Zaidy John

          I

My Zaidy didn’t have to

read about the Holocaust,

to hear anecdotes,

watch videos,

or sit in a history class.

My Zaidy didn’t “hear about it” from someone

or need to ask what it was

or debate whether or not it happened

and how many died

and “was it really as bad as they say it was?”

My Zaidy didn’t hear about the brutality;

my Zaidy was there.

He saw the horror with his own eyes,

heard the screams with his own ears,

smelled the stenches, the fumes, the smoke…

He told me about lining up after getting out of

the cattle cars—

about the babies yanked violently

from their mothers’ arms,

the children and elderly to one side,

to their deaths,

himself and the others

into the concentration camps

without consent.

            II

And after the war,

after being liberated from hell on earth,

Zaidy told me how he waited,

how every day he checked the lists,

hoping, yearning, anticipating

the reunion with his family.

But that day never came.

I can only imagine the depression,

the despair and the loneliness

upon realizing that they were all gone,

not knowing if, how, when, or where they died,

the uncertainty of whether or how

to move on, to start again,

to live.

“I was lucky,”
he told me,

“that I was only in the camp for a year;
some of them were there for two, three years.

I think that’s the reason I survived.”

            III

Emaciated,

a grown man,

my Zaidy weighed only fifty-eight pounds

when the British troops arrived at the camp.

He told me the story

of the man that he and his friend

tried to keep alive,

how they carried him

to see the armies coming through the gates,

only to have him die in his arms

on the day of their liberation.

            IV

“Sometimes the past still comes up,”
Zaidy told me.

“It’s a part of me that will never go away.”

He told me how he got a phone call

about some “restitution money”

that Germany was dispensing to the remaining Survivors.

“A couple thousand dollars

is better than nothing.”

They could give him a million dollars,

they could give all the survivors

all the money in the world,

and it wouldn’t even skim the scars

that the past has left upon them.

            V

I’m grateful

that my Zaidy was courageous enough

to tell me what he went through.

I’m grateful that my grandparents were survivors,

that they not only survived

but lived on after their real-life nightmares.

I’m grateful that they didn’t use going through hell

as an excuse not to create heaven on earth.

And I’m grateful that despite all the love they lost,

despite the pain of losing their entire families,

the memories, the dreams,

the questions without answers,

I’m grateful that they still love me,

that they still gave and continue to give of themselves,

that they refused to let their pasts

shape who they were in this world

and who they still are to me.