Presenting my family’s Holocaust history to a live audience is never easy. I am always looking forward to the last ten to 15 minutes of the presentation, which is a question-and-answer session. Sometimes I am perplexed by questions that show either ignorance of history or naivete concerning human capacity to do evil. This is also the part that sometimes relieves my tension or anxiety—when I sense an outpouring of love and appreciation for my parents.
Recently, I made a presentation to more than a hundred educators who are taking a course at Kean University about teaching the Holocaust. I was prepared for hard questions from this well-informed group, and the one that surprised me the most was a very personal one. Someone asked me if I ever came to a closure concerning my father’s death. I was surprised not by the question itself, but by the fact that I had never asked this question myself.
This relatively simple question brought up countless others. Can I have closure not knowing when, where, and how my father died, or if he was even buried at all? Is it possible that he survived as a POW and lived for a long time somewhere in a camp in Siberia? How do you mourn someone you never met or knew? How do you recall his memory?
Even if I had answers for all of these questions, could my lost childhood ever be restored? When I think about my children and grandchildren, who grew up in healthy families, there is a thought in the back of my mind that I was shortchanged by not having a father who played soccer with me, who could have taught me swimming and skiing, who would have hugged me when I graduated from college, who would have spoiled his grandchildren.
I am very content with where I am today. I have a good life, a wonderful family, friends, and many communities that I am part of. I have everything that I ever dreamt of; wouldn’t now be the time for closure?
At this presentation, I said something to the extent that closure never comes to Holocaust survivors. Although nobody challenged my statement, I have to correct myself. Closure can and does come to some—even if it takes a long time and causes lots of pain. Some came to closure when archives all over Europe, and especially in Germany, opened to the public. Many were finally able to trace their loved ones’ fate from the deportation to the gas chambers. Others might have felt closure when they started a new life in a new country and found a new family that brought joy and redemption to their life. Others wrote their memoirs, and the painful process of recalling memories of loved ones resulted in a cleansing that could be called closure. Many of the survivors were engaged in Holocaust-related museums and organizations, where they were able to share their families’ history and taught many generations about fighting hatred, discrimination, and injustice. These activities have a lasting impact on many, and the positive responses of their audiences drew the survivors to a kind of closure.
Closure is a process that can take years, sometimes a whole lifetime, and for some it never comes to a satisfying end. As I look back, mine started when I searched for and found my true identity as part of the Jewish people. That’s when I started asking my mom questions about family, the wars she had lived through (there were two in her lifetime in Europe), and the Holocaust. Being connected to my ancestors’ religion and traditions, seeing their pictures, and hearing their stories from my mom helped me to understand what my father’s life might have been, what his dreams were, what he aspired to. One stop on my way to closure was when I started volunteering at the Museum. My activities at the Museum not only gave me a purpose to live after I retired, it also gave me an opportunity to educate and inform people who were interested in Holocaust history. My presentations, organized by the Museum, give me opportunities to pay tribute to my parents by telling their history and about their heroism. Participating in the Museum’s writers workshop (which produces the essays in this volume) is not only very educational but also helped me to reach a type of closure. Writing about my parents also gives me an opportunity to organize my thoughts, reflections, and feelings about my own life.
There were some bumps on my way to closure, but time and help from family and friends helped me overcome the obstacles. For a long time, I resisted filling out applications for restitution for victims of Nazi Germany. My reasoning was that no money could give me my father back or take away the pain of missing him. After talking to many survivors who’d had the same objection but who still found good reasons to accept the restitution, I gave in. The final push came after I attended a Kristallnacht commemoration at the German embassy in Washington, DC. The ambassador’s genuine remorse for the atrocities committed against my people made me realize that my father was the victim of the Hungarian government, which never took responsibility for its actions. At that moment, I realized that the restitution from Germany was not for my father’s death, but for the pain it caused to me, a child survivor.
The next time the topic of closure comes up, I am prepared to give a more nuanced explanation of how I came to accept what I cannot change or control. My hope is that the people who heard my improvised response will be encouraged when they have an opportunity to read that closure did come to this Holocaust survivor.
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