I love Fridays! I have been retired for more than ten years, so Friday is not my last day of the week at work; therefore, TGIF has a different meaning for me. Most Fridays, I am at the survivor desk at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, where I interact with visitors, telling them about my family’s Holocaust history, responding to questions, and asking them about their knowledge of the Holocaust and antisemitism, about their motivation to visit the Museum, and their aspirations in light of their visit. TGIF!
I have been collecting a long list of questions and comments I have heard throughout the years as a Museum volunteer. They are all memorable for one reason or another, and they are helping me to better communicate with my audience, may it be a single person or 400 students listening on Zoom. Even after so many years of encounters with live audiences at various occasions and talking to visitors at the Museum, I am still getting questions/comments that surprise and sometimes even shock me.
Just last week, a young woman came to the survivor desk, standing a few feet away, seemingly gathering some courage to take a seat and ask whatever she had on her mind. By her look, I would call her a punk or a goth. She was dressed in a short leather skirt, black, leather-looking jacket, black choker on her neck, and black platform boots. She also had lots of tattoos, one or more nose rings, and headphones over her ears. Not your typical Museum visitor. You may ask how an 80-plus-year-old guy even knows words like “punk” or “goth.” If you have daughters whose ages span from Generation X and Millennials to Gen Z, you learn lots of contemporary words, expressions, acronyms, and memes.
My guess was that the young lady could be anywhere between 16 to 22. After my invitation, she finally took a seat and almost whispered her question. I heard it well, but because of the seeming contradiction between her look and the profundity of the question, I asked her to repeat it, blaming the noise and my hearing aids. She asked again, “What makes you tick in the morning after all of your Holocaust experiences?”
Honestly, at my age, I have learned not to judge people according to their looks. I failed that day. I apologize here and now for my arrogance that I did not expect such a thoughtful, soul-searching question from the person in front of me. It took me a while to still my soul and gather my thoughts.
First, I thanked her for the question that showed the compassion she felt toward me. I told her that conversations with visitors like her make me tick in the morning. She blushed a little.
The tone of her voice even suggested she would not be able to carry the burden of the survivors’ experience. Her question showed a maturity beyond her age. It implied that after all the horrors and suffering the survivors experienced during the Holocaust, the hard life we had after World War II, and the resurgence of antisemitism today, would make even the strongest person bitter, broken, and pessimistic. I assured my visitor that most of the survivors, almost 80 years later, are none of the above. We find strength in our lifetime of experiences. We learned that we should never give up, no matter what life throws at us. We are motivated by not only preserving the memory of the six million victims, but also by the responsibility of doing everything we can to avoid another genocide.
The visitor’s question also implied that she could not live with the memory of the Holocaust. How can a survivor wake up every morning, seeing and sometimes even experiencing the wars, the upheavals, the hunger, the divisions, the animosities, and hatred, and not throw up their hands and give up? We can’t quit now! The Nazis were defeated 80 years ago, and not doing our work today would be an acknowledgment of our defeat, which would mean that Hitler would ultimately have won.
I told her that my personal motivation comes from the love and care my mother showed during those difficult times. I could never pay her back for saving my life at a great personal sacrifice. Showing the same love and care to my children and grandchildren makes me tick every morning. I told her I never had a chance to know my father. What I know about him is from his postcards to my mother from the forced labor camps, from my mother’s diary, and from her post-war testimony. I know how much they loved each other, and they were hoping that one day the three of us would have a normal life. It never happened, and their memory makes me tick every morning.
I told her I feel obligated to preserve the memory of the 1.5 million children who perished during the Holocaust, and that makes me tick every morning, not just on Fridays.
I also told her that I am motivated by my rediscovered religious identity. I say the traditional Jewish prayer in the morning. It connects me with the victims of the Holocaust and expresses my loyalty to the Jewish homeland, Israel. My morning prayer is also for my family and friends. It makes me tick every morning.
I am motivated to tick every morning by the fact that I had a second chance to start a new life in the United States at the age of 39. I am continually grateful that I found refuge in the United States when I escaped from then-Communist Hungary, not like the many victims of the Holocaust who had no place to go.
Finally, I told my visitor about the Jewish concept of Tikkun Olam. It is a Hebrew phrase meaning “repairing the world” or the “betterment of the world.” It alludes to the ideas of what we today call social justice or social action. It can include enforcing basic human rights, ending poverty, eliminating hunger, or helping and protecting refugees. She seemed to understand that this world could use some repair and improvement, and it might have given her some ideas that would make her tick every morning.
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