Posted by PartlyCloudy on December 29, 2010, at 7:47:43
In reply to Re: PartlyCloudy speaks up, posted by sigismund on December 29, 2010, at 4:59:36
> Latvia was a particularly difficult place during that period, but so many places in Eastern Europe were. It is worrying that this sort of thing can occur at all. It reminds me of the words at the beginning of one of Nadezhda Mandelstam's books, about how her generation spent its time surrying this way and that between Hitler and Stalin.
Frankly, I can't believe it's taken me this long to put all the aunts' and uncles' stories together, and within the common threads, plus reading historical accounts put it all together. My mother was just a girl when it happened, but the sense of abandonment - of home, and one by one, of her siblings as they sought sponsors and resettled across the globe, makes my own experience come into focus more clearly.
As for my religious beliefs, although I was sent to an English Protestant school as a child in Quebec, I can't say anything really stuck with me there. I know I closely watched my mother's reaction any time there was a programme on TV about the Jews during WWII, and her horror was not only real, for years I was convinced that her family had been Jewish but had hidden their faith in the sake of safety.
This was not the case, but the resonance was very real and true. My mother was instead seeing those images and listening to the stories of Jewish experiences, and thinking that her family could easily have been included in the extermination.
As I said, our story was not at all unique. And it's been replayed over and over again since.
It's nice for you to visit here, Sig.
poster:PartlyCloudy
thread:974872
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/faith/20100403/msgs/975133.html