(Jewish Group) 'American Antisemitism Inspired Me to Share Our Heartbreaking Family Story'
When I was 13, I watched my father lose his two-year battle with pancreatic cancer. Despite the years of suffering, his death still felt sudden, and without his joy, love, and knowledge, the world felt empty and strange.
As time passed and remembering him became less painful, I tried to think back on the stories he told me every night at bedtime about his childhood. I realized they were fading—if only I had taken the time to write them down. Instinctively, I turned to my father's mother's story, my grandmother Monique Eisenger, who survived the Holocaust. I felt an urgency to commit her experiences to paper while she is still here with me.
My determination to share her story only grew in response to the increasing antisemitism in the U.S. and around the world. The recent comments by Kanye West are just one chilling example. There were over 2,700 antisemitic incidents in the U.S. last year, according to the Anti-Defamation League. Sadly, my generation, Generation Z, doesn't know as much about the Holocaust as previous generations who are more likely to have had relatives who lived through or fought in WWII.
People carry on the stories of family members that precede them, but in the Holocaust, whole families and towns were murdered, leaving no one to carry on their memory. Those who did survive often suffered from survivor's guilt and preferred to keep their traumas within. My grandmother did not tell anyone about that harrowing period of her childhood until my father began asking her questions in his twenties to better understand his family history.
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