Telling

Today is a proud day for me.

Yesterday, words that I submitted to the New York Times were published in the Sunday Times (online). You can find them here:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/18/opinion/letters/influential-books.html
Scroll down towards the bottom to see my words, displayed for all the world to hear in the world's finest newspaper,about my love of Anne Frank and my family's painful past.

I'm proud of this for two reasons.

First, I'm proud because I promised myself that this is the year that I'd get published, that I would put myself out there and make submissions and, well, try to be a writer. This is the year that I told myself that I was tired of the old voice that said I wasn't good enough, that I wasn't that special, that I didn't have what it takes. I went so far as to make a vision board with a focus on writing and telling my truth and being heard; I completed that activity on Saturday. A couple days later I saw the call for responses in the Times, and by Wednesday I'd received an email telling me I'd be in the Sunday online edition. I'm proud because I think if anybody knows what good writing looks like, or what's interesting, it's the Times. I'm proud because only 3% of submissions were accepted, and they chose me. I'm proud because I tried. I'm proud because they picked me. And damnit, if the NYT says I'm good enough to publish, why am I questioning them?! I need to get busy and write more.

But the second reason might even be bigger. I'm proud of this small article because not only did I share my love for Anne Frank, I also told the truth. My family's history is ... is ... what do I even say to finish that sentence? Flawed. Shameful. Imperfect. Embarrassing. Horrifying. Frightening. Which words get close to explaining?

I grew up with whispers about my father's side of the family. My father was born in Germany, and his parents (also of German birth and descent) moved to North America (first Canada, then the U.S.) starting when he was three, just a few years after WWII. My grandparents held their German accents and some traditions (daily sandwiches of dark rye break with deli meats not found at your average Safeway), but they didn't talk much of Germany.

One day in my adolescence, I was going through my grandparents' photo albums (found in the closet of their guest room), and I found pictures of both my grandmother and my grandfather in Hitler Youth uniforms. I found a photograph of my grandfather in his Kreigsmarine uniform, with a Nazi swastika stamped over it as official documentation. My grandmother shrugged off my wide-eyed questions, saying "You don't know what it was like. Hitler was charming and charismatic and he did good things for Germany, getting us out of a bad depression. He made the Autobahn, you know!" My grandfather said that he was in a POW camp for most of the war. My grandmother said she was part of Kristallnacht. She was unapologetic. She said that they were teenagers up to mischief, as if what she had done was T.P. her friend's house, not destroy lives or holy things.

My grandparents did not speak to me - though they lived nearby and our families were in daily contact - for two years when I dated a Jewish man during college. When he and I broke up (I was heartbroken; he broke up with me) they mysteriously welcomed me back into their lives.

My grandparents were hard people. They angered easily, never admitted wrongdoing, and my grandfather yelled and raged at tiny things, and when I was a child he terrified me. They had a local business, and in high school when my friends found out I was related to him, they all had stories about either how much he'd scared them or what a jerk he'd been to them. He believed in leadership through fear, he demanded loyalty and respect. He thought that money meant success. I never understood him.

***

Three years ago, I spoke the truth about my family out loud for the first time, not just whispered to a friend quietly, for the first time. Trump was newly elected, and alt-right groups were rising up and saying "Sieg Trump" and I was terrified. I put a post on Facebook with a link to the news, and said something to the affect of "As the descendant of Germans who fell for Hitler's lies, I'm scared. If you voted for Trump, now is the time to stand up and say "this is NOT what I want" and speak out against racism and anti-Semitism."

My fallout was immediate.

My father, alerted to what I'd written by a family member, called me in a rage. He told me that I didn't know what I was talking about, he yelled, and his final words to me were "I'm ashamed to be your father. I'm ashamed you are my daughter!" before he slammed down the phone.

I know why people don't speak up. People don't tell the whole truth because the truth has consequences. People don't always like the truth. The truth can make people really, really angry.

I haven't spoken to my parents in over three years. (I do not count cards from them that say "We are sorry for your anger" although there have been a few like that. We exchange birthday cards, but do not speak.) I do not know if we'll ever speak again, and of course it hurts. I want to feel loved, cherished, and understood by my family. I want to be united in a quest for truth and justice, for compassion and kindness. I'm not sure if my father disowned me because I spoke a truth about the family that shames him, or because he didn't mind the "Sieg Trump" alt-right and was mad at me for disparaging them, but in the end, as his daughter, that doesn't matter, because he disowned me either way. (To be clear: I had NO idea that my family would respond so negatively to my post. I genuinely believed that speaking up against anti-Semitism was, well, a basic, decent thing to do.)

We don't tell the truth because if we admit our mistakes, people will judge us, and because sometimes what we have said or done is ugly and shameful. We fear that if people knew the worst of us, they'd reject us entirely. We fear that if the family secrets get out, the world will end. Sometimes, we release our secrets, and they slither around like snakes. Sometimes, the snakes bite. My family secret certainly bit me.

But I'm still telling. I started by putting it on Facebook three years ago, and yesterday it was in the New York Times, and now I'm putting it here.

***

After that horrible day on the phone with my father, I did some research. I wanted to know the Truth with a capital T, and I didn't want to know rumors; I wanted facts, not speculation. I made two contacts: first, I contacted a government agency in Germany that releases military records from WWII. Then, I contacted a group (Yad Vashem) that collects the stories and names of those who helped Jews to escape, in a list called The Names of Righteous.

My grandfather was not righteous. He is nowhere on the lists. This is not a surprise, as it wasn't until more than a decade after his death that I first heard a family member say, "you know, I heard he helped people..." He didn't. If he had, we would have talked about that at his funeral, sung his praises. We would not have waited a decade or more to tell the stories, whispered. There is no evidence that he did any such thing. I think it was shame that made the family tell revisionist history. Isn't it easier to imagine our ancestors as heroes?

But I did get a response from the German authorities, who released my grandfather's military records and wrote a letter answering my questions. No, he was never a P.O.W. He was still in service when the war ended. He was stationed at a concentration camp, Bremen-Farge, which was a work camp. It was smaller than the big "famous" camps like Dachau and Auschwitz, with only a couple thousand prisoners, of whom an unknown number died (at minimum 500, but quite easily 1000, up to half of the people imprisoned there), mostly from overwork and starvation. He was a Kriegsmarine, and so most likely he was a guard. At this camp, the guards performed the work of S.S. officers.

It's pretty grim. I see no dignity, no humanity, in these findings. I understand why he wanted to keep these secrets, to move about in society as a regular person, going to restaurants and building a business and enjoying leisure time on his boat. He enjoyed buying my grandmother expensive jewelry. I can see why that is more appealing than reliving what he'd done. I think he carried his shame around him. I think that when he was on his yacht, he was surrounded by the ghosts of men in striped "pajamas" with their bones protruding. I think he wanted to keep it secret for fear of what would unleash if he told.

But I'm telling. I'm shouting it.

After the war, my grandfather would have been 24-25 years old. He had been a student before the war, then he was a low level military guy, and then the war ended and he was released. He and my grandmother married, and lived in a large house, and had a nanny and a maid to help with household tasks. I have to ask: where did he get the money?

I fear that my grandparents lived in a house stolen from Jewish people who may or may not have died in the Holocaust. I fear that they profited enough from war to create a brand new life, away from difficult memories, by stealing the property of others. I don't know. I can only speculate, but I don't know. My grandmother, if alive, is in her late 90s and was deep into her dementia when I last saw her; my grandfather died long ago. I may never know. Whether this fear is correct or not, I know enough, have seen the photos and the papers.

I'm telling.

I'm telling. Snitching? Maybe. But I'm telling the truth. I'm telling the truth because if we don't tell the truth, if we aren't honest with ourselves, then how on earth will we ever learn and grow? If we don't tell the truth, how will we stop others from making the same mistakes?

My family doesn't want me to talk about this. My father is ashamed that I would tell (or so it seems from his words followed by his silence). But today, as we celebrate Dr. Martin Luther King's birthday, I am quoting the Scripture that Reverend King believed and saying "the truth shall set you free" (John 8:31-32). I believe that Dr. King was correct when he said, “The day we see the truth and cease to speak is the day we begin to die”.

I want to know the truth, and I'm not afraid to tell the truth.

My family members did unspeakable things.

Because of people like those in my family and maybe people in my family, people like Anne Frank died horrific deaths, and those who did not die suffered immeasurably.

My family lives, while others died.

My family has not atoned.

My family lives in shame and silence around this topic.

The Diary of Anne Frank or Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl is the book with the biggest influence on my life, because I saw what was lost when her particular form of genius left the earth, and because "knowing" her through her diary gives me courage to tell the truth. 

I am not afraid of what my family will say: they have already disowned me, what else can they do?  I am afraid of living my life in shame and silence: I think it possible that my grandfather was the most miserable person I have ever known on this earth. I will not be silent. I do not know how to manage the shame of such a legacy. But I do know this:

When I tell the truth, even when my voice is uncertain and quiet, I'm freed. 

I am not the people of my ancestry. My father is not his father. But I believe that when families don't own what has happened - in war, in the Holocaust, or slavery, or any other atrocity - then the pain keeps going, it flows in our veins. Shame is powerful (just ask https://brenebrown.com/). But if we look our shame right in the eye, and speak our truth, doesn't that start to change things?

I don't own what happened before I was born, but neither do I think it has nothing to do with me. I have to choose every day to learn from what happened before, or I will be destined to repeat it, in some form or another.

I am not afraid to tell the truth. You can tell me that I'm a snitch or a tattler because I told, because I drug the family skeleton out of the closet and put it on the front lawn (of the NYT!) for all to see. Fine.

I told the truth, and I stand by it.

And today, I feel a so much more free. Saying the words out loud is powerful. My grandfather wore the swastika; my grandmother reveled in Hitler's charisma. I reject everything that stands for. I choose another path. My truth is not only that I know my family's history, my truth is that I refuse to condone it, that I'm fighting for an entirely different way of being. This is liberating! This - this is joyful! I do not know if I would have had the courage to help Anne. I do not know if I would have snuck bread through the fence, or pretended that a child was my own, or if I would have joined the resistance. But my actions now tell me yes you would. By speaking my truth, I'm saying "my values are bigger than my fear". I am not afraid. I am not afraid to do the right thing, to speak up, even when it's hard. What joy!

I know, that if we're not very, very careful, that ordinary people in a modern era can fall for terrible lies about immigrants, Muslims, Jews, gay people, black people, LatinX people. I know that if we're not very, very careful, it's easy to fall for the idea that the brown people over there stole something, or changed something, and to get scared of anyone who isn't like "us". 

But I believe that we don't have to fall for those lies, because "us" has room for everyone. Because I'd rather be free than die from shame. Because I am creating my own story, not following someone else's.

So I told the NYT. I tattled; I told. Because some stories need telling in order to heal. In telling, we tell the world what matters. In telling, we give away the details about what matters to us. In telling, we are set free.

I'm telling, and today feels like a day that I begin to live in earnest.

Edited to add January 22, 2020:
I included a link to my blog in my comment on the NYT yesterday, in an article by Rivka Weinberg called "The Road to Auschwitz Wasn't Paved with Indifference". I received the following response from someone named Jake Roberts in NYC:

Sir, you could have no idea how impactful your comment is, and how grateful I am to read it. I'm glad I was alone when I saw it, because my eyes filled with tears. Thank you. The comments section is closed, so I hope that by chance you see my acknowledgement here. Your presumption offers me some healing. Your graciousness and kindness has touched me deeply. Thank you.