Each of us has a name given by the sea and given by our death

[sovay]

Despite everything, I am glad I went to the City of Cambridge Annual Holocaust Commemoration at the Tremont Street Shul, because I was surrounded by people who think it is important to remember and said so. Frieda Grayzel spoke of her experience as a child survivor of both the Warsaw Ghetto and Auschwitz; Margareta Matache read the testimony of Cârjobanu Lucreția, a child survivor of the Roma concentration camp at Covalevca in Transnistria. I had encountered Irena Klepfisz's "Bashert" before, but not Zelda Schneurson Mishkovsky's "Each of Us Has a Name." I haven't been to services for more than ten years, but it seems it will take longer than that for me to forget how to say Kaddish. A Besere Velt sang "Yugnt himn," "Hulyet, hulyet, beyze vintn," and "Zog nit keyn mol." I said my great-grandfather's sisters' names.

Comments

[cmcmck]

For me it's deep because as our mutual friend knows, I have both Jewish and Romani ancestry via great grandparents.

The English Roma relatives are still out there, but I lose track of the Latvian Jewish relatives in Riga in 1941/2. :o(

May we never forget.