Enough. I have been to Yad Vashem and seen the name of their village, along with all the other names. My mother told me that afterwards, when the few returned to go like penitents from house to house, reclaiming the possessions thoughtful neighbors had been “looking after” for them, she heard one farmer say to his wife: “Look, more of them are coming back than they took away!”
No answers. I can’t even find the right questions. I know only one thing: We are a people who will always come back, bearing that awesome, terrible privilege, our Jewishness.
If ever I have a son, I will call him Alexander.
More than two decades on, the child still cannot comprehend why Jewish existence in any place should drive individuals, groups, even nations to a madness of hatred. Were my parents alive today they would surely hear the echo of 1930’s Europe in the Britain where they felt so safe.
Indeed, answers are elusive. But Jewishness continues to be an awesome, terrible privilege that Jews must sustain and hand down through the generations.
Not my son, but my brother’s son bears the name Alexander. But I have a daughter, Avital, 19, and on my shelf stands a photo of her at Auschwitz holding an Israeli flag as big as herself.