MY TURN: Hitler Killed My Father

[Aptrgangr]

MY TURN: Hitler Killed My Father

He wouldn't talk about the years he spent in Nazi concentration camps. But they never left him.

By Shirley Paryzer Levy | NEWSWEEK
May 5, 2008 Issue


Lauren Fleishman for Newsweek

Realizing a Need to Remember: In her local synagogue

I am approaching another anniversary of my father's death. It will be more than a dozen years since he passed away. I still don't agree with the cause of death on the certificate. The cause of death, according to the doctor, was cancer. That was not what killed my father. The cause of death was Adolf Hitler. My father was a Holocaust survivor. He lived and breathed being a Holocaust survivor. It defined him. It is on his tombstone. His whole life in America revolved around World War II. It was evident in his everyday life. I remember when we were in a hotel in the Catskill Mountains one summer, and there was a fly zapper in front of the lobby. My father heard the noise, saw the flies and mosquitoes get zapped and very quietly said, "That's how Hitler did it, too." There was no escaping his past.

I grew up in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn, a small community filled with European Jews. The synagogue where my father prayed was filled with men and women who were survivors as well. It wasn't until I was in the third grade that I made friends for the first time whose parents were American-born. I did not believe you could be Jewish and not suffer as much as my parents. They came to America, the "golden medina" (golden country), to enjoy the freedom of religion and the freedom of speech, and just to be free. They were not free, however, from their past and their nightmares.

I marveled at my parents' ability to live normal lives. To go through hell for four years (they were living in Poland, and the Polish Jews were the first to be shipped off to concentration camps) and still be able to go to work and make a decent living was beyond my ken. They celebrated bar mitzvahs and weddings with their friends and families, and went on vacations as if they were true Americans. I was miserable. I wanted to shout at them, "Why are you acting normal when I'm not?" I was afraid the Nazis were going to knock on our door and it would be my turn to go. Isn't that how they went off to the camps?

When I was growing up, my father never talked about his time in concentration camps (he was moved around to several). My mother, also a Holocaust survivor, did all the talking. I never knew who Dr. Seuss was, or even heard of Goldilocks or Rapunzel. My bedtime stories were about how my mother stole a potato and made it last for three days. My father's brother told us about how he cheated the Nazis by hiding under the bodies of prisoners they had shot and pushed into ditches. My father never said a word.

When the movie "Schindler's List" opened, my parents went to see it. I couldn't believe them. I yelled at my father, "Why did you have to see what you've already lived through? Why subject yourself to more pain?" My father answered that he had an obligation to go. He said the world had to see what it was like, and he had to go to be a part of it. He was so proud when members of the Shoah Foundation asked him to be recorded for the Holocaust Memorial Museum. He lived in Arizona at the time, and they went to his house for the interview. In front of the camera he told his story. He now lives on in the archives with other survivors.

When my father felt the end was near, he started to obsess about his past. He decided that if he didn't start talking about the Holocaust, who would remember? He made a series of audiotapes beginning with his life in Europe, leading up to the Holocaust and ending with his wedding to my mother in Germany in 1946. When he finished the tapes—there were seven in all—he mailed them to me. He would ask me at least once a week if I'd listened to them. I told him no; I just couldn't, because there was pain in his voice and I couldn't bear to hear it. A year after he died I tried to listen to the tapes. I could not. I knew he was no longer suffering, but I would not be able to tell him that I knew he was finally at peace.
I don't know if he felt the Nazis would rise again, but I know for sure Hitler never left him. A friend of mine who recently lost her mother told me that two weeks before her death, her mother started acting in a way that made my friend think she was hallucinating about being back in a concentration camp. She was once again being tormented by the Nazis. We agreed Hitler got her in the end. Just as he got my father. Hitler didn't end at 6 million. He is still killing the Jews. It is 6 million and counting.

Paryzer Levy lives in Queens, N.Y.

My Turn: Hitler Killed My Father | Newsweek My Turn | Newsweek.com


6 million and counting indeed...

[wilpuri]

Keep it alive.

Its completely acceptable for Finnish leftist intellectuals to say that it is time to forget about the wars, it is time to stop glorifying the past and time to stop remembering our veterans. Yet I wonder what would happen if the same was said about the holocaust... That its time to move on? Blasphemy! Never forget!

[Delbáeth]

My uncle is an alcoholic, Hitlers fault I tell you. Oh, my dad smokes, Hitlers fault as well.

[Menydh]

The whole holocaust story is sick to death. From both sides, supporters and deniers. No one side is credible.

Instead of wasting time with often unbalanced denials, I would focus on researching on the financing of Hitler and National-Socialism by the Warburgs, the Rothschilds and other Jewish bankers, and campaign to demand the Jews moral reparations to Germans for promoting Hitler's National-Socialism into power and thus bringing about the moral ruin of Germany.

But you would need brainy nationalists for it, not nazi, neo-nazi, or crypto-nazi freaks.

[Kernunnos]

Originally Posted by Aptrgangr

My Turn: Hitler Killed My Father | Newsweek My Turn | Newsweek.com


6 million and counting indeed...

Italian prisoners in german camp after 1943 personally told me they resent the Jews because they were treated the same way and were given not one tenth of the attention the Jews got after the war.

A comparison between the conditions of such prisoners and the conditions of italians kept prisoners by english forces in North Africa and India or by US forces in the camp of Hereford (destined to italian non-cooperating with the US) shows that the condition of detentions were the same.

Example: a prisoner in german detention and not cooperating with the NS regime would receive a soup of no more than a potato a day and some greens, no meat if not for fortuitous contact with the german populace during work (true).

Bad sheltering conditions etc.

An italian non cooperating with the US and detained at Hereford would be released at some forty kilos of weight at the end of the war, when his normal weight was double: similar hunger conditions were found among the italians detained in India.

Italians detained in North Africa told me of hunger and of being denied clean water when english forces camping before them could have showers: one man with a broken leg was negated proper care while his fracture was "repaired" with iron wire and a makeshift weigh elongating his leg, as a result he came home half crippled.

The stories of the italian non cooperating with NS regime or US and Britain are remarkably similar.

It is also remarkable that italian prisoners of the NS do confirm the mistreatment of the Jews but insist on likening their ordeal to that of the Jews.

[BeornWulfWer]

What Holocaust is she talking about? Who is Hitler?

Ah well! Let's get on with real important issues.