The Courage to Choose Hope

May 14, 1943. Eighty-three years ago to this day.

This date has lived inside me my entire life, as told by my father and internalized by myself, over the years.

On that day, my father escaped from the Novogrudok slave labor camp in western Belarus after nearly ten months there. Most of his family had already been murdered by the Nazis, including his parents, brother, and sister. Only he and his sister Fanya remained. Holocaust survivors living with pain, guilt, trauma but also with a deep desire to live, to fight back and to help defeat the monstrosity of the Nazis and their many collaborators.

Fanya served as a secretary in the camp because she spoke German well. Through a guard who was a local Belarussian peasant who had once known the family, an extraordinary possibility emerged: during a change of guard, two people might be allowed to escape. It was not easy to come by, the guard was slow to agree but eventually he gave in. Perhaps it was after the May 7^th massacre in the camp of half the inmates at the time.

Why did the guard agree? We never fully knew. I am not sure my father and aunt did either.

My father believed the man carried guilt over his role in the extermination of Jews in his hometown of Zhetl in August 1942, and feared future retribution from the partisans. Whether that was true or not, no one can really know. The Holocaust was also a time of impossible moral ambiguity, terror, fear, sudden decisions, and unpredictable human choices, consistently at the brink of your very existence.

Fanya gave up her own chance to escape so another man familiar with the forests, and who had smuggled in a gun could guide my father. My father never forgot his sister’s deep act of love and devotion. They were the only remnants of their family, and each of them carried it all inside them.

At the last moment, once my father lifted the barbed wire to escape as the guard turned his head, a third person ran towards the wire and began slipping under it as my father had done.

Miraculously, no shots were fired.

My father reached the forests, joined the partisans, survived the war, and eventually lived to be over 96 years old. Fanya later escaped in the incredible tunnel escape from the Novogrudok camp in September, 1943. She lived to be over 100. Her story, and that of the amazing tunnel escape has not received the credit it deserves. It will soon I believe.

For me, these stories have always been about more than survival. It is about the fragile unpredictability of existence, the courage to act without certainty, and the decision to choose hope even when there is no guarantee of survival. 

My father’s stories became a light unto me throughout my life. Even seven years after his passing, I miss him deeply. He is with me as I forge my life further into my 67^th year and the long pilgrimage that awaits me.

Perhaps one of the great lessons he left me is this: life is precious beyond words, and even in times of darkness and crisis, we are still called to choose life - and to practice radical hope.

I invite you to view a short clip from our family visit to the site of the Novogrudok labor camp in August, 2000. My father had never been back there until that moment. I will never forget these moments when he and his wife and sons tread on this soil to recall, to recollect, to mark and to honor.

https://youtu.be/UjjC-5RMqcs

These stories remain as sacred legacy for me to remember, share and to pass on to future generations.