A day of significance
Reflections of a granddaughter
Dayna Steinfeld
For many people, Sunday, Jan. 27, 2008 would have passed much like any ordinary day. Here in Winnipeg, it was a beautiful winter day, and I imagine most Winnipeggers enjoyed the warm weather without realizing the historical significance of the day. In fact, I also spent time on this particular day enjoying the weather. As I browsed through Osborne village, I wondered to myself that if I’d stopped people and asked them if they knew what happened 63 years ago on this day, most would not have known.
I assume that this would have something to do with the fact that a 63rd anniversary does not usually warrant much news time. It is not a significant anniversary, in the way that the 60th was, or the 65th will likely be. As a number, 63 is not especially significant to me. Rather, I would say that the number 26 is what matters most to me about Jan. 27. The number 26 represents the number of squares on my family tree that say: “gas chamber — Auschwitz.” Jan. 27, 1945 is the day that Allied troops liberated the few thousand survivors left at Auschwitz. And it is a day, regardless of whether the anniversary year ends in a zero or a five, which is deserving of reflection.
I can’t remember when I first became aware that my grandparents were Holocaust survivors. It was one of those things that are just known somehow, something that even as a child I understood to be a delicate and difficult subject. Occasionally, it would come up, and little by little I learned of the horror my grandparents had lived through. There was the time my mom told me that my zeida, my paternal grandfather, had another family prior to the Holocaust, a wife and young daughter who had both died at Auschwitz. There was the day my cousin gave us copies of the family trees he had made, and I counted 26 squares. These sorts of things, which most people experience only distantly through school history lessons, literary representations and Hollywood movies, have always been a very sombre reality in my family.
When I was in the ninth grade, I interviewed my baba, my paternal grandmother, about her experience. This small, gray-haired, 82-year-old woman sat across the table from me and spent several hours talking about everything she had gone through. She showed me the few mementos she has left of her family. She talked about the time that she herself spent at Auschwitz. I realized that day that my perception of strength had been a childish idea of muscles and brawn that was far from the truth of where true strength lies. I learned that day about senseless, incomprehensible evil, but more importantly I learned about the power of the human spirit.
So on days like Jan. 27, I take a moment to pay tribute to six million and to 26. I reflect on all that was lost and I am thankful for the love that was born amongst the wreckage of war that allowed for the flourishing of one branch of that family tree. These sorts of days are important to me and they are days that should be recognized by all of humankind, in whatever small way possible. It is in knowing and in understanding that we not only pay respect to those who perished, but we also celebrate the human spirit that somehow survived the darkness. These days, these markers in history, are the days that remind us to take up the cry that has echoed through the years with the survivors and their descendants: never again.
