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    The Everyday Remember: Holocaust Legacy
    The Everyday Remember: Holocaust Legacy
    The Everyday Remember: Holocaust Legacy
    Ebook161 pages1 hour

    The Everyday Remember: Holocaust Legacy

    By David Weiss

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    About this ebook

    My grandparents, Jack and Genia Grinbaum, managed to Survive and Thrive under the most cruel of circumstances. Born in Poland in the 1920's they were on their way to a hard-working and fulfilling family-oriented lives. While Anti-Semitic rhetoric and actions were a part of day-to-day life in their Polish villages, their families had lives that were filled with meaning and purpose. And then came the Holocaust.

    Grandpa Jack lost his mother, his father, two brothers and countless other family members and friends. He survived the Miechow Ghetto, several Concentration Camps (escaping twice, once from Plaszow, the Camp shown in Schindler's List) and another near death experience at a Pogrom in Kelce, Poland. While this would have been enough to break most men, Grandpa Jack survived...and then he thrived. While in Kelce he married Genia, went to another Displaced Persons Camp (Regensberg) and found a way to enter Belgium illegally and use his tailoring skills to impress enough people to be granted a Green Card. He paid for his wife, her only surviving sister and her new husband to join him in Belgium. Success, on a grand scale, was just around the corner for Grandpa Jack, first in Belgium and then in the United States. It was an unusual, inspiring journey for Milwaukee, Wisconsin's premier retailer of men's formal wear.

    My Grandma Genia was a partner through it all. She came from a religious family in Maczki, just outside of Sosnoweic, Poland. She witnessed the murder of her parents and four of her sisters. She also lost her brother in Auschwitz. Grandma Genia suvived well over four years of pure hell, almost all of it at Parschnitz Concentration Camp. While she re--united with her only surviving sister and a few distant cousins, her life was destroyed. While Grandma Genia had moments of happiness and joy after the war, the PTSD symptoms and bi-polar symptoms would haunt her until she would pass away. Grandma Genia was a true angel who suffered through unspeakable horrors that go beyond description. Despite living with a heavy heart, she raised a daughter and had two grandchildren and was the most wonderful, kindest human being that I have ever known.

    This book begins with a grandson/grandfather interview. This was primarily taken from my 2011 interview with Grandpa Jack but pieces were also taken from previous interviews in the late 1980's, 1990's and one from 2009. The Grinbaum's were incredibly generous to share these experience with me so that others could learn about the good and the unspeakably evil that lurks in human souls. This book then has inspirational, funny stories about the Grinbaums as well as some suggestions for what "we" should do to carry on the Legacy. There are interviews with people who knew the Grinbaums before the war, dozens and dozens of pictures and much more. This book will leave you inspired and help you gain a new perspective of "what's possible" in both good and bad ways.

    Whether you are new to the study of the Holocaust or whether you have read a lot of books on this topic, this book will provide you with a unique perspective, knowledge of time period and a sense of the Survivor-Spirit.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherExpert Promotions LLC
    Release dateOct 3, 2018
    ISBN9781386425281
    The Everyday Remember: Holocaust Legacy

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      Book preview

      The Everyday Remember - David Weiss

      Table of Contents

      The Everyday Remember: Holocaust Legacy

      Copyright © 2017 by David Weiss, Expert Promotions LLC

      All rights reserved. This book, The Everyday Remember: Holocaust Legacy or any portion may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher, Expert Promotions LLC and David Weiss, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

      Second Edition, 2017

      ISBN: 978-1-68419-709-5

      Expert Promotions LLC

      David@ExpertPromotions.org  www.HolocaustLegacyBooks.com

      The Everyday Remember

      Holocaust Legacy

      David Weiss

      ––––––––

      Table of Contents

      Dedication

      Escaping Death, Embracing Life

      A Grandson’s Perspective

      Mayses and Bubba Mayses

      The Everyday Remember

      About the Author

      A lot of you cared. Just not enough.

      —Jay Asher, Author

      Dedications

      I dedicate this book to my grandpa, Jack Grinbaum and to my grandma, Genia Grinbaum. Grandpa Jack was an incredibly warm and loving person with an endless appetite for life. He was, without a doubt, a perfect grandfather. Grandpa Jack was the consummate winner with an infectious smile and a constant ability to brighten up any room he was in. His life and presence were a gift to everyone he crossed paths with. As Oscar Wilde said Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go. During his Eighty-eight years on this Earth, Grandpa Jack brought happiness, a positive energy and usually a song into every room he entered.

      Grandma Genia was the most honest, kind soul I have ever met. Her love for her family knew no limits. Grandma Genia lived a tough life but thankfully she had those times where she was able to enjoy the freedom that was so hard to attain.  Grandma Genia was one of the worlds truly righteous human beings.  Nobody has been as nice or as good to me as Grandma Genia. If the concept of God judging your life and deciding about Heaven/Hell is indeed true, God did not deliberate at all when it came to Genia. I’m sure it would have been something to the effect of Thank you. I’m sorry for the extreme hardships and I bless you on a life well-lived. Grandma Genia is the angel looking over her family and friends.

      I am unbelievably lucky to have had these two incredible human beings as my grandparents. It is the honor of a lifetime to share their story.

      Prologue

      Death ends a life, not a relationship.

      ― Mitch Albom, Author

      One of the most common questions that I get asked is When did you decide to write these books about your grandparents? The answer that immediately comes to mind is that the writing process began the day I was born. At least that’s when my small role in it began. The books actually began to write themselves many decades earlier. When events this unreal play out and stories unfold in this fashion, it becomes the obligation of future generations to retell the stories and events.

      I was extremely close to all four of my grandparents.  I knew that I had this obligation and an opportunity to record their life experiences. For various understandable reasons, none of them did the formal Holocaust storytelling recordings. If anyone could get them to open up about their experiences, it would be me or my sister (their only grandchildren). I was the one that lived near all four of them until I was in my later 20’s (Weiss grandparents) and mid/late 30’s (the Grinbaums). This gave me the extraordinary opportunity to ask and have answered all of the questions I had. Both me and my sister had and have a great interest in our grandparents’ journey.  They were sometimes reluctant to share their experiences simply because it was difficult to shift their mindset from the present day back to that difficult era in their lives. Fortunately I found the ‘right’ time and the full stories were told. I have interviews with them from 1989 (Both sides), 1992 (Both sides), 2001 (Weiss’s), 2009 (Grandpa Jack) and 2011 (Grandpa Jack).  While none of my grandparents looked forward to it, once they began it seemed like they found moments of satisfaction and knew that it was a good decision to share/tell all. My Grandma Grinbaum spoke most often about the war, but I wasn’t able to get the same type of interview with/from her. She suffered with Dementia for many, many years and I wasn’t able to get the in-depth information that I did from the others. My Grandpa Grinbaum shares what he knows about my grandma’s experience in this book so that certainly provides considerable additional insight to go along with what Grandma told me over the years. The Weiss’s full interviews are available in Czech Mates and Holocaust Underground.

      While I did video interviews initially, I found that recording them on audio tape actually worked better. It seemed like a better conversation and a more comfortable setting for my grandparents. Then I found that if there was no recording device, it was even better. In these cases (no recording devices) I felt a divine presence with all four of my grandparents. I wasn’t just listening and remembering what they were saying. A whole new area was forming inside of my mind. Or perhaps past generations were stepping forward and planting this as forever knowledge in my brain. Perhaps what they were saying already was known by my DNA and simply needed to be activated. While I have no firm idea or concept of God, something divine was going on as I was interviewing them. God and past generations were present in some way. Whichever form of interview was conducted, it was always so poignant and I was always taken to another almost other-worldly place. I remember right after the interviews, getting a pen and notepad and being able to write down thirty, forty, fifty pages of what they said. I remembered each word and could hear their voice as I was writing.

      It is never easy to transcribe (audio interviews) but it was also the honor to be able to finish that part of the job. I had begun transcribing them right after doing the initial interviews years ago. I knew that the next time I listened to them or saw them would be after they passed away. I figured that it would be hard to hear their voices after their death....and it was. I always feel odd because all of my grandparents had to handle so much death, yet I struggled with their deaths so much, even though all four lived long, full lives. This interview is almost entirely from the longest, most extensive session that Grandpa Jack did with me in 2011. It was done on audio tape and he was more emotional than I had ever heard/seen him. He did mention details and answer questions with very revealing answers in the previous interviews which I added into this book. The most amazing thing is that he talked so much about the massacre that happened right after he left the Kibbutz or Displaced Persons Camp, but he didn’t focus on the name of it. He had seen so much murder during the Holocaust that it was just another tragedy in his life. He didn’t know until a few years before he died that the Kielce Pogrom had been so widely documented and known about.

      My reflections about my grandma and grandpa are shared in the next part of this book.  I include some funny stories, my own reflections and more about how they viewed the world as well as some lessons from their struggles and successes. Their life-story contains time-tested wisdom. It also has considerable comedic value. This book is about surviving, but it is just as much about thriving. I also have commentary from my grandfather’s first cousin in Israel and a friend who knew Grandpa Jack from the Miechow Ghetto.

      The last section, The Everyday Remember, contains thoughts about how we can and should carry on the Holocaust Legacy. Our main focus must be on Human and Civil Rights. We must be strong, unapologetic defenders of the Rights of all. This chapter tracks how the Human and Civil Rights violations that occurred before Hitler’s rise to power helped to contribute to the Nazi large-scale genocide of Jews and other minority populations.

      In the first part of this book (the interview section) I had to make some decisions about proper grammar and word choice. I want readers to understand everything but I also want to keep the flow of my grandpa’s message in his voice. He spoke fluent Polish, Yiddish, French, German and Flemish and some Italian, Hebrew, Russian and Dutch. English was not his best language.  Yiddish was his native tongue followed by Polish. English was probably only his 4th best language behind German. So there are times when you can tell things aren’t grammatically correct, but I felt it was best to keep it as-is. Other times I had to make it easier for the reader to follow so I adjusted his grammar. Still other times I had to translate his Yiddish words into English or change things around a bit so the reader could understand.

      Grandpa Jack was a supremely confident, capable, fun-loving man who always captured the spotlight. He had a big personality and an unparalleled love for having fun and for his family. As you will read in the interview, he understood and appreciated his immense abilities and many talents. He had every reason to be confident. He really could do it all and he actually did do it all during his incredible lifetime. He was the consummate Alpha-Male and one of life’s true winners. When you saw Grandpa Jack, you knew you were looking at ‘the real deal’.  He Won the Life.

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