Three generations after the Holocaust, my family still hadn’t healed

T

he Holocaust ended over 70 years ago, but the lingering trauma is still bleeding into the third generation. My paternal grandfather endured suffering he never spoke about. The little we know is that he spent years in the camps and lost a wife and three children.

My grandmother survived by hiding with gentile neighbors. At the age of 15, she spent some of the war years crouched in a tiny attic. She, too, didn’t talk about it.

Raised by two Holocaust survivors, my father grew up in a home where emotion was frightening. Lest it be unleashed and become uncontrollable, it was locked under deep layers of years and silence. To survive his childhood, my father developed a shield of armor. He was emotionally impenetrable.

My father rarely made direct eye contact, even with his children. He would glance at me for a second, but then look away. Meeting someone’s gaze meant exposing something of yourself. Feelings were dangerous. If you kissed the baby too much, you were spoiling her. “I’m proud of you,” was not in the lexicon; “I love you,” certainly wasn’t. I don’t remember my father ever laughing. If something amused him, he would lift his mouth into a small smile, at most.

My mother’s parents were not survivors, but they endured hardships of their own. In their house, feelings were viewed as indulgent and shameful, and accordingly shunned. You did what you had to do, and that was that. You had to be tough to get through in life.

So what became of us, the third generation? Growing up in the late 90s, I lived in a home where emotion was nonexistent. You talked about things and happenings and ideas, but never feelings. Love, fear, and sadness didn’t exist. It was almost inappropriate to mention such feelings. And you didn’t dare make yourself vulnerable. The most you could feel perhaps was content, but certainly not insecure, excited, confused, or any other colors in the rainbow of emotions.