For years, she has stared at me every time I walk down my hallway.
Gustel, barely 14 years old, stands out among her nine sisters, which include my late husband’s Oma Sophie, in the one remaining family photo from Germany taken in 1910.
Self-assured with long lustrous hair and a cocky posture signifying an eagerness to take on the world, Gustel’s gaze is hard to ignore. The first time I saw this huge portrait over a cousin’s fireplace, I was completely mesmerized by her. Then I learned her story.
Thirty years later, Gustel, along with the majority of her sisters, their spouses and children, disappeared in Germany. Taken, arrested, sent to camps, split from their families — they simply vanished. Visiting Yad Vashem in Jerusalem in 1992, we were shaken to find many of their names in Auschwitz death camp records. Oma Sophie was able to escape to St. Louis with her children (including my future father-in-law), but we still don’t really know how.
Our family, as does every other Holocaust surviving family, continues to carry those scars and always will. Our missing loved ones live on through us while we try to comprehend being marked, living in danger and ultimately “disappeared.”
Then Oct. 7 happened, the worst torture and massacre of Jews since the Holocaust.
We woke to ghastly news from Israel, not fully grasping the horror. Hostages, very young and very old, were tortured and kidnapped by Hamas extremists at a music festival and nearby kibbutzim. Weeks later, we began learning of the atrocious sexual violence and evil mutilation of hundreds of Israeli women and girls before they were shot or beheaded. International human rights groups, including United Nations Women, along with the women’s movement at large, have been dismissive or have yet to respond.
Before our very eyes today, we see antisemitism exploding worldwide, hate crimes against Jews skyrocketing and disturbing anti-Jew signs and chants in our own backyard. Friends on the left seem to have turned their heads and have waned in their support and solidarity. We’re exhausted trying to explain how Israel was supposed to be our one safe place and how many of us are deeply intertwined with Israeli family and friends.
Now I understand what Gustel and her sisters lived through.
Oma Sophie later wrote in her family memoir:
“Hitler’s propaganda came across the radio waves all day, with slogans as ‘Don’t Help the Jews’ along with ‘We Must Get Rid the Jews’ while Nazis marched by singing of their dream to exterminate all Jews. An armed guard was posted outside the Shue Haus Neumann (the family shoemaking business) to frighten people who patronized a Jewish business. Twice the store windows were stoned and broken, most alarming since the family lived upstairs. My daughter Meta was taunted at school and other children were not allowed to sit next to her because she was Jewish. She had to quit that school and travel to another town to complete her education.”
In this age of “Never Again,” we recognize those fears. Again.
Today, Jewish college kids are being screamed at while walking on campus and report significant antisemitic hostility even at Washington University (online at https://bit.ly/Brandeis-report). University presidents testify in Congress, get tangled up in First Amendment theory, while their Jewish students seek safety. We get freedom of speech, but it’s unnerving to witness signs with “Please keep the World Clean” at pro-Palestinian marches in Clayton. Their “river to the sea” chant, popularized by Middle East terrorists, refers to eradicating the state of Israel and its people. “Globalize the Intifada” is a call for widespread violence to both Israelis and Jews worldwide.
How can this not be bone-chilling? I’m not alone in fear.
The national ADL reports a 388% intensifying increase in antisemitism incidents and threats in America since Oct. 7. This past weekend, hundreds of U.S. synagogues received bomb threats, including my own congregation in St. Louis, a trend many fear will continue. The normalization of anti-Israeli hate, a cover for mainstreaming anti-Jew hate, coming from both the far right and hard left, is petrifying.
I don’t have any answers.
Most of our community have strived for years to understand and fight against oppression of other groups, believing it was our tikkun olam responsibility. Now we only have energy to focus on the return of the remaining 135 hostages and permanently eradicate the Hamas terrorists responsible for the brutal atrocities so they cannot strike again. We desperately need allies, especially those of us with “disappeared family,” feeling that our own vanishing could be just around the corner.
Gustel continues to look at me every day in the hallway. I sense her reminding me, “You are doing now what you would have done then.”
I tell her I feel so inconsequential, but she just gives me that searing defiant look.
I know, I know.
