This past week, Elysha and I produced a storytelling show in collaboration with Voices of Hope that featured the children and grandchildren of Holocaust survivors. These storytellers told stories about their own lives while weaving in part of their descendants’ experiences as well.
It was an outstanding show filled with amazing stories of struggle, heartbreak, and hope.
One of the storytellers spoke about her mother’s and aunts’ time spent imprisoned in Dachau, a concentration camp in Germany where tens of thousands of Jews and other political prisoners were murdered during World War 2. Dachau was liberated on April 26, 1945, thus freeing my storyteller’s mother and aunts and allowing them to live long, prosperous lives.
On April 26 of this year – the 76th anniversary of Dachau’s liberation – my aunt Diane – a family historian of sorts – wrote to me, informing me that my grandfather – Pépère – was one of the first American soldiers to pass through the iron gates at Dachau and liberate the camp. Pépère was a First Lieutenant at the time, but given that his Captain was ill for much of the war, he was charged with leading his men into the concentration camp, which housed more than 30,000 starving prisoners.
Included in that number were my storyteller’s mother and aunts.
I couldn’t believe it.
On the same day that I was listening to the harrowing tale of a woman and her two sisters’ surviving in Dachau, I learned that my grandfather had been there as well, and he was at least partially responsible for its liberation.
I still can’t believe it.
I always tell a story in these Voices of Hope shows, too. The goal is for me to find and tell a story about my time spent working with these storytellers, and thus far, I’ve managed to do so. The stories tend to center on something I’ve learned from the storytellers themselves or one of their stories, but there have been moments in the past seven years that we’ve been producing these shows when I wondered if I’d be able to find yet another story to tell.
But in this case, the universe (and my aunt Diane) handed me a story on a silver platter, and I was both thrilled and honored to tell it on Thursday night.
The opportunity to honor my grandfather’s sacrifice and courage was one I will never forget.
You never know what history might reveal when people are willing to study and share it with the world.
In this case, two strangers – a future mother struggling to survive the horrors of the Holocaust and a future grandfather marching across Europe to fight against fascism – converged at a single point in Germany under the worst possible circumstances and managed to survive.
Many years later, the child of that survivor and the grandchild of that soldier would share a stage to tell stories about that convergence.
If only they could’ve seen and heard the stories we told.
