Holocaust memorial day.

My Saba Israel Mondry z”l survived the horrors of Hitler and the Nazis. He was 14 when the war started. His chassidic family was very big. He had brothers, sisters and grandparents.
These are their names: Abraham-Saul, Sarah, Trivia, Leah, Berish, Mordechai, Rachel, Esther.

He was smuggled and sent to work in the kitchen, that’s how he survived… He never saw his family again. After the war, he came to Israel, then he found out his sister, who apparently survived as well and lived in USA.

I started the day looking at some name lists from Ghetto Lodz and locations, hoping to find more than what we have (which is this one photo below).

Now I can tell you that it all started when I was 17. Yes, years ago. When I wanted to go on March of the Living, and I shared the fact with my Saba. He was furious. How can I step on that horrific soil? I might step on his family’s blood. You can understand he refused.
I gave it a year. In that year he opened up and told us his story of those times of war.
We managed to videotape it, which is so good, before shortly after that he got sick and passed away.

A year later I went on March of the Living and it changed me forever.
When you see everything behind glass in Auschwitz, you understand how bad it was. And the Ash Mountain… just breaks you to pieces. Then you go to Treblinka and see the amounts of stones that symbolise the communities that were vanished, but when you enter Meidanek and see the piles of shoes… and smell the leather… It hits you back: the sheer amount of people who died there….

I promised myself to remember that forever.