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I sometimes wonder how my mother felt when, at age 6, she had to leave behind the woman who had raised her thus far to live with a mother she had never known in a foreign country. And how she felt when, after attending daily Mass for years, the faith that she was accustomed to and believed in was replaced with a new one entirely, in which ritual was sporadically observed and synagogue irregularly attended by parents who, after what they'd been through, had little use for a concept such as God.

Initially, these three postwar survivors must have experienced some difficulty melding into a cohesive family unit, but they tried to make their life together as normal as possible. And for the most part, it was.

I've always sensed that my grandparents are content with how their lives have turned out. If they felt any bitterness about what they could have been or could have had, it was rarely vocalized. Their war-time losses only made them appreciate their post-liberation lives that much more fully.

My mother simply chooses not to deal much with the past. She has worked hard to create a facade of normalcy in our family. She prides herself on how our family has remained more or less free of dysfunction, and she has little sympathy for those who can not overcome their childhood demons.

And thus she did not want that number on her father's tombstone. It would only remind her that our lives are not as unblemished as she'd like them to be; that the war remains a presence to this day, hovering in the background, casting its shadows.

I am far from the first person to experience how the legacy of war plays itself out -- not only in the lives of those who went through it, but in the lives of their descendants as well. Being the descendant of survivors is an awesome responsibility, and I'm still figuring out what, for me, it entails. Maybe this is why I was moved by my grandfather's odd, morbid gesture. It reminded me that I am even thankful, in some crazy way, for the catastrophic circumstances that made him who he is.

As the granddaughter of survivors, I not only love my family; I am continually in awe of them as well. And although I sometimes resent this thing, this monstrosity that lives with us like a part of the family, I know that enduring this horror made my family who we are today.

In the end, I understand my grandfather's decision perfectly. I understand that taking that number to his grave will be testimony that, as he once wrote to me in a letter, "the human spirit cannot be extinguished easily, and somehow, I contributed to the knowledge of this." It will be a reminder that, with intellect and sheer luck, he managed to outwit those whose master plan it was to eradicate him and all of his descendants from the Earth. It will be a sign that, irrespective of how much he loves us, he honors the memory of his murdered wife and son and acknowledges the completely different life he would have shared with them, had they lived. It will show that passing away by natural causes can sometimes in itself be an act of defiance.

Yes, those who will eventually pass by the number 3-2-2-0-9 in a Jewish cemetery may find it jarring at first, an eerie marker in an already unpleasant place. But then they will see the year of my grandfather's birth and the year of his death, and they will see the lengthy span of years in between. I hope that they will not only respect this man they were not fortunate enough to know, but be in awe of him as well, just as I have always been. Because they will understand that in his case, simply living was the greatest achievement of all.
salon.com | May 1, 2000

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