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She Raised a Trans, Autistic Child After Surviving Nazi Death Camps
Now I understand why my grandmother was so overprotective
As a child, I didn’t understand why my grandmother was so overprotective of me. Other kids could attend sleepovers and go to birthday parties, but she always kept me home.
Even letting me attend school made her fearful, and for the first few years, she often hovered outside of the school, watching me through classroom and lunchroom windows. As a kid who was often bullied, having her hovering nearby certainly didn’t help, even though she tried to prevent it.
Fear of being seen as “other.”
At a young age, my grandmother witnessed firsthand the world’s cruelty towards those who didn’t fit in with societal expectations.
She was born in 1910 in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. She confided in me she had been born different, using the outdated German word for intersex to describe herself, Hermaphrodit. This led to her not being treated kindly by her parents.
As the eldest child, her parents put her in charge of her younger siblings, because both of her parents worked to make ends meet. Her father worked as a butcher, and her mother was a social worker. They had to work because they were poor and had…
