Growing up in a small corner of Brooklyn, home to a community of ex-Soviet Jews, history wasn’t something confined to my textbooks; it was revealed through the narratives of resilience and survival that my family shared with me. My parents and grandparents, immigrants who came to the United States from the Soviet Union, endured unimaginable hardship. 

My grandmother’s entire family escaped the Holocaust on the last ship out of Ukraine bound for Uzbekistan. I grew up hearing the story, by then three generations old, of how my great-grandfather sat on that ship and watched as Nazis shot down the vessel in front of them. As he watched it sink, in that moment, he never thought he would reach shore. 

May 9th, marking the defeat of Nazi Germany, is a national holiday that my family celebrated back in the Soviet Union. Now, every May 9th, my grandfather sits me down to recount stories of his father’s resilience as a soldier during World War II. One story has stuck with me forever. When Germany invaded Kyiv, my great-grandfather was one of two soldiers left alive after the Nazis killed every other soldier in his unit. He survived by running from Nazis for years, growing out a beard to not be detected as a Jew, hiding in neighbors’ houses, and speaking Ukrainian instead of Yiddish. His story is not simply about survival, but about the quiet, relentless courage required to live in a world determined to make you disappear.

My parents also grew up with a shared sense of fear........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)