Living with Hitler

“They’re coming back. Make no mistake about it. Doesn’t matter what you think you are, they are coming back for you. You are a Jew,” my mother often told me.

I’m not. I’m an atheist. At 5, I told her so, thus creating a chasm between us that went unresolved, even with our last goodbye, when she died of lymphoma nearly 20 years ago.

My mother displayed her fears, though always quietly, through the years I was growing up with her continual barrage of warnings. As children, she insisted my sister and I go to Hebrew school, regardless of my protests as an atheist. In my teens, she insisted we join her in watching The Holocaust mini-series. She sat riveted through each episode, hand to mouth to stifle gasping in horror.

Regardless of her indoctrination, I didn’t feel afraid the Nazis would return because in my family then, and my own family now, the Nazis never left.

I will not deny my mother’s fears were warranted. She’d lived through WWII, saw the rise of fascism allow the murders of six million of her family and faith. She was old enough to witness Hitler’s speeches ignite the German underclass to hate, and blame everyone but themselves for their strife. She saw the world forever changed by our ability to destroy it, with the advent of the atomic bomb.

I tried often to dissuade my mother’s fears. I argued, “We’ve learned, Mom. That’s the best thing about us. When we’re standing on the precipice of disaster, we DO change!”