I am the granddaughter of Holocaust survivors. My grandmother, Rifka, was married with four children when the Nazis murdered her husband. Alone with children to raise, her young son Avrumi, 12 years old, took her shift working so that she could prepare for Passover with her other children, sister and sister’s children. When shouts of “Yudenrein!” “Jew round up” rang through the streets, Rifka took the children to the empty space below the floor boards to hide. As she was closing the hatch, Avrumi ran into the house. “Come! Come!,” she called frantically. “I can’t,” he said. “The Germans saw me, if I don't come out, they will know there is a hiding place. I just came to say goodbye.” When the Nazis barged in, Rifka listened through the floorboards as her son told them he had run into the house in a random search for food. She would never see him again. Two more of her children as well as her sister, nieces and nephews were killed in subsequent round ups. Her brother had been killed earlier in the war. Rifka was left with one son, Shlomo. 14 years old. They worked and hid in farms, in hay stacks and behind false doors. Exposed in the fields one day, they ran together, chased like animals by the Nazi’s. Shlomo told his mother, “If you don't let go of my hand, we will both die.” He let go. Shlomo went one way, Rifka went the other. The Nazis shot him in the back. With no husband or children to live for, Rifka joined the Partisans in the woods. After the war, she lay sick in bed with no will to live. Shlomo, meanwhile, had survived the gunshot. After the war as he searched for family, he heard a woman singing a familiar song. “Where did you hear that song?” he asked her. She told him a woman who lay dying had been humming it. “Is she still alive? Please, bring me to her.” And so Shlomo was reunited with his mother. In a displaced persons camp in Germany, Rifka married a man named Zalman whom she had met in the partisans. Zalman had lost his wife and three children to the Nazis but had one surviving son, Al. Together, Rifka and Zalman had two more children. Shep, born in the DP camp and Fayge (my mother) born in Bolivia where they moved after being sponsored by cousins. Zalman fell ill and the family moved to NY for treatment. Unfortunately he died when my mother was 2.5 years old. Left alone with children to raise, Rifka bought a farm in NJ. Back then, being a single parent meant your children could be taken from you. She needed a husband fast. A man named Berche, also a survivor, whose wife and two children were murdered, remarried after the war and had a daughter. His second wife, Dubye, died on the boat to America. A widower with a daughter to raise, he needed a wife to keep his daughter from a state run orphanage. Someone introduced Berche to Rifka and they married. I was raised with their memories. Their tears and their fears. There was no Sabbath when my grandfather didn’t cry, no day my grandmother didn’t stare silently into a past I could not accompany her to. Each spoke 4- 5 languages. Each had rebuilt their lives over and over again...But despite their pain, they were full of love. Their pride in their families, their belief in goodness...I cannot imagine the depth of their loss and how much strength it took to simply continue breathing. Believing. Hoping. And loving. I grew up with a family of half, whole and step siblings. A grandfather with whom I shared no blood but with whom I shared a heart. Cousins who drove me nuts but drove hours to see me. Aunts who were crazy and who I was crazy about. Uncles who slobbered me with kisses and showered me with love. I grew up in a family that understood love and loss, the value of sacrifice and the vital importance of loyalty. I love them all for who they are and who they are to me. They are all part of the story and part of who I am. #YomHashoa