Second Yom HaShoah Post. Some Family HIstory · 2:28pm Apr 28th, 2022
Hey.
Today's a sad day for me, and for all Jewish people around the world. I thought I could honor the memories of those we lost by sharing some stories of courage and bravery.
My great grandmare is Dutch. She was born in Amsterdam in 1919. If you know your 20th century history, you'd know that Holland got brutally decimated during WW2, and the Jewish community there was brutalized. Holland got raided on May 10th, and my great grandmare fled on May 8th. She fled southwest to Belgium with her sister, and barely made it out alive during the Axis raid on Dunkirk (there's a movie about that raid that came out in 2017. It's really good!).
I don't know how she did it, but she managed to get a worker's visa to Switzerland, which most Jews would have killed to get. In 1942, she got asylum in Geneva, and stayed there until 1946 with her husband. The only family member of hers to make it out alive during the war was my great x2 aunt, who died in 2018 at the age of 95.
After the war, she got on a boat to Cuba, and eventually made her way to Canada. Stuff gets crazier when you learn what my great x2 aunt did in Vichy France. She lived in a stable, sleeping in horse manure for four years, hiding from the French collaborators.
My Oma is 103, and still alive.
On the other side of my family, I hail from the Ukraine and Poland (using the old term for Ukraine because the borders were different). This is on my mother's side. My great-grandfather got on the boat to leave the Ukraine in the 1920s, but most of his family stayed in the shtetl where they came from. IIRC his sister managed to come to Canada at one point, but I am not sure.
In 1943, the Germans got to this small hamlet and brutally killed that entire town; including dozens of my family members.
