Hansel and Gretel

I have never felt that I understood or was informed about certain events of World War II that happened in Poland and in Hungary. Of course this topic was touched on in various high school classes and I of course know that the one of the events was the Holocaust. I knew that terrible suffering occurred and that there are nations today that dispute the events, such as Iran, by saying that these things never happened. The number estimated was that six million Jews were murdered.

I hadn’t realized that Seventeen Million people died. I did not know that those who perished included teachers, gypsies, catholics, Jehovah witnesses, persons with mental illness and varied leaders of so many villages and towns.

I believe it was my teenage combination of inattention and self-absorption that blinded me to this time in history. I think it was also that I could not relate to or comprehend the black and white photos and elderly who told their story.

I came to realize that my understanding of history is not only incomplete, but that I was missing an entire library retelling human history and choices. History and choices that included an astonishingly defiant desire to live and a shockingly brutal desire to destroy.

I heard the comment in the news that “Our diversity… is our strength”. I cannot agree with that statement. Diversity is dividing. It is conflicting. Name me one country who has diversity in gender, race, culture or religion and has it without conflict. Only by overcoming, learning to live with, and/ or by looking beyond that diversity, are people and nations able to find what does not divide us. When we find what we have in common despite our difference, that is where we find strength. The most common thing we share on this planet? We all love something. We all love our family, our community, our memories, our pet dogs, good food, safety, gardens, success (however you measure that) and most of all- We all love respect and acceptance.

The more I learn that I possess a perspective unique to myself and that so does everyone around me, the more I understand that it is not mine to judge, to measure, or to understand their perspective. It is for me to learn about what is different from myself, to protect what I love, and to strive to do the best that I can.

My mother gave me a book to read, as she regularly gives me books, this one called “Hansel and Gretel” by Louise Murphy.

The book has taken over my thoughts since I started and completed it. I think about it when I eat a meal or put on clothes for the day. Lately when I hold my husband’s hand or smile at my dear friends, Char and Sal, I think about the luxury I have in these simple acts. I think about how much I don’t know and would like to learn and how I have the ability and time to learn as much as I want.

I have caught myself looking at all the items I own and seeing them as treasures. Perhaps I do not have the best whatever it is or the most stylish shoes, but I have things. I have a new purse, I have nice older ones -I have MORE than one. I have so much and it rattles me as I think about this family, whose fear and worries I cannot understand. This family who lived through horror and with crimes that I cannot comprehend.

I don’t know that I have their strength, their tenaciously impossible will to live, but I will remember their story, in hopes that I can in some way give my respect to their courage.