Yom Hashoah

My grandfather was born in Warsaw on October 26, 1911, the youngest of seven and the only boy. His name was Motel (pronounced mut-TEL) Rajsman. He had green eyes and thick black hair, although by the time I knew him, only silver wisps remained, clinging stubbornly to the sides of his pale head.

His father died when he was a young man, so my grandfather dropped out of school to help operate the family's butcher shop. All of his sisters were married with children. My bubbe once told me that the three oldest sisters lived in Germany and owned a chocolate factory. From papers that Bubbe prepared requesting reparations from Germany, I learned that the middle sisters were named Tema and Estera. The youngest sister, Doba, was my grandfather's favorite. My younger sister, Dana, was named in her honor.

On September 1, 1939, Hitler launched his blitzkrieg - lightening war - through Poland. The Polish government conscripted all men of fighting age. Sixteen days later, the Russians stormed in from the east. Doba's husband was sent to the eastern front. My grandfather fled.

Once, when I was in elementary school, I asked my grandfather what happened to his family. His clear green eyes clouded over and he was quiet for long enough to scare me. Finally, he shook his head, peered down at me, and yelled for my bubbe to bring him a pear. She scurried to give him one, then walked back to the living room where she had been crocheting an afghan. Grandpa held the light green fruit up.

"See this pear?"

I nodded.

"It's shaped like your bubbe's tuchus!" he said, and we laughed together at her butt as she turned to glare at us through the doorway. Then he patted me on the head, his eyes twinkling.

Whenever I imagine my grandfather's last interaction with his family, a mostly black and white film with splashes of color unreels in my head. I see three dark-haired women assembled at a large dining table. Their husbands are at work or in the army, their children are at school, and their mother, Pesha, is upstairs resting. Then lean into the center of the empty table, hashing out a plan. They need to save their only brother. When my grandfather returns from their butcher shop, six sets of green eyes look up at him.

"What?" he asks.

"It has been decided," Estera says. "You leave tonight for Russia." Although Russia is known for anti-Semitic violence, and is at war with Poland, it is the closet country not occupied by the Nazis. He might be able to slip through the borders undetected.

"No!" The bag containing provisions he has brought from the market slips out of his arms. Vegetables spill on the polished wood floor, a mess of colors.

The women shake their heads. (I costume them in wigs, as Orthodox Jewish custom dictates for married women.) Doba speaks. "We are women with children, and out mother is frail. The Nazis won't bother us. I can't bear to lose you to the army or worse..." Her voice is quiet, like my sister's. She stares in her lap at her small folded hands.

They pack a satchel of food and clothes. They collect money from the deep pockets in their simple dresses and count it at the table. They shuttle him toward the door. Doba presses the bills into Grandpa's hand, and Tema passes him the bag. They kiss him good-bye. As he walks down the street, he turns back one last time to look at them. Doba calls out, "L'shanah haba'ah birushalayim - next year in Jerusalem."

He never sees them again.

Stike Out for Choice!

Others might make jokes about "striking out a life" (which I find really funny, by the way, because my gallows humor on this topic is so finely honed; another good one might be about alleys), but I am participating in an abortion access bowl-a-thon in April. Seriously.

"But Suzanne," Dear Reader may be thinking, "abortion is legal. How can it not be accessible?"

Yes, that's what I used to think, too. Then I found out that 87% of counties in the US have no abortion providers. This affects approximately 1/3 of American women. The lack of providers increases exponentially for women who need abortions after 16 weeks.* These women are forced to travel long distances, sometimes as many as hundreds of miles, to get the medical services they need.

Add it up: there's the cost of the procedure (not covered by Medicare in 32 states; although those lucky enough to have private health insurance are covered by many policies for now), the cost of transportation, and potentially the cost of a motel if the person has to stay overnight. Since 50% of women who get abortions already have children, there's the cost of child care, too.

While abortion may be legal, it is only really accessible to women who live in certain geographic regions and/or those who have financial resources.* So, I join the abortion access bowl-a-thonin an attempt to keep pins, not women, in (back) alleys. Um, or something like that.

*There are many reasons for why that may happen.
**Just like other health care! How nuts is that?!?!

The Census is Coming! The Census is Coming!

A white envelope waited for me when I checked the mail last night. In huge letters it said, "United States Census 2010." Excitement surged through my veins. Ooooh! The Census! Not only do I love filling out questionnaires (seriously), but I love helping New York get its fair share of resources.

I ran back into the apartment. "We got the Census form!" I told Husband, waving the slim envelope triumphantly in the air.

"Are you sure? It could just be a letter telling us that the Census is coming."

"Oh." Suddenly the tiny envelope made more sense. I ripped it open. It was a letter. In bold letters, it said, "About one week from now, you will receive a 2010 Census form in the mail."

Fine. I got all excited again. "The Census is coming! The Census is coming!"

I sort of hope that my enthusiasm for the Census will not be matched by people who live in states that don't believe in government services or civil liberties. I don't want them getting their fair share of representation if they are going to use it to deprive me of my fair share of rights. I'm just sayin'....

International Women's Day Was Yesterday

Basically, I have no idea what is going on outside of my little sphere of work and thesis writing. I thought today was March 8th, which is International Women's Day, and was all excited to write about it. I understand now that March 8th was actually yesterday. I'm going to say some shit anyway.

I wrote a post for BlogHer about 30 Woman Making History, a campaign by the Woman's Media Center to highlight, yes, 30 women making history while also raising some dough to employ women to write about news and politics. Good idea. I picked five women that I thought were making history (Shada [Shatha] Nasser, Eveline Shen, Sindiwe Magona, Shirley Rodriguez Remeneski, and Alysa Stanton). Links for more info on each awesome woman is in my post at BlogHer if you want to know more, and yes, that's my way of getting people to click over there. Whatever.

Today I read a post over at another awesome woman's blog, Suebob's Red Stapler. She quoted a not awesome woman blogger who said that equality is stupid because it is about fairness and we all know that life isn't fair. "Fuck that!" was essentially Suebob's reaction, echoed by all the excellent people who left comments on it.

One comment in particular stood out: "Vagina's are wasted on some people I swear." This was written by Thordora, who totally made my day.

And now, back to my day.

Another Disturbing Ripple in My Universe

My mother and I are planning a trip to Warsaw in mid-June. We will visit the Jewish cemetery and try to find my great-grandfather's grave. (He died before the war, so he probably is lucky enough to have a burial place unlike my grandfather's sisters and mother.) We will see the few remnants of the wall of the Warsaw ghetto. We will visit the Jewish Historical Institute. We will do a records search. We will pass by the address where my grandfather's family owned a butcher shop and/or lived.

We will also go to Treblinka.

I always assumed that my grandfather's family died in Auschwitz, if they even lived to be deported from the ghetto. But, one of the dangers of Holocaust hagiography is that the fame of Auschwitz dwarfs reality. Deportations began in 1942, and when Warsaw's ghetto was liquidated in the spring of 1943, everyone left was sent to Treblinka, 2 hours outside of Warsaw in an isolated forest. There was no work at Treblinka. People died within an hour of their arrival.

Husband has a friend who lives in Warsaw who is very kindly helping me arrange my trip. He sent me a link to the Treblinka Museum. One of the things that fascinated me when I first learned about the Treblinka site is how noncommercial it is. Auschwitz, to me, is tourist attraction at this point. Tour groups go, people gape at the convent built on site, they exclaim over the signs proclaiming how much the Poles suffered* because it was initially built for Polish political prisoners. Treblinka was completely destroyed by the Nazis, so there's nothing "fun" to see. It is a sober monument to the 800,000 Jews and thousands of Gypsies and Romani murdered there.

Anyway, as I read the museum's website, I was taken aback by this statement:

The memorial should be visited with due seriousness and respect.
Within the area of the museum it is forbidden to bring dogs, smoke or eat ice cream.

Damn, I can't eat ice cream there? Well, I guess I'll have to pack ham and cheese pierogies and chocolate kolacky.

I hope that this was a translation error and in Polish it says, "no eating." Otherwise, WHAT THE FUCK? How weird is the focus on ice cream? Even weirder, it reminds me of a fucked up Hasidic monument I visited in Israel:


I mean, they are not the same thing, but the utter randomness of what is forbidden strikes me as similar. (In case the photo does not appear, it is a sign that says that it is forbidden for women to dance at this site.)

Anyway, it is going to be an intense trip. I believe we will also take a trip to Krakow, as Husband's friend recommended.

*Oh yeah, and some Jews, gypsies, and homosexuals died there, too. But whatever. (This is written in the vein of signage at Auschwitz, so pardon my bitter glibness.)

Bring on the Funny

My thesis, which is about the spoken and unspoken experiences that I inherited from my paternal side, uses humor to explore the horrible things that happened to my grandparents and father during and after World War II. The humor is integral because my grandfather relied on jokes to deflect topics that he didn't want to deal with and as a coping mechanism for his enormous losses. I think that this reliance on humor is something that I inherited from him.

Anyway, today I spent some time reading Jewish humor books. Partly it is for research, partly to procrastinate because I have no ideas at the moment. I thought I'd share one:

Sadie says to her husband, "Moshe, I'm fed up with frozen chicken. Please buy for me a live chicken for a change. Then I can make for us a lovely meal."

So Moshe goes to the market and buys the chicken. On his way back, he sees that Funny Girl is showing at the movies. He calls Sadie on a pay phone. "Sadie," he says, "They're showing Funny Girl at the movies. I think I'll see it before I come home."

"OK," replies Sadie, "but what about the chicken?"

"I'll take it inside with me," Moshe answers.

Moshe stuffs the chicken down his trousers and goes in to see the film. Unfortunately, part way through the movie, the chicken pokes its head out. Two women are sitting next to Moshe and one turns to the other and whispers, "There's a man next to me with his shmeckle hanging out of his pants."

Her friend says, "Why be shocked? If you've seen one, you've seen them all. Just watch the movie."

"But this one's different. It's eating my popcorn."

OK, this joke totally cracked me up because it is so weird and random. I can almost hear my grandfather telling it. (He really liked dirty jokes, just like I do.)

Heads Up!

For a nanosecond, I wanted to scream when I stepped onto the subway on Tuesday morning. In a seat between two disinterested women lay a disembodied head, face down. Its black hair stood up at odd angles, and its brown neck was evenly sawed off from a torso.

I quickly realized that the reason that the women were so nonchalant about this horror was that it was a severed mannequin's head. Further inspection lead me to notice that the mannequin's little bud nose rested on a cosmetology magazine. The head seemed to belong to the woman on its right, who thoughtfully gave it its own seat so that actual humans had to stand.

At 42nd Street, the woman gathered her shopping bags, scooped up the head and magazine, and exited the train. I sat down in the seat formerly occupied by the lifeless head. I love living in New York City.