For Me the Holocaust Would be present.
My dear friend of over 40 years lives in Vienna.
She has lived there for over 30.
After falling in love with an Austrian volunteer on her Kibbutz (Israeli communal farm community) they relocated to Vienna.
We have remained in close contact, meeting up mostly in Israel and even in Santorini.
But never in Austria.
I have always been afraid to visit Austria, a country that carried echoes of Naziism.
For me the Holocaust would be present.
A fear that my family, and people passed on to me, generational trauma.
However, my dear friend had been touched by breast cancer,
and my heart knew it was time to visit.
.
How would I overcome the fright and anxiety of visiting Austria?
A country that promoted the starters of the Holocaust.
I grew up with my family’s Holocaust stories.
In a country where tattooed arms with numbers were more common than not.
I married a man whose mother, my children’s grandmother was a Holocaust survivor.
My mother in-law and her two sisters survived the horrors of Auschwitz, and
Bergen Belsen concentration camps.
As well as the tortuous Death March.
Most of the members of our European families were murdered during the Holocaust.
Very few survived.
How would I overcome the fright and anxiety of visiting Austria?
A country that promoted the starters of the Holocaust.
With a bit more research I found the hotels were confiscated from Jewish owners.
I looked for hotels in Vienna, hoping to find one with history of art and music.
However, as I began my search, I learned that many of these hotels.
had been used as Nazi headquarters.
With a bit more research I found the hotels were confiscated from Jewish owners.
Sleep in such a hotel would not be an option for me.
The visions of barking german shepherds, and sounds of “schnell “( a German word used to get Jews onto the cattle cars) immediately filled my mind.
Faces of frightened children wearing a yellow star, with arms in the air as they were taken from their parents.
I ended up booking one that had been built in the last twenty years.
With hope that it would help put some Holocaust anxiety to rest.
I arrive in Vienna on April 17th at night, Yom HaShoah Eve, the eve of Holocaust Day in Israel.
My ticket was booked without paying attention to the significance of the date.
I arrive in Vienna on April 17th at night, Yom HaShoah Eve, the eve of Holocaust Day in Israel.
An evening that begins with a siren and a moment of silence across the entire country.
One moment of silence that holds the cries of millions that were murdered just because they were Jews.
A day that awakens the skeletons of our past.
But I have taken this coincidence as a sign of courage and pride.
My story is like so many others, we carry the holocaust in the halls of our soul.
For some like myself it has crafted a desire to pursue peace and equal rights for all of humanity.
I a Jew, an Israeli American will be stating to the world and especially to those in Austria that wished us gone, I am here!
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