in the wind. Like your grandfather, my dad never wanted to talk about it, and yet, my mother talked about it everyday. As a child growing up, sadly, I never believed her, I couldn’t, the tales were to terrible to be true I thought. Whatever your religion, race, origin, nationality or belief . . . the pain is the same, the emotions as intense, whether they are shared or held within, the hurt the same, the memories may be different but still unthinkable.We must tell their stories, lest we forget. There is a book called “Man’s Search for Meaning” by Viktor Frankl that tells of HOPE. It helped me to undestand a little more about believing. HOPE is what embraces you to live another day.
December 21st, 2009 at 4:33 pm
MDTaz says:
I live in the heart of the old Jewish quarter in Paris. My children went to “maternelle” (like pre-K and Kindergarten) at the public school directly behind our apartment building. The school bears a plaque commemorating the students who were summarily deported to concentration camps, sometimes in the middle of the day. Their families would come for them in the afternoon to learn they’d been taken away. Every year that school has a ceremony to honor the young students whose lives were stolen. It’s pretty moving, children acknowledging the memory of other children from a previous and tortured generation.
I am the product of a Jewish/Catholic marriage; a “Passover Jew” celebrating only a few holidays and from the standpoint of tradition more than a depth of religious belief. But last week, when I heard the Hanukah truck drive by (yes, it’s like a Good Humor truck with Hebrew music) I thought about this: Had I lived here all those decades ago I would not have walked the streets without fear, and I wouldn’t be able to light the candles of the Menorah and place it by my window.
Once I saw Elie Wiesel at a wedding I was attending. It was a festive day, and he was smiling. That gave me hope. But I still think we should never forget.
Thanks for writing this beautiful, provocative post.
December 25th, 2009 at 7:23 pm
Ellen says:
Maggie, that was a hugely powerful piece of writing. Thank you for sharing your experiences. I was especially moved by your comment that it is our responsibility to feel with those who have unbearable burdens to carry at Christmas-time as much as it is to celebrate the joy of Christmas with our friends and loved-ones. Thank you for the HOPE. Seasons Greetings to you and your family.
December 30th, 2009 at 3:31 am