GRANDDAUGHTER

GRANDDAUGHTER

Yes sir. I saw this movie. Shocking. But it is still just a movie.

My Grandma always said that the concentration camps couldn't be described.
You could look at her camp papers. You could photograph them.
But the rest lies deep inside her somewhere. She would never say more.

Even though I am the second generation after the Holocaust, the war had never ended for my family, and my grandma's experiences influenced the life of the rest of the family. Mine too. As a family, we were all woven into our fates.

When I was a child, my paternal grandparents were the most interesting people I have ever known. There was something noble about them.
They talked to me like an adult and didn't treat me like a child.
Even so, I felt that Grandma didn't love me or that she was unable to love me.
As if it was just impossible with her burden and with what I reminded her of.

Grandma's behavior towards me, depending on her mood, was radically different.
She could be rude and disrespectful one day and warm and sweet as candy the next day.
The problem was that my mother was German.
And in Grandma's eyes, I was such one too.

My whole family is a victim of the history that has determined our relationship and locked us into predetermined roles.
As if we were inscribed in this story without having any influence on it.

As a child, I spent holidays with my grandparents.
My father used to bring me there, but he never stayed with them.
Grandma was taking me on trips.
We used to go to museums and eat her delicious pancakes coated in sugar and cocoa.
And we rode in her little Saab.
She was sweet to me. But, sometimes, it could end badly.
When I was with Grandpa and Grandma, they could say: "Your maternal grandparents are murderers!" And they meant my German Oma and my German Opa.

Grandma took out albums, and Grandpa talked about family members who died in the gas chambers during the war.
"They were your age. Do you know what they felt?", he used to ask.
I felt that such things should not be told to a child. But I didn't know what to say.
I began to cry, and my grandpa was getting even angrier.
It often ended with me hidden and locked by myself in the bathroom and Grandpa screaming at the closed door.
Grandma tugged from time to time the door handle, asking me to go out.
It ended after some time, but the memory of it remained.

When I look at the old photos, my grandma is usually smiling.
The same can be seen in the old photographs of my grandparents with my father and the pictures with neighbors and friends for whom they often held parties.
But I remember Grandma completely different.
Do the photos lie?
Is what you see just a furniture polish that covers some deep scratches?

My father told me that my grandma's experiences were the dominant factor in whole family life.
I tried to bring it up with my grandma. Breaking through the wall, behind which my grandma was hidden, was not easy and not entirely successful.
But these hard and unpleasant conversations, together with not less tiring discussions with my father and Grandpa's still living cousin, gave me a picture of the situation.

Grandma was sent to the concentration camp in 1943.
She was 15 at that time, but she was very tall, and therefore she survived.
All children under 16 went to the gas chamber.
Grandma was in several camps, and the liberation found her in Mauthausen.

Grandpa never said what camp he was in.
After the liberation, he returned to his village. And he found no one.
The fate of the rest of the family was unknown.
So, he waited to see if they would come home or not.

After the war, some special offices were created where you could get news about the missing family members. People walked with pictures and asked if anyone had met or heard of the person on them.
Every one of the waiting people was so lonely.
It was the first thing that brought Grandpa and Grandma together.
Grandpa's parents, and his 18 other relatives, were murdered in Auschwitz.
The same fate befell Grandma's family.
They got married quickly. Because the ordinary life was to have a family.

My grandparents left Poland after 1956, but they stayed in Europe.
To start a new life here.
The grandparents had a large circle of friends and close friendships throughout their lives. But none of their friends knew about their past. Nor about their Jewish identity.

There were no candlesticks or stars of David in the house.
The word "Jews" was forbidden.
Because they, like the others, wanted to forget that they were Jews.
And they raised my father as a non-Jew, so that at least he would never be persecuted again.

During that time, no one was subject to psychoanalysis.
The past was the past, and you had to live an ordinary life.
How did this affect one's psyche?
This was not the topic that was discussed.

My father remembers that my grandpa was violent from the beginning and cultivated an advanced form of psychological sadism that was difficult to describe.
For Grandpa, my father had no name or even a number.
Grandpa called him a lousy dog, a dead worm, or a cripple. Continuously.
Until complete exhaustion, and sometimes longer. Until he collapsed and groaned helplessly, "Fa-fa-fascists! Mur-mur-derers! ".
Then he started beating my father and, with the help of Grandma, he threw him into the bathroom. My father was locked up there, and it felt like he would never get out.
Grandma only repeated, "Say you are sorry, and everything will be fine! ".
My father remembers that after one such punishment, they bought him a brand new, red semi-racer, "Favorit". But at that time, my father felt only contempt for my grandpa.
Grandma never stood up for him. On the contrary. She functioned as Grandpa's echo.

It was a mentally disabled family. And according to my father, what was happening inside the family had nothing to do with the war.

Father had difficulties describing my grandma.
Her moods were unstable, not to say extremely unstable.
At one moment, she was a spoiled girl from a noble family. Only to suddenly change into a scared prisoner in a concentration camp or loyal wife supporting her husband in everything, or a small, helpless child.
These mood changes were quite common.
After settling in Denmark, my grandma had a nervous breakdown and ended up in hospital. She never shared what she had experienced.
Father knew only some scraps and screamed out fragments of it.
His relationship with Grandma was never good. He always felt a distance.
He was never sure how much grandparents' stay in the concentration camps played in it.

My father moved away from the family. He decided to make his own life.
He joined the popular hippie flower fad of the time and met my mother there.
She charmed my father from the very beginning.
She had some classical culture, and he could talk with her about anything.
She also had a charm and looked pretty good.
Six months after they met, they decided to get married.
For them, love was the most important thing, and nothing else mattered.
My parents got married believing they could be free from the past.
It seemed easy and adventurous to my father.

It started easy.
They didn't think the family could mean that much and that family history could make a difference in their lives.
My mother was born after the war. Although German history weighed her down, she did not think it would prevent her from belonging to an assimilated Jewish family.
She was welcomed by my grandparents with open arms.
It was Grandma who organized the wedding.
My grandparents had a serious conversation with my mother about the future the day before the wedding.
My parents' residing or giving birth to their grandchildren in Germany was absolutely out of the question.
My mother had to promise that they would live in Denmark

When my mother got pregnant, and they notified my grandparents about it, my grandpa was shocked. Remove the pregnancy!
He did not want a grandson born from a German mother!

My mom toned down her German part very much. She chose not to speak German with me and changed her citizenship when it became possible.

How is it with my German part?
I know the German language.
For me, it is the language of Rilke, Goethe, and Schiller.
Full of nuances and poetry.

The family from my mom's side?
I dug out the Iron Cross, 2nd grade, awarded to my Opa's brother for "fighting for the freedom of Great Germany."
My Opa briefly served in Normandy, where the Allies captured him.
Although he was not a convinced Nazi, like his brothers, he nevertheless participated in the war, making himself complicit in some way.

The strangest thing is that Oma and Opa, with whom I had very sporadic contacts, never had a problem accepting me.
Regardless of whether I felt German, Jewish, or Danish at a given moment.

But my paternal grandparents had a lot of trouble with it.
Grandma seemed to accept me at the end of her life.
Certainly my Danish and Jewish part.
I have doubts about the German one.
Grandpa died before I decided to deal with the problem directly and talk with him about it.

Who am I feel to be? I'm normally Danish. But culturally, I could be a German.
Emotionally? I think I'm a Jew.
My husband laughs at me sometimes.
"Who are you? You are a human! Leave all grandparents' stories alone!
Why should you feel guilty for others' sins and suffer the sufferings of others?
This is your life, not theirs".

But sometimes, I cannot get rid of it, and I'm afraid I will pass it on to my children.