"We Remember Only the Atrocities" and Other Signs of Amnesia (Part III)
Descendants of victims, like the descendants of perpetrators, sometimes prefer to forget
Read Part One:
When I first saw the small doorway (seen above) at the synagogue in Nyíregyháza, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I’ve been there before, that I’ve walked through that door.
The intense sensation of déjà vu was unsettling, almost frightening. Logically, I’ve never been inside but my grandparents lived on the outskirts of Nyíregyháza before the war and then for several years afterwards they lived within walking distance of the synagogue — that is, until they escaped to Canada during the Hungarian Revolution in 1956. So, it’s logical that my grandfather might have prayed here, even my grandmother, mother and uncle. But not me.
According to this week’s Internet worm hole, the ancient philosopher St. Augustine first referred to the concept of déjà vu in 400 AD as “false memoriae.” The Cleveland Clinic, explained that déjà vu is a result of the dysfunctional connection between the “parts of your brain that play a role in memory recollection and familiarity.” In other words, your brain identifies something familiar then cross-checks it with your experiences, only to come up empty, resulting in a glitch.
So our memories fail us, even when they never happened. Still, I can’t help but wonder if this intense sensation of déjà vu is my subconscious way of compensating for something. Maybe, I’m trying to channel other people’s memories, the ones the dead left behind and the ones the living so easily cast off.
When I embarked on this journey to uncover my grandmother’s story (The Bubbe Tapes), I tried to squeeze my mother for more details about what life was like for her parents (my grandparents) right after the war. My grandfather only returned in 1947 after serving five years in slave labor. A year later, my mother was born. She couldn’t tell you what my grandfather’s experiences were, or how long he was gone, or what life was like for them when he and my grandmother — who married a few months before he was forced into slavery — found each other again.
In fact, she seems to remember nothing about the first 10 years of her life. My mother spent the first nine years of her life in Nyíregyháza, a town only 45 minutes from my grandmother’s village of Beregdaroc. Despite the proximity, she never mentioned even visiting the village, not even the cemetery where her uncle and grandfather are buried.
Here’s a sample of our conversation:
Leah: Mom, how did you get to Toronto from Hungary, when you were escaping in 1956?
Mom: I don’t remember. But I know we went to Venice. It was beautiful there. I’d love to go back. It’s very romantic.
Leah: Did you take a ship? Did you fly? Did you land in Toronto or somewhere else?
Mom: I don’t remember.
Leah: You don’t remember if you took a plane? You were nine. Did the ways in which your parents escaped ever come up?
Mom: No, no it didn’t.
Growing up, I chalked up my mom’s self-inflicted amnesia to a survival tool utilized by many second-generation survivors. People recreate themselves, and looking back isn’t always advisable. Cue Lot’s Wife from the first instalment; who really wants to turn into a pillar of salt?
According to my mom, she was never a refugee. She never lived in a tenement in Toronto next to a sardine factory that had rats. She didn’t lose any family in the Holocaust. Everything was great for our family. All not true. But she’s someone else now.
Since I was dealing with an “unreliable source,” as we say in journalism, I did my own digging through some old papers that my dad kept after my grandparents passed away. Among them, I found these immigration cards, issued to my grandparents.
It turns out my mother, uncle and grandparents arrived in Halifax by ship on Feb 28, 1957, traveling from Vienna. I can see it is the Italian cruise line, Trieste. Jan Raska, a historian at the Canadian Museum of Immigration at Pier 21 in Halifax, tells me that:
“MS (SS) Vulcania was in service from 1929 to 1974. It was built by Cantiere Navale Triestino in Montefalcone, Italy, for the Cosulich Line, also an Italian company. The ships’ itinerary/route consisted of Trieste-Naples-New York City-Trieste, but this was also modified to include other stops later on.”
Somehow, knowing the ship’s name gives me comfort. I ask Raska if it still exists somewhere, but he tells me that in 1974, it was sunk and pulled apart for scraps after hitting a rock near Cannes, France a few years earlier. This, too, seems like a forgetting. The ship, now a ghost, and all the stories that occurred onboard have slowly disappeared underwater. Cue my athazagoraphobia, that irrational fear of forgetting, but I can’t help but think that like the ship, my family’s story, our history, is slowly being submerged.
It’s not only on a family level that I fear amnesia. I can’t shake the idea that the further we move away from the Shoah (from any genocide, really), the more different it will continue to look in our rearview mirror. It’s a fear that hit home recently when the House of Commons in Parliament applauded a 98-year-old Ukrainian war veteran – not knowing that the man had fought with the Nazis. Was this lack of knowledge due to generational forgetting?
In 2018, Poland controversially passed a law that would criminalize any mention of Polish complicity in the Holocaust.
Still, not everyone values collective memories. In David Rieff’s Holocaust book, “In Praise of Forgetting,” he argues that remembering never really prevents anything from happening again.
In the book, he quotes Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi, the late Columbia professor and author of many books, most notably “Zakhor: Jewish History and Jewish Memory,” who once wrote that “the antonym of ‘forgetting’ is not ‘remembering,’ but justice.”
So, do I want to remember, or is it possible that what I really want is justice? What would justice even look like? Even if turned out my family did own “The Jewish house” in Beregdaroc, I wouldn’t want it. How will that bring back the dead?
What I really want is to hear all of their stories, to commit them to paper so that I can breathe life into them once more. I want to reanimate them all, the entire village, even if it’s only for a moment. Just so I can see them for myself.
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The Village at the End of the World
My father came to Halifax on that same boat on the same date. He was Hugarian. Ferenc Toth born 1939. I wonder what he went through. He is passed on now. I wish I would have asked him more questions. I wonder if he met your family.
Vulcania
Italian line
Trieste + Halifax
Feb 28, 1957
Tourist class
A house is not always only a house, it can be regarded as some kind of a connection to family long gone. Something more than just four walls. The villa my Mum grew up in was lost twice (first due to debts, second time due to war) and after the family regained the house it cherised as preciously as a jewel by my cousin and her family who lives there. When my Mum died, I took over her part of ownership - all for the sake of history.