The StoryIt all began in 1937. Or at least, it's easier to think of it that way. That was the year my grandmother was born. May 14, 1937 in Kaunas, Lithuania. Now, keep in mind that Jewish women didn't have babies in 1937, if they could help it. It was a bad time to be a Jew, and things didn't seem to be getting better. Antisemitism was on the rise, Europe was still recovering from WWI, and Hitler was consolidating his power in Germany. Across the world, it was becoming clear that a global conflict was brewing. Within Germany, people were disappearing from the margins of society. As early as 1934, hundreds of thousands of people were forcibly sterilized under the diagnosis of 'feeblemindedness' (though, of course, Germany was not the only country to perform forced sterilizations---take a hard look at the history of the U.S.). In the following year, 1935, the Nuremberg Laws were introduced. German Jews were denied citizenship, and prohibited from engaging in sexual relations with non-Jews. Ancillary laws gradually deprived Jews of the rest of their civil rights, segregating them and quarantining them in an increasingly vulnerable twilight. This is hardly the most recent or most egregious case of civil persecution. Again, I refer one to the history of the U.S. But back to Germany. Facing widespread persecution, the Jews that could began to leave the country in droves. On a winter day in 1938, the boy who would become my grandfather left Nuremberg. As far away as Lithuania, the echoes of these changes were felt. The Jews began to prepare.
So my grandmother's earliest childhood was filled with turmoil, to put it lightly. For a family like hers (upper-middle class, educated, and with relatives already in America) emigration was an option. A good option. But visas were scarce, and the situation in Lithuania was becoming increasingly uncertain. Recently my great-uncle found a letter from 1939 in his attic. It contained an affidavit that would have allowed Louis Finklestein to obtain an American visa for himself, as well as his wife and child. All of those who remember why this emigration attempt failed are dead. It is a mystery, like so many other mysteries, lost to the winds of time and death. By 1940, things in Lithuania were grim. In 1939 the western regions of the country were ceded to an aggressive Germany. This concession included Klaipeda, the country's only port on the Black Sea. Then, in 1939 the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, a neutrality agreement negotiated and signed in secret between Germany and the Soviet Union, carved up Eastern Europe into 'spheres of interest' for the two countries. The vast majority of Lithuanian territory was eventually ceded to the Russians. Vilnius was captured by the Red Army as the Soviets invade the eastern half of Poland. Though the Russians returned control of the city to the Lithuanians, it came at a heavy price. 20,000 Russian soldiers were permanently stationed in the country. For the local population of Lithuania, a nightmarish chapter of war-time occupation was just beginning. On June 14, 1940, the Soviets issued an ultimatum to Lithuania: form a new government, allow an unspecified number of troops to cross the border, or be destroyed. Lithuania could not resist. A Soviet puppet-state was founded and 150,000 Russian soldiers marched into the country. For the Lithuanian inhabitants of the countryside, the resulting carnage was devastating. For the Jews, the Russian occupation offered a new possibility for escape. By obtaining a visa for a third destination, persons fleeing Europe could travel across the Soviet Union to Vladivostok. Both Lithuanian and displaced Polish Jews descended upon the embassies of Kaunas in droves. The vast majority of them, penniless or otherwise disenfranchised, were denied approval for additional visas. Refugees, then as now, were looked upon as an unwanted liability. With rumors filtering eastward from German-controlled territories, the Jews of Lithuania were becoming increasingly desperate. In July of 1940, however, hope presented itself. His name was Chiune Sugihara, and he was the acting Japanese consul of Lithuania. Defying the orders of his superiors at the Japanese foreign ministry, Sugihara began to issue a slew of Japanese transit visas. Often, he issued these visas without ensuring that the recipients had a third, permanent destination beyond Japan or adequate means of supporting themselves while in the country. This act of defiance, while strategically ill-advised, saved many, many human lives. Word spread of Sugihara's actions. Jews began to flock to his home in central Kaunas. From there, they traveled eastward, to Moscow and the Trans-Siberian Railroad. Caught up in this exodus was one family--two parents and their three-year old daughter. On November 28, 1940 , Louis, Sonya, and Edith Finklestein boarded a crowded trans-Siberian train. The journey to Vladivostok took fourteen days. Louis, ill with an unknown malady, became so sick that the Russian authorities almost forced him off of the train somewhere in Siberia. An unknown Polish-Jewish doctor (or, at least, a Polish Jew who claimed to be a doctor) vouched for the sick man and saved his life. Louis recovered and the family reached Vladivostok, where they boarded a ship to Tsuruga, Japan. Eventually, they traveled to Kobe and, with the help of a Manhattan-based relative and the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, sailed for the U.S. In January of 1941, the Finklesteins arrived in San Francisco. Another trans-continental train ride brought them to New York, where they settled with the help of the relative that had aided their immigration to the U.S. In June of 1941, the German launched the infamous Operation Barbossa. Within a week, they had conquered Lithuania. Those Jews that had remained in Kaunas were placed in the Kovno Ghetto. Among them were Sonya's parents and younger brother. Before the end of 1942, all of them had been shot and buried in mass graves. Beginning in 1943, the remaining Jews were deported to work camps, concentration camps, and death camps across eastern Europe. In 1944, in New York, my grandmother's younger brother was born. Elsewhere, Dresden burned. In May of 1945, the war ended in Europe. Sonya, still in New York, rushed to the Red Cross headquarters and began scanning the lists of Jewish survivors for any names she knew. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were destroyed. The U.S. war with Japan was abruptly ended. Displaced Jews began to drift across the Atlantic, passing through the Finklestein's living room on the way to their new, shadowed lives. They brought with them whispers, half heard memories of unspeakable atrocity. In some ways, life went on. In other ways, it never would. The world was similarly shaken. In 1950, when my grandmother was thirteen and her brother was five, their father died. A sudden, unexpected heart attack. Sonya found herself alone with two children and a shattered world. Her family was dead. Her home was gone. And now, loss had crept into her new, American world. Years of fear and tragedy had taken their toll. Anxiety did much to keep the wounds fresh. Without change, without help, there was little she could ever do to heal. That help never came. Sonya, spurred by fear, remarried far too quickly. Within a year, she and her children had moved from Manhattan to East Orange, New Jersey with her new husband, another Jewish refugee from Europe. From what I can tell, those years in East Orange were the darkest of my grandmother's life. In some ways, the loss of her father was the aboriginal tragedy of her girlhood--not the Holocaust. Her grief for her father was deep, intertwined with the loss of her home in Manhattan. Her new step-father was violent and controlling. And her mother, mired in depression and a twisted set of sensibilities, was unable to help her daughter confront the abuses of their new world. Even sixty years later, when my grandmother had built a life of her own, the things that happened in that house still haunted her. Just as before, in some ways, life went on. In other ways, it never would. Though my grandmother moved beyond that place and those terrors, the echoes of them would still travel through my father's childhood and my own. Three generations out, the Holocaust was not the unspoken trauma of my family's past. It was what happened afterwards. In 1957, at the age of twenty, my grandmother married my grandfather, the Jewish boy who left Nuremberg in 1938. He was twenty-two. Together, they moved away from East Orange, though it pained my grandmother to leave her brother behind without her help and protection. Wounds began to heal, or at least close up. My grandmother finished her undergraduate degree by taking night classes, then went on to get a teaching degree. When she received her diploma, she was pregnant with twins. On August 3, 1962, my father and his brother were born. Once they had reached school age (which I imagine felt like an eternity to their young parents) my grandmother began to work as a teacher in the local public school. I don't know much about my father's childhood. I imagine that materially, it was secure, and that his parents were present and aware. But I also imagine that a large, unspoken weight hung over it--a pressure to succeed, a pressure to make the most of his relative advantages and make up for the pain of the past. Emotionally speaking, that is a large weight for a child to bear. But my father managed. Many people do. He excelled, even, fulfilling and exceeding his parents' expectations. I would argue that he paid the price in other ways. But that's beside the point, I guess. To make a long story short, my father married my mother (a Roman Catholic from Erie, PA) in 1994. Eventually, my two sisters and I were born. As we grew up, our father's parents were always just up the street, right around the corner. A constant, comforting presence in our lives. Then, in August of 2013, our grandmother was diagnosed with cancer. Her illness sent shock waves through our family. For two and a half years, the disease charged into sight and then faded in upon itself, an invisible weight which drew us all together and, at the same time, kept us all apart. I finished high school and started college. My depression and obsessive fear of gaining weight grew into an eating disorder during my freshman year. Bulimia, to be exact. If anyone noticed, they didn't say anything. For nine months, the disorder went on unchecked. Eventually, I got help and began to improve. At the same time, my grandmother declined. In the summer of 2015, an unknown neurological disorder rapidly descended upon her. Speech and fine motor function were soon followed by the loss of strength and most gross movements of the arms and legs. Towards the end, she was essentially trapped inside the prison of her own body. On February 18, 2016 at 4:53 PM, she died. My grandfather, my sister, my father, and myself were there to say goodbye. Each of us found our own ways to grieve. Or at least we tried to. We are stıll trying. Because the woman we lost was many things; thoughtful, intelligent, anxious, angry, loving. Pained. Peaceful. She was, like most people, a beautiful series of contradictions collected into one incomprehensible whole. A universe, a multitude. And no universe is easy to let go of. There are so many monuments in this world. Monuments to love and hate and glory. But I, in my own small way, would like to add one more. A monument to her, and her life, and the things she cherished. The things she left behind. I will travel across the world. I will write about it. I will love and grow and remember. And that is the story at the heart of it all. There are a few special people I have to thank for making this trip possible. First of all, I would like to thank the Rice English Department, the benefactors of the John D. Parish Fellowship, and the Rice Program in Jewish Studies for making this trip possible. I would also like to thank my family for all of the love and encouragement, even if the trip makes them anxious (Dad :)). And lastly, I would like to thank Dylan Feldpausch for not letting me chicken out. And lending me his priceless iPod to create a soundtrack for my odyssey. Thanks guys, love you all!
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