For those of us who are glued to news notifications, it's hard to escape - and it's a valid question to ask whether we should want to, when the people of Ukraine cannot. Of course, she depended on radio broadcasts and newspapers for information about what was going on in Europe and the Pacific. How did she make sense of America's own equivocal stance towards refugees? After all, Roosevelt sent Jews on a ship away before the war, and they weren't the only ones who didn't find a safe haven here.Ĭould she ever wonder if it would happen again? Did she ever wonder, whether she said it or not, if hate would win? How on earth did she not surrender to hopelessness? What did she and other Americans do, aside from working in factories, on behalf of refugees during World War Two?
What would my grandma have thought? Did she imagine, after helping refugees to get out, the devastation that would overwhelm Europe, and the murder of millions? Now Ukraine appears to be one of the least anti-Semitic countries in Eastern Europe. Many of them were killed in waves of anti-Semitism. The history of Jews in places like Poland and Ukraine is complex and often tragic. Today I heard a story on NPR about rabbis trying to care for Kyiv residents as the bombs fall on their beautiful city. Who can take in the total senselessness of this conflict? We sit aghast in front of our televisions, thousands of miles away, our senses barraged by the horrors unfolding in front of us - and helpless to do anything to stop them. Who could have imagined another huge flood of refugees, scenes of smoldering buildings, features on the cold-blooded murder of the elderly, kids, young couples, fighters on both sides? Who would have thought "war in Europe" would be a phrase we learned to use again?
It's also a reminder that the questions we don't think, don't even know to ask can echo through a future we couldn't imagine. As is the photo of distant cousins with a note that says they were killed in the Holocaust.
It's a reminder that the past is never really totally past. I don't know if they made it out of Austria, to be frank. They were put together by my grandmother in the 1930's as she tried to get Jews out of Austria to the safety of the United States. Inside the box, normally used for photos and documents you think might be important some day, are affidavits.
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