Family history

I've always said the best thing about being Jewish is the great sense of humor. (The worst is the food.) Of course, I'm only half-Jewish (dad is, mom isn't) by heredity, and not at all Jewish by upbringing or religious practice. But as my dad's a New York Jew, he got more than his fair share of the humor gene, and was kind enough to pass it along to me.

My dad was born in 1935 in Austria, so spent the first five years of his life with his family getting the hell out of the way of the Nazis. The family was lucky - an aunt of my dad's had married a wealthy man with business connections in New York, which is what allowed them to get out of the country with a place to go. My dad doesn't like to talk about it (though I sincerely hope he changes his tune on that subject eventually, as it's family history that ought not be lost), so I don't know much - but I've been told that at one point they were smuggled over the Pyrenees into Spain with Basque gypsies. They got a boat from Spain to New York, and the rest is history. So to speak.

I've always had trouble watching footage of the WWII concentration camps. In high school, I recall having the eerie feeling that I was looking for people who looked like me. I still have never been told if any of the family died in the camps - it felt like it was almost an involuntary reaction to the films. When Chris & I visited the Holocaust museum in Washington DC several years ago, I began crying as soon as I got off the elevator, and didn't stop for hours after leaving the building. I bawled my way through "Schindler's List" (though who didn't?). I'd forgotten about these gut-level reactions until Saturday evening, when Chris & I watched Rick Steves' program on Poland's two big cities, Krakow and Warsaw.

There's something a little strange in thinking that Auschwitz, a former concentration camp, is now a tourist destination. Rick points out that survivors want it that way - they want people to see, to experience, to remember - and to never let it happen again. It just feels a bit weird. At any rate, as I watched Rick walk through the buildings at Auschwitz, I felt a familiar lump in my throat. "I can't believe I'm going to cry during a travel show," I thought. And I managed to keep the tears at bay. The program made me realize something, though - I really need to see these places for myself.

So, I'm going to check out some books on Poland from the library and start thinking about what kind of trip it could be. I've never been to the town where my dad was born, and somehow that also feels like something I should do.