A Day for Them and A Day for Us

I met Marian Turski in November 2013, when I was attending the UN Climate Change Conference in Warsaw. I had gotten his contact details from a friend of mine, also a daughter of survivors, who told me that I had to look him up. As it turned out, the only free time I had was just before my flight back to the United States. I went to Mr. Turski’s home for tea and cake, and he was most insistent that I should not take a cab to the airport. He wanted to drive me and wouldn’t take no for an answer. I felt his enormous warmth – and had the immediate feeling that I was a close family friend, even though we had only just met. I’m sure many of you can relate to this feeling that many children and grandchildren of survivors have for every survivor we meet, and that we also have for one another.

When I reflect on the call for the establishment of “a day of their own”, Holocaust Survivor Day, chosen to coincide with Marian Turski’s birthday on June 26, I wonder why it took us all so long to think of it. But then, isn’t it true that so many survivors had been reluctant to call attention to themselves, given that they lived on after so many of their dear ones had been murdered? Survivor guilt was so powerful in so many, and I believe that my mother’s death at age 62, on the 50th anniversary of Kristallnacht, was not a coincidence. As she told me while in the hospital, she had been living on borrowed time since she was 15. She had been the only person in her extended family of 34 people to survive.

Those of us who are part of the Second and Third Generations feel our responsibility grow with each day, to ensure that the remaining voices are heard, but most importantly, to celebrate those precious survivors who are still in our lives.

As Michael Berenbaum and Jonathan Ornstein wrote in their joint op-ed in the

Jerusalem Post, “they deserve a day of joy; a day of celebration…to celebrate what they have given and continue to give us. A day for them and a day for us.”

https://www.holocaustsurvivorday.com

May every day be a celebration.