It is OK to be silent

The dominant narrative among children of Holocaust survivors, the so-called second generation, is that their parents never spoke about the atrocities that they endured and opted to remain silent, to repress and entirely ignore the past. These children of the second generation are now parents themselves, and have found themselves holding bits and pieces of information without any ability to crack the black boxes in their parents' hearts.

Over the years, many of the second generation have made great efforts to convince their survivor parents to divulge their stories. Their efforts were fueled by the immense fear that their families' stories would be buried forever and the family heritage would not be passed down to future generations. Investigators, recordings, school projects, family get-togethers; anything became a legitimate means of extracting stories about those terrible years, be it overtly or covertly. Many of my friends have been occupied with this issue for the last 30 years.

But not me. I am one of the silent second generation. I am one of those who do not turn on the radio or watch television on Holocaust Remembrance Day. I don't cry on Holocaust Remembrance Day. I have never hosted events meant to find my roots, nor have I ever recorded my parents speaking.

Because at our house, people talked. They wrote, they sculpted, they cried. My father founded an action committee of survivors from the village of Mizocz (then in Poland, now in Ukraine) which met every week to discuss how best to preserve the memories. He brought the German man who helped them hide in a forest to Israel and organized a march for survivors at Yad Vashem's Avenue of the Righteous Among the Nations. The German planted a tree there.

Using only one finger and "lots of white out," my father typed dozens of pages documenting the details of the lives of every family member who was murdered as well as every resident of his town, including himself. He would sit at his desk day and night and fill dozens of Pages of Testimony for all the victims, giving them eternal life in the Yad Vashem archives. He raised funds to build the Wolyn Jews' Memorial Hall in Givatayim. He made sure to have a memorial ceremony for the victims there every year, and even forced us to participate, very much against our will, as children.

The house was always filled with people whose entire life's mission was to remember. My mother would bake cakes for them and serve them tea. When he died, my father left us a parchment, written by a Torah scribe, bearing the names of all our murdered family members, from both his and my mother's sides. It was a collective headstone. On the parchment, in enormous letters, it said, "Be careful and very vigilant lest you forget."

And I chose to remain silent. I chose to put it all aside and devour life. He documented, preserved, reminded us incessantly never to forget. He did all the work for me. My children never heard a single story from me. As a teenager I chose to make the most of life and live well. I decided run forward and conquer every challenge. Never to fall, never to cry, never to be weak. To win, win, win.

But today, it all came to the surface. Every Holocaust Remembrance Day opens up locked doors and releases thoughts. We are in the midst of an accelerated shift from Holocaust to resurrection. From this position of strength, it is OK to look back and remember the atrocities. Now this memory cannot weaken me. The fear is dissipating. It is OK to shed a tear, to peek at the carnage through a crack in the curtain. I won't lift the curtain just yet. I will do things slowly, not all at once. But in our family, these days, anything is possible.

Zippi Koren is the CEO of Israel Hayom.