His grandmother was forced into a Russian work camp
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I have very strong memories of sitting in my grandparents kitchen as a boy, waiting. We waited a lot. It wasn’t until I got older that I tried to figure out what we were doing all those hours…
They owned an apartment in a typical melting pot neighborhood in Brooklyn with a mosaic of neighbors on the block. We’d sit there at the kitchen table and really sit. We sat in the shadows of late afternoon and watched the numbers on the old GE clock flip, one by one, minute by minute. I thought I’d explode. When were we going to DO something?
My grandparents were Holocaust survivors. Jews living in Poland, they were both raised as Jews had been raised for centuries, to keep one eye open. While there were times and places in the past two thousand years where Jews thrived, it has rarely been long term and it has historically come at a great price. Until the recent past, the simple notion of something like “American Jews” as opposed to “Jews living in America”, has been a fantasy. My grandparents, one from the city and one from the farm, were Jews occupying space in a nation that would eventually betray them as outsiders. A government “for the people” was not something they ever considered a realistic idea in Poland.
And still, they survived.
My grandfather watched his eleven brothers and sisters, mother and father, gunned down in front of him, in the early stages of the war. Fifteen years old, penniless and cold, he was left alone to remember. My grandmother, a smart young girl not unlike Anne Frank, was becoming anxious as the news of Hitler and the threats of war worsened. Just a few days before the Nazi army poured into Poland and placed the Jews in sealed ghettos, she convinced her parents and siblings to pack bags and leave their home. They boarded a train and headed east toward Russia. By the time they got to the border, the Russian army greeted them and put them in a work camp to make supplies for the Russian army.
My grandparents found each other in the eye of the storm. They managed to fall in love and start a family even as the world fell apart around them. How do people survive when everything they have known suddenly changes and the only constant seems to be uncertainty? Their attitude. No one can ever take away a person’s freedom to choose their own attitude. They decided to make the best of it.
Still, there were scars. As the war shifted back and forth, their security changed as well. From camps in Russia to a camp in Germany, they rode the storm to the best of their ability and eventually, they made it to the new state of Israel shortly after the war ended.
As Americans today, many of us have the surreal luxury of conceptualizing a SHTF existence based on minimal personal experience of being truly upside down in the world with a gun pointing at you. However, there is a human survival instinct that simply, quietly, directs us toward shore in whatever storms we face.
My grandparents sat in the kitchen for hours but they weren’t necessarily waiting. They were listening. One of the greatest gifts they gave me was the awareness that anything can change on a dime, so who will I be if that occurs? For my grandparents, they never slept a night after the Holocaust without packed suitcases in the closet for a bug out situation. As a spoiled suburban kid growing up in America, I found their meticulous attention to detail irritating. Saving sour cream jars and using them for drinking glasses. Folding every package carefully and neatly so nothing spoiled and nothing was wasted. My grandfather knew where every tool was at his workbench. Grandma could tell you how many cans of soup were neatly stacked in the cupboard. They were mindful about their thoughts, feelings and even the material possessions they carried.
My great grandfather headed his household in a Jewish enclave “in the middle of nowhere.” They chose to ignore what was happening outside the bubble and simply pray that God would take care of them. Eventually, tragically, the outside world decided for them. My grandmother saved her entire family and had the luxury of watching her parents die of natural causes by listening to the changes in the political, social and cultural environment and responding appropriately.
Listening to what is happening outside allows us to respond inside and choose a direction that is not based on impulse or emotion. Preparing for unforeseen or possible future events is not necessarily waiting for the SHTF, it is being conscious, aware and responsible to self and family for whatever may be in life. It is about listening, not waiting.
Listen.
The Mindful Prepper
J.S. IL
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