There’s a Virus on my White Canvas!!

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What in the world? No doubt, no one planned on this craziness happening – it wasn’t on anyone’s list of possibilities! Nothing about this Virus makes for a nice picture. People sick all over the world, many have died. Shortages in hospital beds, medicine, test kits, grocery stores… food, toilet paper! Isolation keeping families and friends apart, many feeling trapped in their homes. I can’t even imagine what all this will do to the worlds economy, or individual fiances, travel based companies, small business, entertainment venues, etc, that have been forced to close.

Over the years, I received letters and emails from people who have read my mother’s book: memoirs of a Holocaust Rescuer “In My Hands.” I get questions about how someone so young; a girl cutoff from family, left with no resources, and facing a very real possibility of death, could do what she did – AND, even more importantly, survive without crippling trauma, and enjoy a full, happy life.

Here is one of my most recent emails:

It has been many years since I read your mother’s book.  I recall that she merely mentions, almost in passing, that she was raped by Russian soldiers in the woods when she was in her late teens.  Your mother does not say how she processed this. In my mind the trauma would have been heightened by the fact that she was raised as a proper Catholic girl.  I think to have undergone such an experience, that person would be consigned to dealing with the psychological trauma for the rest of their lives.  Their ability to grow as human beings would have been severely stunted. That your mother overcame this, for me, is quite remarkable.

There is another incident in the book where your mother is with the Partisans in the woods, and she is engaged to be married but her fiancé is killed in a dangerous mission. I think that for many, such an experience could be forever emotionally crippling. 
Of course, what is the most well-known, heroic, and valiant accomplishment, is your mother’s becoming the mistress of a Nazi officer to save 12 Jews.  It is hard to fathom someone making this choice, and equally hard or harder to understand how they can go on as if nothing happened. So your mother comes across as a super human being (not normal), who after the war is able to marry, have a normal family, raise a child, and settle into the role of wife, mother, and homemaker. Do you have any insight or understanding into how your mother was able to become the person she became? 

Soooo, what a question to try and answer, huh? “Do I have any insight or understanding into how my mother was able to become the person she became?” Talk about causing a person to reflect and think! The more I pondered my answer, the more it caused me to consider my own actions and beliefs. “How do we become the people we are?”

It took me days to answer:

My grandparents taught and modeled to my mother and her 4 younger sisters, a combination of faith, responsibility, and caring for all life, regardless if it was in the form of animals, nature, or people. She was taught to focus her eyes and heart outward rather than inward. “A life spent and used well for others was valued over personal gratification. She was taught that we are “Our brother’s keeper” and that there is no distinction to race, creed or religion when it came to offering a stranger a meal or place to stay.

Even though Mom and her sisters were raised in the Catholic Church, Mom placed her faith in God alone. Because of this, she had an intimate connection and relationship with God and felt Him on a personal level. Her sanctuary was found in the forest where she could be alone with the God she loved.

Like many or most survivors, Mom wanted her child to have a better life and every available opportunity. She self-taught herself a profession (Interior decorating.) Hours of hard work, late nights, and sacrifice, on her part produced a beautiful home for the three of us. Many times, I witnessed her face obstacles during my growing up years. Each one was met with determination. You could almost see her rolling up her sleeves and figuring out the best way to get around, over, under, or conquer the mountains of difficulty she faced. Giving up was never an option! 

Mom was a skilled hostess for my Father’s political parties and their personal friends. Yet, she was my “play buddy” on our vacations.: riding horses with me, jumping off rope swings into the lake, hiking trails in the desert. Yet she was continually on the lookout for an elderly person who had no place to live. Because of this, I grew up with dozens of random seniors living in our house, many times for years, some for decades. 

When confronted by a Holocaust denier in the 70s, my mother’s focus changed. Shocked to learn people were saying it didn’t happen, she changed her vow to leave the past behind, and began sharing the truth. Back then, in southern California, no one even seemed to know the word Holocaust… least of all me!

I’ll digress here a bit to comment on your “Superhuman being” comment. My mother was a flesh and blood human being, complete with flaws, a European temper, and all the other human stuff each of us deals with. She’s been likened to “an angel, a saint, a hero,” and more. Mom was an incredible human being, there is no argument… but she had no wings, cape, halo, or anything different than the rest of us. She’d be the first to tell you when a label like “hero, or angel” gets put on someone, it gives the rest of us an excuse why they could never do something similar. “She could do that because she’s a hero! Or, God protected her because she’s an angel.”  We can have no such excuse!

The secret to my mother’s resiliency, courage, and strength, comes down to believing we have a choice to use it or not. Fear and anxiety may be justified, but we can choose to put fear at the back of the line, and choose to do the right thing. Mom taught me that we all make choices every day based on our core beliefs. She helped me understand we have little to no control over what happens to us: there are no assurances any of us will finish the day. BUT, each day, we have the choice of our attitude, our decisions, and our responses. It’s those choices that ultimately shape who we are, and make a difference in ours and other’s lives. 

My mother lived out what I now know to be true. Trauma will always be a part of life: evil, hate, persecution, mountains of trouble, sickness, and hardship, will touch us all at some point. When faced with those things, individually we have the choice to stand through the storms, move with actions to help others, love without limits, and to hold onto truth and hope. To choose anything else will be no life at all.

For Mom, her source of strength came from her faith. Faith that in living – or dying, God would hold onto her. I’ve added one of her favorite scriptures.

Psalm 56:3-4

When I am afraid, I will trust in you. In God, whose word I praise, in God I trust; I will not be afraid. What can mortal man do to me? ❤