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I have been thinking a lot - nonstop, actually, always in the back of my head - about the truth I told in my post Telling this January. Putting my story out here in the world for anyone to see what a powerful thing to do: it changed me, somehow, and only made me more determined to live my truth, to tell the truth. What we do is telling; what we do tells the story of who we really are at our core.

I deeply want to be the girl who promised herself at nine that, if she'd been a German in the Holocaust, she would have done the right thing. As a nine year old I was just so incredibly sure of that difference between right (helping) and wrong (looking the other way); I was untested, and with that innocence, I as absolutely certain that I would have been different than my own family members, who blithely wore the Hitler Youth uniform, who lied about what they did in WWII while they wore swastikas. Plus, I had promised myself, and Anne Frank, that I wasn't like that. I promised to keep my promise that if the time came, I'd stand up and do what was right, even if it was hard.

However, I grew up, and I learned - as all grownups do - that life is complicated. I learned that life is dangerous. I grew to realize that self preservation is a worthy goal, because life has value, and when you're dead it's hard to help anyone. I grew to value comfort and safety. I spent about eight years of my life in cancer treatment - 16 surgeries, chemo, radiation, and so many awful pills that were designed to save my life but in the short term tried to ruin my life with side effects. In those eight years, I learned one thing that I know for sure: I value my life, and I will fight for it. I am desperate to remain on this planet to raise my daughter, and to accomplish some of my dreams, and to feel joy. I do not take one breath for granted, and I value my safety. I don't drive in the Seattle snow (hills and ice and bad drivers), I take the ten essentials (and more) while hiking... I obsessively take steps to make sure that my daughter and I are safe.

It is nearly impossible to stand up to fight injustice and adhere to maximum safety. The two things are in conflict: Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. spent time in jail for his beliefs before he was taken down by a bullet; Dr. Christine Blasey Ford told her truth and then her entire family had to move and get a security detail because of the threats she received. This troubles me. How could I fight to protect my life, while still holding my ideals?

Life is messy. I try to live my life in a way that would make my nine year old self proud; I try to live my life in a way that honors my promise not only to myself but to Anne Frank. However, I wasn't absolutely sure what the truth of myself was, if I would actually keep that promise or if it was just a lofty thing to say (from the comfort of my home, in a country with free speech, in my middle class life, in my white body). Who could know what I would really do?

Now I know.

On Saturday, I was standing in front of my house when I heard some of the most terrifying screams I've ever imagined, and I realized that a neighbor and her children were in the middle of a domestic violence situation. I will spare the details because they are a very real family and they deserve their privacy, and so I tell this not from their perspective, but my own. I stood in front of my house - having been out walking my big dog - and heard those screams.

I did not hesitate. With what I hoped was a little big of security from my large, rambunctious dog, I walked right into the middle of the situation. There were little kids in there, and nothing mattered to me but making sure they got out. I tried to de-escalate the situation, I talked softly, and I got the kids and mom out, and we went to my house for safety while we waited for the police to arrive.

It was only after we were standing in the safety of my kitchen that I learned that there was a gun involved, and realized that I had walked into an incredibly dangerous situation - much more so than I had imagined. It happened a few days ago, and I'm still shaking.

***

Last night I talked to a domestic violence expert about my experience, and told her about my realization that I had not thought it through at all, that I'd only acted on instinct, and that I was concerned I had done absolutely everything wrong, despite the good outcome. I told her that I felt like an idiot - what if I had made things worse? What if I'd risked myself unnecessarily? If I'd done the right thing, how come I felt anxious and frightened and I can't sleep at night?

I keep reliving details. The police came, and after a couple hours of standoff that involved shutting down the neighborhood, police with guns that looked like assault rifles - giant scary guns, not "just" handguns" - out in my yard and on my porch and and all over my street and alley, the man with the gun was taken away for evaluation. The wife and kids were safe. I was safe. But I don't feel safe.

We talked through my feelings of fear and concern that I'd possibly risked my life in a foolish way, and how I'd acted on instinct and not thought about the consequences of doing so, and how shaken I was, and she said words that I can't get out of my head:

"You did not act impulsively. You've been thinking about this for more than 40 years. You made a promise to your 9 year old self, and you kept that promise. You trusted your instincts - which are good! - and you did the thing that your values demanded. Nothing about that was impulsive; it was a decision that you spent over 40 years thinking about."

***

I will never know, probably, if what I did was the bravest thing ever - hand me my superhero cape, please! - or the dumbest (no domestic violence expert, ever, suggests intervening: domestic violence is incredibly dangerous, and people get years of training of how to deescalate situations, and this is not a situation advised for amateurs).

But I know this: two children were cowering. Their terror, and danger, was real. They will never forget this day for the rest of their lives; they will spend their lives either unpacking it and managing it, or suffering from it. And in this day, I hope that they remember that their middle aged neighbor, the one with the big dog, walked right in and said, "It's okay. It looks like this is a really bad day, and it sounds really scary. How about everybody takes a time out? Come with me, kids. I've got you. You can come with me, and I'll make cocoa. Your mom should come too. Come to my house. It's okay, I've got you..." and then I wrapped them in soft blankets and made them cocoa and grilled cheese sandwiches. I hope that they remember that, when they were screaming, somebody heard, and that somebody didn't look the other way, didn't hesitate to stand up for them. I hope that helps a little bit.

And me?

I'm still shaking. I can't sleep. I hate guns and all that they stand for. I hate violence. I hate shouting. This weekend was filled with that, and I know I risked my life - I risked leaving my daughter motherless! - through blind instinct to help.

I'm glad I'm okay, though shaken. (So shaken. No words to describe these feelings.)

But most of all, though I'm having trouble sleeping this week because I keep reliving it and because the adrenaline or cortisol or whatever it is clearly hasn't left my body, all these days later, I know that for the rest of my life I will be able to sleep, because I passed the test. I am paying the price: the price of doing the hard thing is that - wait for it - it's HARD. There are good reasons people don't stand up.

But I did. I pay the price now, but I did it.

My nine year old self would be proud of me.

And now I know,  and I can look my vision of Anne Frank in the eye, and tell not just my dream but my truth:

I would have helped you. I am brave. I am not my grandparents, and I would have helped.

This one was for you, Anne.

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.