Bonnie Adler is a Westport-based freelance writer. The other day, she posted a compelling story on CNN Travel.
It’s an intensely personal reminder that the past is closer than we think. Bonnie begins:
Long before I could speak of it, I knew my mother had blue numbers on the soft skin of her inside forearm. My father had a similar stamp, as did my aunt and uncle. I understood they were very happy in our small family circle, but once upon a time, in a past I did not comprehend, they were not.
They spared us their separate tragic stories for as long as they could, but my sisters and I eventually came to know the bare-bones facts they shared: Parents dead, siblings lost, my father’s brother missing, never found.
Bonnie Adler (right) and her mother.Bon
I am no different than many children of Holocaust survivors. We share a common denominator. We are mostly recipients of overwhelming love born out of loss and survival guilt. And we share a responsibility to remember and honor those we love and the memory of those they lost.
So when an email came, with information that for the first time there was to be an official ceremony acknowledging the 75th anniversary of the liquidation of the ghetto in the city of Radom, Poland, my two sisters and I were gripped by a primal reaction.
Bonnie’s trip to Poland was harrowing, exhausting and inspiring. Click here to read the entire story.
