What's Up With Me
I have been heartbroken to see the devastation happening in Israel.
My family suffered in the Holocaust. My grandmother and her kids, including my father who was two years old, lived in Vinnytsia, Ukraine when it was captured by the Germans during World War II from the Soviet Union. Her husband - my grandfather - was killed early in the war. She, my dad, and my dad’s brothers were lucky to be able to rely on the kindness of some Ukrainians to help hide their Jewish identity, and eventually escape to the Soviet-occupied territory. Most other Jews in their situation weren’t so lucky. And then, my dad grew up in the Soviet Union, and suffered anti-semitic discrimination there, which cost him the ability to get the kind of education and job that he wanted.
Eventually, when the USSR was falling apart in 1991 and reduced its barriers to letting Jews leave, he and his family - including me at ten years old - immigrated to the United States. Many of our other relatives immigrated to Israel. So did many of my wife’s relatives: in fact, her family almost immigrated to Israel instead of the US. It was really meaningful for me when I visited them in Israel just over a decade ago.
It's hard to believe that they have experienced such devastating events, which always and inevitably bring up the overtones of the Holocaust. To be clear, I do not mean in any way to take away from the reality of Palestinian suffering or the suffering of any others involved in this or any other global conflicts right now. I’m simply sharing my visceral experiences, which are based on my emotional ties to my identity and relatives.
I’m hoping that suffering for all will be minimized going forward.
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