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6600 Telegraph Rd.
Bloomfi eld Twp., MI 48301
248-671-0087
www.mbjewelrydesign.com
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1995220
42 May 5 • 2016
as it her or was it me? Were
the questions my daughter
Lily’s teacher asked and com-
ments she made indifferent, or was I
hyper-sensitive?
Only the night before, I was reveling
as Lily enthusiastically enjoyed prepar-
ing her heritage project. To make up for
the limited number
of family members
who survived the
Holocaust, her heri-
tage project was rich
with family stories
shared with my broth-
er David and me while
our parents were alive.
There were no fam-
Elyse Foltyn
ily
crests or glossy
Commentary
photo albums to
embellish the frag-
mented stories we clung to over the
years. Our heritage is revealed by only
a handful of tattered photographs that
hurriedly made their way out of Europe
in a pocket. A shadow of a family tree
rounded out the project.
Lily was so excited to share her assign-
ment with her classmates that she vol-
unteered to present first. But now, Lily’s
enthusiasm was barely a memory. The
prior night she somehow made peace
with the incomplete lives of three grand-
parents who survived the Holocaust but
lost scores of family members. Now, like
so many memories of our past, she was
shattered like fragments of crystal.
“My teacher asked me what Papa
Steve ate when he hid in the woods,”
Lily mumbled weakly. “I told her I didn’t
know what he ate. Did Papa Steve ever
tell you what he ate?”
I was mortified. Could this teacher
who we have only known to be sensitive
and kind truly have been so detached?
Didn’t she recognize that the typical
questions and rules of research could not
be applied to the catastrophic lives Lily
described?
It seemed her teacher was seeking
complete details on an incomplete life.
However, in this situation, it was both
insignificant and too late to compile this
research. My father passed without ever
being able to bring himself to share these
specifics. In fact, it was merely a dozen
years before he died that he had an
epiphany of sorts and broke his silence
to begin sharing stories of his life during
the Holocaust. Like most survivors, he
didn’t want to “burden his children” with
this unimaginable history and pain.
I considered myself fortunate to learn
Like most survivors, my
father didn’t want to
“burden his children”
with this unimaginable
history and pain.
what I did about my father’s life and
the history of our family from him.
When Dad was finally able to talk about
his upbringing, we spoke of seminal
moments. We talked about the Polish
shtetl (now the Ukraine) in which he
grew up; his father’s leather tannery and
his uncle who was the mayor of the next
shtetl. Dad’s eyes became glossy each
time he described the porcelain texture
of his mother’s skin and her shiny dark
mane.
Although his European accent was
always heavy, his words were barely
audible each time he recalled leaving the
family home with his sister in anticipa-
tion of the Holocaust destroying their
town.
He said he felt a hole in his heart
when his parents would not join them
and forbade them from taking their
baby brother, Ephraim (after whom I am
named), with them. He learned years
later that his parents and brother were
shot into a mass grave by the Nazis. On
the rare occasions we spoke of all these
weighty topics, my father never had an
interest in telling me how he foraged for
food in the woods. And I never had the
heart to ask him.
I have come to believe that missing
details are often more telling than the
details themselves. The lack of something
can speak volumes for what is really tak-
ing place. I felt this over and over again
as we toured Berlin last year.
At the Memorial to the Murdered Jews
of Europe, we got lost in towering cement
monoliths. The memorial, designed by
architect Peter Eisenman, consists of
2,711 concrete slabs, arranged in a grid
pattern on a sloping field. By all mea-
sures, it is powerful. However, as stirring
as the concrete slabs were, I could not
decide whether the memorial was the
cement or the empty space. There is
often a sense that absence is presence.
As emotions simmered, the intensity
of my reaction evolved.
I concluded that Lily’s teacher, an oth-
erwise sympathetic and supportive men-
tor, must not fully understand those that
have experienced mass tragedy in their
lives. Perhaps she has not yet discerned
how to read the details that are missing.
Then, I wondered if her unsuspecting
questions spoke more to the enormous
power of the subject matter than to
her disregard of our family wounds. By
all measures, the Holocaust itself is an
unnerving topic for most people. Could
it be that the intensity of the experiences,
the powerful stories Lily shared with
such innocence could daunt even the
best teacher?
I am not entirely certain if my initial
reaction to Lily’s disappointment was
that of a momma bear protecting her cub
or a daughter protecting her Holocaust
survivor father — who spent a lifetime
shielding me. When you consider that
70 percent of the killings by grizzly
bears are by mothers defending cubs,
you begin to understand what may have
been my innate reaction we moms have.
Or, was my reaction a learned reflex? An
internal response of a child of a survivor
protecting her now deceased father, his
family, other survivors and the 6 million
Jews they stood for?
I find myself protecting and clinging
to my family’s past more and more. It is
a measured dance I participate in daily.
Shifting between being proud of my heri-
tage as a child of a survivor and being
protective of all those that have been hurt
by my family history or a similar his-
tory. Sadly, now, I can see the list of those
touched by the Holocaust extends to
include Lily and her generation.
*