Haven't posted for a while.

Today I heard a survivor from the Bielski Partisans group speak to a group of teenagers in Denver. When the kids weren't behaving, I just wanted to shake them. Still, the teachers stood like guards in the aisles, waiting for misbehavior. What's wrong with this picture? I guess I'm too old; I feel like there should be swift accountability for rudeness.

In any case, Paula Burger was delightful and warm, and her story of survival is about as human as you can get. She wasn't special then, she just was lucky. But she shared the sentiment that those that got sick and died were also considered lucky, as they didn't have to wonder when their time would be up. As a child, she was perhaps more resilent than others. Could I have survived the cold, deprivation, hunger and fear? When I was younger, I was sure I would have fought to stay alive with all my being. Now that I'm older, I don't know how much I could take before I gave up. Her courage comes through now, though, in talking about her traumas and losses and sharing the horror of the time with others who who otherwise never know or understand. The Holocaust has always seemed to be bound up in my being - although I never had direct contact with survivors and my folks never talked about it at home. It's in my DNA. I wish I knew that my kids inherited that.