I was about eight when my grandmother began having me study Russian after school. I vividly remember one lesson— a cloudy day during winter break, trying to make sense of a foreign alphabet in a little blue study book, and looking forward to not having school the next day. I can't remember what I was thinking that prompted me to ask, but on this day, I remember asking my grandmother a question I asked time and time again.
"Can you tell me about Baba?"
I knew the story— at least what I had thought to be the whole story, but it was so intriguing that I never grew tired of hearing my grandmother tell it again and again. Perhaps it was my way of trying to wrap my young mind around what I knew to be a difficult topic.
My grandmother would tell me every time I asked, and I could tell she loved talking about her mother. So, I sat on the floor beside her recliner and listened. She would begin by telling me about these horrible people called nazis, how they wanted to kill all of the Jewish people. How my Baba had lived in a town on the Black Sea, but was forced to leave her home and live in some sort of camp where these people forced her to work against her will. I remember how proud my grandmother seemed when she would get to the part of the story where she told me of an instance where my great-grandmother had stood up to a nazi. An officer had pinched her bottom and made a pass at her. "And do you know what she did? She slapped that nazi right across the face!" She would proudly say. I was proud too, in fact, that was my favorite part of the story. While the story was kept child-appropriate, my grandmother did not downplay its seriousness. Even at that age, I knew retaliation of that sort could mean death for a prisoner. I knew that every moment in those camps could quickly become a life-or-death situation. My great-grandmother, of course, was not killed, but instead forced to do extra labor. The story would then conclude with my grandmother and her sister being born in Germany after the war's end. In my limited, naive thought— a happy ending.
A few months before my great-grandmother passed in 2013, I came home from school with a writing assignment. I had to make a journal entry about the person whom I considered to be my idol. My idol was an easy choice, and I quickly finished my assignment. The next day, we were asked to read our entries aloud to the rest of the class, and I volunteered to be one of the first to read. I was proud of my Baba; I found her strength beyond admirable, and so I was excited to have a chance to share her remarkable story with my peers. I made sure to include her slapping a nazi in my entry, which was the part I was most excited to share because in my mind, she was a total badass. She was the person I respected most in life, and I wanted other people to feel that same sense of awe and admiration that I did.
My presentation, however, did not get the sort of reaction that I had expected. Many of my classmates had chosen celebrities or their favorite singers to talk about and were met with a round of applause from the rest of the class.
It was quiet after I finished.
Nothing from my classmates, my friends, or even my teacher. I was wondering where the applause was. Why did Justin Bieber get a round of applause but nothing for my Baba? It took me a few years to figure out, but eventually, I came to the realization that not many (if any) of my peers had grown up hearing stories about how a bunch of "bad guys" wanted to kill their grandmother. I was desensitized; my classmates, on the other hand, got an early history lesson on the reality of the Holocaust.
After that and her death, I started seeing things differently. My Baba had always been a fearless heroine in a world of villains, but at some point, it stopped being a story to me. I stopped seeing her as a protagonist in a faraway world. I saw reality. Slowly, but surely, I began to understand the true gravity of the situation she had been in. I realized what survival actually meant for Jews.
I was probably ten or eleven when I walked in on my mom telling one of her friends what my great-grandmother had gone through. My mom hadn't noticed me yet, but as I walked closer, I could hear the word "rape" being used. When my mom saw me, I froze. I was young, sheltered, and had actually just only recently learned what the word rape meant. I knew the conversation had been about Baba, and I realized my mom had just said something she probably didn't want me to hear. I asked her if it was true that Baba had been raped while she was imprisoned. My mom nodded, and I stayed for the rest of the conversation.
I ended up learning that not only was she raped and sexually assaulted (as many Jewish women were in the camps), but at one point, she had escaped one of the camps she had been placed in. She didn't go very far; she wasn't trying to run away from the camp, but her life instead. She had found a river and got in, figuring she might drown or die from the freezing cold water. Suicide. But in a miracle, she was found, saved, and sent to an infirmary to recover.
My heart was broken, and I felt so confused. Here was this woman whom I always saw as the defining image of strength and resiliency— and she tried to take her own life? Someone who was brave enough to slap a nazi and managed to evade the possible danger of that— but couldn't escape being raped?
The reality is that she was a victim of one of the most horrible atrocities of the modern era. I realized I needed to stop seeing her as some invincible force or superhuman idol— I needed to see her as a person who was just as vulnerable as the average being. A person who was afraid, someone who probably thought about her own mortality daily.
I looked beyond the surface and thought deeper. As a child, I always wondered why she never wrote a book about what she went through. I knew many survivors had published their experiences to share with the world. Why didn't she?
I think now that maybe this part of her life was something she wanted to keep quiet, for her own sake. I wouldn't blame her; who would want to be constantly reminded of such suffering? It's probably why I know so few details about this point in her life. It's understandable to tell a limited and palatable summary to her daughter, who then tells that summary to her own daughter and grandson. Telling a summary is probably less of a burden than giving your family an entire rundown of the worst years of your life. I know that there's a lot that I don't know. I don't even know what camps she had been held at. What her day-to-day life was like there. I'm curious, but knowing what I know now, I'm not sure that I want to know all the details of her life. Even on days when curiosity creeps in, I think if she were still alive, and I had the chance to ask her about everything she went through— I wouldn't. I wouldn't want to put her through that. Memories are powerful things. Some can be happy, others are a burden to the mind.
I always wondered how it could be possible for such a nightmare to become a reality, the Holocaust. Why was no one able to stop it? Why did it go on for so long? Why did so many people simply allow and encourage the suffering of millions? Why Jews? Why Baba? I had a lot of questions but couldn't come up with any satisfying answers. Really, it boils down to ignorance, hatred, and people not bothering to care or utilize empathy. All of those together in a society are a recipe for disaster. Fatal disaster. It hurts to think about my great-grandmother's story, but she was lucky in the grand scheme of things. So many people died before they even got the chance to live.
People tend to think of those who died as a statistic or a number— six million if we're only counting the Jewish people. People will see the scale of loss and think, "wow, that's horrible," and then move on. Not everyone looks past the numbers and bothers to consider what lies beneath. Sometimes I wonder if most people lack empathy. Maybe it's a lack of education. Either way, the passive nature that many people have about topics like this is a societal poison. I haven't had many run-ins with antisemitism myself, but there have been comments I have overheard, uncomfortable statements passed off as jokes, and unwarranted opinions. As a child, I never knew what to say; most people and my peers didn't know I was Jewish unless I told them outright, so I never said anything. Even now, while people my age are supposedly more mature and have moved past edgy "jokes" about the Holocaust, I don't always know what to say. The internet, though, is a hive for antisemitism. People think that there are no consequences to what they say. It's easy to hide behind a computer screen and spout hate for anyone and everyone to see. It's easier to call people out from behind a screen, though. I've seen my fair share of antisemitic garbage that's posted out there. But everything is different in person. It's shocking to hear someone say something you never expected to come out of their mouth. It really throws you off. It's worrying that people can't seem to grasp the seriousness of antisemitism. Sometimes I think— have we learned nothing? And that's the problem. No one learns beyond the surface level and the statistics. No one bothers to learn about the people. This is why the stories of survivors need to be shared and heard.
I am not my great-grandmother. I know of her life— a life that I don't even have the full details of— a life I know I could never fully understand. I do know, though, how vital it is that people are aware of the cruelty that exists in the world, and the cruelty that the world is capable of. I know how important it is for people to be aware of what others went through. I know that these stories cannot stop being told. I know that they cannot be forgotten. I hate to think of a day when my Baba's memory might be forgotten. So, to the best of my ability and with the knowledge I have, this is the life of Musa Woronkow:
Musa had been born in the USSR, most likely between 1920 and 1923. She lived in Crimea, in the town of Yevpatoria. She lived with her mother, who was from Crimea, and her father, a Turkish man who came to know the USSR as his home. I do not know much of Musa's childhood, but at some point when she was a young adult, is when she was imprisoned. I'm often surprised to hear that most people think that the atrocities of the Holocaust occurred in Western Europe and Germany alone; then again, Holocaust education is often neglected. Eastern Europe is where some of the most awful things could be found. At this time in her life, she went through something that no human should have ever had to experience, but she was one of millions. Thankfully, she survived. At some point, she found herself in Germany. At the end of the war, she lived in the Mittenwald DP camp, where many Ukrainian and Russian Jews had settled. She married, and eventually, my grandmother and her sister were born in Munich. Her life slowly came back to a sense of normalcy, and the family was sponsored to immigrate to the United States in the 1950s. They settled in New York, where they made a new life for themselves. Musa worked as a nurse who was well-respected by her colleagues. She was an intellectual who had a passion for learning arts and helping others. She learned English as well as Greek and Latin. She was a mother and a wife. Unfortunately, her husband passed away only about a decade into living in the United States. Her new life wasn't without trials— she struggled with alcoholism, being a widow, and I'm sure she struggled with her past as well. Her life itself was a miracle. She was blessed with a very, very long life. I got to know her and be a part of her life for nine years. I would visit her on Sundays with my grandparents. In her old age, she had forgotten how to speak English, so I would rely on my grandmother to tell me what she was saying and what I should say back. These visits continued until her passing.
Even after constantly butchering phrases in broken Russian to my great-grandmother and studying the language under the guidance of my grandmother, I never went far with my comprehension of the Russian language. In fact, I would say I am completely incompetent in the language. However, there is one phrase I learned that I doubt I will ever forget. At the end of every visit I had with my Baba, my grandmother and I would stand by her bedside, give her a kiss goodbye, and tell her, "Я люблю тебя" (ya lyublyu tebya). I love you.
That phrase wasn't hard to memorize; I didn't have to rely on my grandmother whispering the pronunciation in my ear every time we'd leave. I was quick to learn it because I meant it, and it was important to me that she knew I meant it. I loved her for her. I still do and always will.
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