On Holocaust Remembrance Day, we all have family history to cherish.
The Warsaw Ghetto was a death warrant on the Jews. Among those who were forcibly collected and sealed to die within its walls was my father, Sam Gingold, then 7 years old, as well as his parents, aunt and uncle. And one more, anxiously anticipated. My grandmother was expecting.
Before the 1939 German invasion, one-third of the Warsaw population was Jewish. At its peak, the ghetto was packed with 400,000 Jews in an area less than 2.4% of the city. Whether by starvation, disease, forced labor or street executions, the Nazi plan was to exterminate the Jews. All of them.
As a child and grandchild of Holocaust survivors, I was in awe of their resilience. Most Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto did not survive. For those who did, I was left with the question of how they endured it. The answer is that they survived together. Those who escaped never could have done so alone.
During their siege of the city, the Germans dropped tons of explosive and incendiary bombs, along with heavy artillery shelling. My family’s apartment building was blown to pieces. As the Germans bombed residences and strafed fleeing citizens, nowhere was safe.
Despite the brutal invasion, some life moments couldn’t be paused. As the Germans bombed Warsaw on Sept. 19, 1939, my grandmother went into labor with her second child. My uncle would be born in a Jewish hospital that would be leveled by a direct hit from a German bomb. The baby’s first day of life would be the hospital’s last.
My grandmother said that after she fled the building with the baby and my grandfather, it was leveled with staff and patients inside. She said that it was mostly injured Polish soldiers who were there when she left.
At age 7, my father was forcibly confined to one room in the Warsaw Ghetto, along with his parents, an aunt and uncle, and his day-old unnamed baby brother. One room. No food, washing, heat, baths, privacy or future.
It was vital that my grandmother receive sustenance to nurse the baby. Others in the building were aware of the desperate plight, even trading for rotted food bits. One night, a lady in the building summoned my father to her room.
Her assigned room was one floor up from our family. While the voice was young, her appearance was haggard. Her gray hair had been falling out in clumps, leaving bare spots with rashes, my father remembered. True ages were lost in the Warsaw Ghetto.
Her husband and children were gone, the woman told my father, their lives ended by the Nazis. She offered my father her food ration, for himself and his newborn brother. It was a cup of the watery gruel, given to laborers forced to clear the streets of fallen rubble.
“You children must live and remember what happened to our family,” she said, at least in our family’s remembrances. “It is too late for us.” The dire words painfully echoed similar conversations with other building inhabitants. Each frail person was determined to share their scarce bits of food. Their purpose became the survival of others.
Before he passed in 2018, my father explained how he recalled the faces of those who were facing their end. Call it trauma or PTSD, many Holocaust survivors say that their resilience was born of a necessity to protect and save their families.
Surviving each obstacle was personal, with elements of faith, timing, risk, trust and family reliance. For them, the key was to keep moving, while embracing and communicating with family. Everyone had a vital role.
From the depths of the Warsaw Ghetto, there is much to learn. Maybe for your family legacy too. Your ancestors may not have faced Nazis, but they no doubt faced other hardships. Ask questions and discover how your family evolved. How did you get here? Before more relatives have passed, taking the vital family facts and lore with them forever, ask them and record the details. Ask now and preserve the path.
Jeffrey N. Gingold is the internationally acclaimed and award-winning author of “Tunnel, Smuggle, Collect: A Holocaust Boy.”