In my travels as an IBM technician thirty years before, I met a Jewish lady, Annette, then her husband Paul. I had forgotten about them until my mother passed away, and after that renewed our friendship. Paul, now in his late 80s, is another survivor - a survivor of the Holocaust. As a 14 year old youth he saw his father dragged away by the Nazis to be shot.
His mother was gassed in a "mobile gas chamber" the Nazis often used to expedite their victims. Paul lived in Lodz and the Lodz Ghetto. He knows the places I know, and he walked the streets I walked.
My uncle Icek in his book "And I will Remember my Covenant" also wrote about Lodz and the Lodz Ghetto. he also lived there, loved there, and lost his family there. Having started reading his book, I found it hard to put down.
I have found Paul's description of his life during the war most riveting. I have found things I should have known about my own father - things I should have asked my own father when he was alive and well. Paul's vivid and clear descriptions of the sad events has been one of the most dramatic experiences in my life, but it has also filled me with regret - regret that I had never got to know my father better; It has given me a deeper understanding of the psychological damage the Holocaust has done to many other Jews.
To what extent was the psychological scarring my father must have received in the Holocaust responsible for the tragic sequence of events which destroyed our relationship - relationship between him and my mother, and between him and me?
Now, in my mid 60s, with most of my life behind me, I ask myself this question - What right did I have to judge my father - when his God deemed that he would survive? Was I a failure as a son? I'll never have an answer - these questions can only haunt me.
The inscription on my mother's grave in Yiddish reads "Once Again With Mummy and Daddy" I hope my mother is now with her family once again. I hope my father is with his.
