Shadow of War

I've been thinking a lot about my great grandmother who was living in Berlin when WWII broke out. I wonder what her experience was like and if mine is similar?

I always learned about the war knowing that my great grandfather was in Poland when it started, and then he eventually travelled to Canada through Japan and met up with his wife and daughter Eva (my grandmother) in Vancouver in 1945. Six years. I know they were in touch, but how often? When they weren't in touch, how did my great grandmother feel? Did my grandmother know what was going on? Did she miss her father? 

When the war started I'm sure that people in Berlin felt safe. Germany invaded Poland, so the war was happening in Poland. Berlin was fine. Sure, there was antisemitism, but no one thought it would be physically unsafe for Jews to go on living in Germany. I'm sure it was scary to know that there was a war, but they all probably thought it wouldn't last long. And then as Germany invaded more and more countries and other countries started fighting back it probably got scarier. But people couldn't believe that there would be another big war so soon after the Great War -- it was still fresh in most people's memory! Just like most people today remember 9/11 very well. And even once it became clear that this was a world war, I'm sure no one thought it would go on for so long. People probably had an idea in their mind that it would be less than four years, because the last war lasted four years and this can't possibly be worse than that!

Imagine how anxious my great grandmother must have been. Her partner was on the run. At some point she decided to move to London with my grandmother. What made her decide to move? How bad do things have to get before you decide to leave your home and your partner and go to a foreign country? How often were they in touch then? Did she accept that she had to parent alone? Did she have support from family or a community? I'm sure she never imagined that it would be six years before she'd be reunited with her husband. That's a long time to hold your breath. How did she cope? I bet she felt guilty about leaving him, about taking her daughter away from home. And when they left London for Vancouver that could not have been an easy decision to make. Did she think she'd move back to Berlin one day? Back to London? Did she mean to leave Europe forever? And when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, did she feel safe in Vancouver?

It's one thing to look at the outcome, at how they all survived and built themselves a beautiful life in Vancouver, but what about the process? Living with this much uncertainly is horrible, sometimes it's like I can't breathe.

And what about me? Do I stay here in Israel with the kids? Might they be safer somewhere else? I couldn't possibly leave Yossi here, but every time I think about European Jews in the holocaust I wonder why they didn't just leave? Eventually it was too late to leave, they were trapped in ghettos or else other countries just wouldn't take them in, but at the beginning of the war they could still leave and they chose to stay. Now I understand why. We have a beautiful new house that holds so much hope for the future, but not if it's going to be bombed or attacked. We live right next to the security fence, which until eight months ago wasn't a problem but now it's very worrying. Are we the next Nir Oz? Do we need to fear rockets from Surif?

So I put myself in my great grandmother's shoes and I wonder if I have the courage to do what she did. Maybe everything will be fine and my family will stay here and still survive this? What about my marriage? I never thought I'd have to ask myself these questions.