REAL PEOPLE FROM HISTORY

Real history gets more realistic when granddaughters tell about their family.

I’ve got grandkids. Maybe you’ve got grandkids, too?

Imagine them in the future, telling your story.

What would it sound like?

This comes from a comment on Stumbling Stones Of Harsh History:

“I’m sending you a photo of the two “stones” that were planted in the asphalt in front of the building that my grandmother and great grandmother were relocated to by the nazis.

The stone on the right is for my grandmother Emma, my father’s mother.

Born in 1873, deported to Theresienstadt in 1942 and murdered in Auschwitz in 1944.

The left stone is for my great grandmother Esther, the mother of my father’s father.

Born in 1853, deported to Theresienstadt in 1942, died in 1942.

Note the use of the word “murdered”.”

 

History changes from academic interest to ‘what in holy hell happened’ very fast.

We live out our days and nights, most of us, looking out for our wives and husbands, sons and daughters, and for fewer and fewer boomers, our moms and dads.

We die from mistakes, from disease, from accidents.

What we don’t expect to die from is the idea coming from some shitty administrator, some governmental appointee capturing the ear of their boss, and telling them to round up everyone possible and treating them worse than they’ve ever been treated.

Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t expect to be shot dead in my car, or drilled ten times on the ground by a civil service employee.

And neither should you expect to get shot in the face, or get a firing squad treatment.

 

Two People, Two Names, Two Stolpersteines

When you see two anonymous people like these two, what’s it mean?

Two people. One. One more. Two people.

Esther and Emma Lewin? Two other people, one eight-six years old, one sixty-nine.

Neither of them young and dangerous like the two in this picture taking an evening stroll in Paris, where, if you were in the wrong place at the wrong time, like 1941, you’d be picked up and taken away.

Their crime? Someone would come up with something.

What crimes did Esther and Emma Lewin commit that caused their deaths?

Was it a king pin and her henchwoman? Noooo.

 

Esther was Phyllis’s father’s, father’s mother.

Emma was Phyllis’s Grandmother, Mother of her father

 

Leading an opposition against the occupiers?

How many eighty-six year old women, how many sixty-nine year old women, do you see in the streets?

In this WWII refugee image, age is hard to tell, but they do have kids with them.

 

 

There are probably older women in this picture:

 

 

I feel it safe to say that a comfortable coach didn’t arrive for Esther and Emma Lewin.

Were they pulled from their home and pushed toward a train station? Most likely.

Were they treated with the respect their ages had earned them along the way?

It’s safe to say the people in charge man-handled the hell out of any and everyone, pushing them into already maximally loaded cattle cars, waiting days before starting the long journey to their next destination, and for many, their last.

 

The Real History Of Real People

My baby boomer readers can relate to this image, everyone else follow along.

People on the higher side of the age spectrum have unexpected medical conditions.

Our feet hurt, our knees swollen, hips snap and crack, backs that bend the wrong way, necks grown too weak to hold our head up, bad hearing, poor vision, can’t hold our water, maybe a leaky bowel.

Any combination is a problem we see doctors for.

These people have poor shoes, if any, no change of clothes, no bathroom facilities, just the clothes on their backs when they were rounded up and deported.

They had homes, appointments, friends, and family.

Here’s the test: Pick which one is you. Who in the image do you want to be?

I’m the guy with his hat in his hand wondering, ‘What’s next?’

What’s next is what no one could guess.

 

 

I remember opening a book in my grade school library in fifth or sixth grade during class library-time where we learned all about it.

I picked up a book, a WWII history book, and thumbed through.

The part about the holocaust was new to me.

I read more, then some more.

I’m still learning more about now.

 

 

Industrialized death camps for convenient mass murder?

You don’t have to be a historian to learn from history, just read about what interests you, what concerns you.

Here in America we’ve learned from history.

Germany showed what can happen when leadership condones illegal arrests and makes them legal.

Here in America we’ve learned the results for those would take us down on their way out.

 

Not everyone was held accountable, but the men not wearing the white hats had their day of poison, their day at the end of a rope, their days in prison.

It is through them, and because of them, that women like Esther and Emma Lewin were picked up, deported, and murdered for their crimes.

What was their crime?

There wasn’t one.

Did it matter?

No.

 

PS:

Put yourself in the ladies’ place.

 

PSS:

Put yourself in their great-granddaughter’s place, their granddaughter’s place.

Remember Esther and Emma when you think of family history.

May their memory be a blessing.