You Can't.

**warning: this is an extremely heavy post, dealing with the Holocaust. reader beware.


Do you remember when you were a little kid, and the worst thing you had to worry about was being inside before it got dark?

Do you remember that the word death never entered your vocabulary, because it was just so, foreign?

Do you remember thinking the world was safe and peaceful and your little town was fun and happy?

You can, right?

Do you remember at the age of 14, seeing your father die and being buried in the town you grew up in, because disease became rampant?

And that disease became rampant because you, your family and neighbors were all herded into ghettos like animals?

And people were not allowed access to life-saving medicines and even clean water?

Do you remember wearing your fanciest and prettiest shoes, on the way out the door to wherever you're being "herded" to, only to have your mother stop you and say, "Baby, I have a feeling you'll need stronger shoes than those. Put on your warmest boots, please." And you don't argue, you simply comply.

Do you remember your brother and mother, the only surviving members of your immediate family, being sent off one way, and you being sent to another line, in a concentration camp?

And do you remember your Mom pleading with an SS officer for her to switch places with you, because you were placed in the thumbs down line, and she was placed in the capable to work line?

Do you remember seeing your mother get yelled and cursed at by an SS officer, and when your mother kept pleading, with tears in her eyes, to switch places with you, that SS officer slapping your mother across the face?

And finally, that SS officer switched you and your mother in the lines, so you went to work and your mother straight to her death.

Do you remember having to work in 22 degree temperatures, wearing only a linen shirt and pants? And wondering why this was happening. Why such horrible attrocities were happening to people of all ages and sizes?

What about not knowing the next time you'd get some food? The idea of getting hot food has long since passed your realm of thinking.

Do you remember walking, and walking, and walking, with no shoes, in the snow, wondering when your time would come?

Knowing that death could be tonight. Or tomorrow morning. Or tomorrow evening.

Because you had been in Auschwitz, Bergen-Belsen and one more of the worst concentration camps created by fellow man. You know that devastation is always near.
Do you remember meeting your future husband at a liberation camp soon after the war ended? And do you remember trying to help him, for the rest of his life, not feel guilty for surviving, when all of his family perished?

Do you remember having three absolutely beautiful and wonderful children before/during/after, struggling to make a new life in the United States?

Do you remember having a granddaughter that cherishes her time with you? That wants your story to be known, but you don't talk about it? Because, why would you want to retell the horrors that fellow people placed upon another person?

And that granddaughter that adores you - do you remember those times that she wanted to know your stories, and know your memories, so that your family that perished needlessly in the war are not just forgotten victims?

Do you remember seeing Elie Weisel speak at the National Holocaust Museum in DC, and have tears in your eyes, because you know the pain in Professor Weisel's voice? A pain not easily audible to those that are not Holocaust victims.

Or do you remember seeing an actual train used in transporting Jews from the ghetto, on display in the Holocaust Museum, and realizing it was a train used in your hometown in Poland? A train you may have been on 70 years earlier.

And seeing pictures of a bridge from your hometown in Poland, that you crossed so carelessly as a child, transporting soon-to-be Holocaust victims as part of the master plan to eradicate all Jews from the human race?

Do you remember when your granddaughter cried to her mother, your daughter, because she just can't understand how you have one of the most tender and caring hearts she's ever come across? Because, despite the atrocities you have suffered through, the nightmares that were your reality, the unspeakable loss of life you have cried over, you are an extremely loving, generous, humorous, life-loving person that does not give the impression of ever having been a victim.

No, no you don't remember any of these things. You can't. They're not your memories to have.

They are my Grandma's.

Her name is Debora, and she is a survivor.