What Resilience Looks Like Up Close
Even as the lone survivor of her family at Auschwitz, she found hope and gratitude
Her name was Channah, and she was born in a village in Czechoslovakia in 1931. Today is her funeral.
I knew Channah as a grandmother living in my community of Newton, Massachusetts. She was a force that was packaged in a very small body. It was the kind of body that could easily get on the floor with young kids and play with them, which she frequently did. If she wasn’t on the floor, she might be walking on the sidewalk bouncing a tennis ball. She seemed never to walk without a ball she could bounce.
Channah had a very dark start. She and her family were taken to the Nazi’s Auschwitz concentration camp. She was the only one in her family to survive Auschwitz, and she did so because as she and her family were placed on a train, her mother placed multiple coats on Channah to make her look bigger. Channah shared that when she got off the train, there was Josef Mengele, who sent her to the right and her family to the left. She never saw her family again.
Her mother had known that the camp would not want a young, frail girl who would only drain their resources and be of no use.
Upon liberation, Channah emigrated to Israel, where she studied nursing and met what would become her husband, also a holocaust survivor.
Channah and her husband eventually moved to the U.S., married, and started a family. He became an engineer. Together, they would build a family tree far greater than they had reason to think possible.
I have three memories of Channah that will last until I am very old, and my memory is tiny.
I will remember how, on Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day, Channah spoke to our children in an appropriately educational way. She let them ask questions and parsed her answers carefully—honest but gentle. Somehow, she was able to exude healing and hope.
I will remember how Channah attended prayer service nightly at our synagogue. When it came time to say Kaddish, a mourner’s prayer for loved ones, Channah would always stand up and say it for all her losses in the camp.
I will remember her energy and smile and the way she ended all encounters with me, said in Hebrew and translated as:
“May we be privileged to share life-enhancing news.”
While I’d like to think myself special, she said this to almost everyone. I never understood how she could maintain her positivity, but I always appreciated it.
Channah modeled love and purpose when she could have easily been filled with hate. She was faithful to the meaning of her name. “Channah” is from two Hebrew words — “Chain” and “Hashem.” Chain means grace, and Hashem is how we refer to God. She imbued the grace of God.
May the memories of Channah be a shining example of how the past does not dictate our future. May we find strength in those memories and work to build a bridge of love and healing as we strive for a life of meaning.
And if we bounce the tennis ball while we walk, we can remind ourselves that there may even be some pleasure and fun as we encounter our world.
Channah, we will miss you, we will remember you, and I promise to bounce a tennis ball to remember you in both serious and light ways. It helps that I love tennis.
Shalom Channah.
Beautiful! Thanks for sharing.