Episode Description
On this episode of Our American Stories, Dana Mitch tells the story of her trip to Buchenwald, the largest concentration camp on German soil, and how she reconnected with her family because of it.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:10):
And we returned to our American stories. Up next a
story from writer Dana Mitch. Today, she shares a piece
of her family's story, a piece that occurred in Buchenwald,
one of the largest concentration camps and the largest on
German soil. Take it away, Dana.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
A few months ago, I stood at Buchenwald in a
large open field that was covered in an endless expanse
of rocky gray gravel. The ground that I gazed at
before me was where the barracks once had been. On
that unnaturally humid and sunny afternoon, thunder ominously clapped from
(00:56):
heavy storm clouds that loomed off in the distance. His
guys certainly echoed my state of mind. As for anyone
that visits a concentration camp, it was a particularly sobering
and gut wrenching experience. But for me it was more
than just emotional. It was personal. Why was I there
(01:20):
to learn about my grandfather, who had stood on that
very ground some seventy eight years prior, and reconnect with
his life, his journey, his story. The morning after Chris Soolnacht,
(01:44):
at the age of twenty five, my grandfather was arrested
by the SS and taken to Buchenwald as a part
of the special program, the first ever mass deportation and
interment of Jews at that camp. He arrived on November thirteenth,
thirty eight, before the barracks were even built, and for
three or four days and nights he waited among ten
(02:07):
thousand other Jews in the freezing winter rain to receive
a roof over his head and a twenty centimeter wide
wooden sleeping plank. Many who were there with him during
that time didn't survive, and I will always remember the
tears that came to my grandfather's eyes in the video
interview we have of him as he hesitatingly rehashed the
(02:29):
horrors that befell those around him, frequently and at random.
Speaker 3 (02:35):
He was one of all too.
Speaker 2 (02:36):
Few who was miraculously able to flee Germany during the Holocaust,
and I owe my life to his luck. But his
journey wasn't over when he got to the United States.
Mere weeks after officially becoming an American, he was drafted
into the Army. He was shipped off to Europe, back
into the eye of the storm, just five years after
(02:58):
his time at Buchenwal, and as a soldier in a
replacement depot. Despite only having gone through basic training no
infantry training, he was nevertheless thrown into combat during the
Battle of the Bulge.
Speaker 3 (03:14):
He fought against the Nazis with the ultimate.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
Goal of invading his homeland, and yet again narrowly lived
to tell the tale. He ended up living a very
full life. He passed away in nineteen ninety nine at
the age of eighty five, when I was just eleven
years old. But as for my return to Buchenwald, it
was actually another more recent death in the family that
(03:39):
served as the catalyst. By the time I stood on
the same ground that my grandfather had this past September,
my father had been gone from.
Speaker 3 (03:47):
Us for nine months.
Speaker 2 (03:50):
He was my grandfather's first born, and he had wanted
to be able to share his dad's heroic story with
the world. So my visit both to Buchenwald and also
word to my grandfather's hometown was to remember the two
of them, my grandfather's persistence and my own father's admiration.
It was to pay homage to the sacrifices they made
(04:13):
and the pride they held in raising a family in
continuing our lineage. The reasons behind my journey ebbed and
flowed in my mind as I read a passage that
was embedded in stone amongst the gray gravel I stood
on at the camp. It read so that the generations
(04:35):
to come might know the children yet to be born,
that they too may rise and declare.
Speaker 3 (04:41):
To their children.
Speaker 2 (04:43):
As a member of the third generation of Holocaust survivors
in the US, this struck a chord with me, living
now at a distance both across generations and oceans, from
the horrible tragedy that resulted from Hitler's Nazi regime. I
had always felt somewhat detached from it. In fact, few
of my friends knew the extent of my grandfather's story,
(05:07):
that is until I recently chose to rise and declare it.
And now as my own father's firstborn, carrying forward his lineage,
it's something that I too, am committed to rising and
declaring for future generations as well. There's something sacred about
the kind of cycle created by generations, which is really
(05:28):
just to say people that share a heritage over time,
and in Judaism, we observe these sacred cycles that connect
us with our earliest ancestors in one way, the most
through the high holidays of Russiashana and Yom Kipur. In
that light, it should come as no surprise that the
(05:49):
name of the book that we use on these holidays,
the Machsor, shares the same root with the Hebrew word
for return ksarah. We reliably we returned to these traditions,
thus completing a sacred cycle to remind us of all
that we have inherited and all that we will carry
forward when distilled down to their roots. That's what jum
(06:12):
Kapor and Russiashana are all about, respectively, remembering and thinking
back on our past and looking into the future. As
I stood at Buchenwald several months ago, on the ground
that held all that it did, my present moment joined
together the history that came before me and my future
yet to come.
Speaker 3 (06:33):
Through that return, I made into.
Speaker 2 (06:35):
A difficult past, one that altered destinies and set my
own life into motions. So many years ago, I began
a kind of intergenerational remembering. But I also felt that
I began a kind of healing, because in that moment,
I realized that even though my grandfather and father were
both gone, I still carried parts of them within me
(06:58):
that I would perpetuate in the future. This year, my
hope is that we can all make our own important returns,
whether they're on foot or in our minds, because when
we seek out the source of who we are, we
end up moving forward into the new year with the
two things that have always kept us firmly rooted, remembrance
(07:22):
and hope.
Speaker 1 (07:27):
And a terrific job on the production, editing and storytelling
by our own Monte Montgomery. And a special thanks to
Dana Mitch for sharing her journey to Buchenwald and what
got her to do that, what prompted her to do that.
She ended with two words, remembrance and hope, and it's
(07:48):
hard to have one without the other. Memory is so
important in our lives, story, narrative, so important. As Reagan
had said in his farewell speech, President Reagan, we forget
what we did, we'll forget who we are. And that
wasn't a Republican statement or a Democrat statement. It was
a human statement. And Dana found herself at Buchenwald because
(08:10):
her grandfather had been there and she wanted to honor
his journey. And he got out of there miraculously and
found himself back at the battle of the bulge not
many years later, going after Hitler and what did she
learn from that? In the end, she learned her own story.
She was learning more about her father's story, firstborn to
(08:32):
the grandfather, and connecting it all. It's what we do.
You're in all American stories as best as we can,
each and every day, stories of remembrance, stories of hope.
And we want your stories, your stories of remembrance and hope.
Send them to our American Stories dot com. That's our
americanstories dot com. Sad ones, happy ones, everything in between.
(08:57):
The boy. If there isn't a struggle through some pain
and suffering, well you're leaving some things out. Dayne and
Mitchell's story, the story of her family, the story of
Jewish families around the world, and in the end, the
story of all of our families. Here are now American Stories.