In Honor of my Mother...Forgiveness

In honor of my Mother…. Forgiveness


A few weeks ago was Holocaust Remembrance Day, Yom Ha Shoah it is called. I am a Holocaust Survivor’s daughter. I have lived my entire life learning about the Holocaust and, in a way, living with the memories of it through unconscious words and actions of those that came before me. I have heard the stories of Jewish persecution not only regarding the time period of World War II, but about the thousands of years of history of the Jewish people. This re-telling of the atrocities of the Holocaust and our history of persecution as a people created fear within me at a young age. Even though we feel safe in this country we live in today, the fear of this persecution become part of me through anxiety and fear and I believe we share these feelings as a collective group. This fear of persecution sustains our anger towards the individuals and communities that participated in this horrific genocide and I believe it keeps the hostility fueled within us. The question becomes…can we change this feeling?

I would like to tell you a little bit about my mother first. I can actually write an entire book about her life, it is a story of intense and miraculous experiences, but I will give you a tiny glimpse into her journey for the sake of this writing. My Mother was an amazing woman. She changed her name to Aviva after she went to Israel in 1946, but her birth name was Hanolore. She was born in Germany in 1927 and she lived a relatively normal life within a middle class community until Hitler came into power. She witnessed “Kristallnacht” in 1938, or the night of the broken glass in which the store fronts and books owned by the Jewish people in Germany were looted and burned. Her father, Alpert Adler, as the story has been told, died of a heart attack, most likely from the stress of his business being forcibly taken from him or boycotted by the business community. He was buried in the Jewish cemetery in their home town of Gisen near Frankfurt, and his grave is still erected there, next to a Memorial that now commemorates the Jews of this small city placed there by the government 40 years later, and in which my Mother was invited back to Germany to witness.

In 1939, when the Nazi’s demanded that all Jews be deported from their homes, my grandmother had an opportunity to send my mother, Hannalor, who was about 11 or 12 years old at the time, on a “kinder transport”, a train for children, heading to Switzerland. Once safely there, my mother, and the children her age, including the well known Ruth Westheimer, Sex Therapist, stayed in an Orphanage with other German-Jewish children and with a Swiss family who took her into their home until the war ended. After the war in 1945, she made many attempts to find information about her loved ones, only to discover that she was the only survivor of her immediate family, her mother and older sister, Margot, were both killed in Auschwitz. Soon after the war, all of the children who were living in Switzerland made aliyah (moved to live) in Israel. Aviva was about 18 years old at that time and lived on a Kibbutz, a co-operative agricultural community, and soon afterward she moved to Jerusalem and became a nurse who served in the army during Israel’s War of Independence in 1948. Some 10 years later, she came to America, where she met my Father, married and had three children of her own.

I am telling you a piece of her story because I want you to know a small part of her history and understand some of the stories that I have heard throughout my life. Because of my Mother’s history, I became extremely interested in the Holocaust when I was a teenager and I studied it whenever I had a chance to learn. I read books, took many classes at Hebrew School and Confirmation, watched movies and eventually signed up to become a trained interviewer for the Shoah Foundation for Visual History. My mother passed away from Breast Cancer over 19 years ago, and at the time, after her death, I found learning first hand about the Holocaust through these interviews was a way for me to connect to her.

I would like to have a conversation with the spirit of my Mom, Aviva, sharing what I believe her thoughts would be and the wisdom she would impart for all of us today.

Do you Hate Hitler?

I did. I lived with the pain and suffering of the millions that were murdered. I lost my family and I lost part of my soul to the terrible atrocities that happened during that time.

Do you think we should all keep that hatred alive?

No. It is the past.


How do we let it go?

We forgive.

Forgive Hitler?…he was one of the most horrible human beings in the past century to have ever lived. He tortured and murdered millions of people who did absolutely nothing to him, they seemed to be innocent victims in his path of brutality. How can we possibly forgive?

First of all, I am not saying FORGET! We have to learn from what happened so that we can continue to teach kindness, acceptance and peace. But we have to understand that Hitler’s actions came from a wounded and angry place inside his soul. What he did was unimaginable BUT we will never move away from our own fears of persecution unless we forgive.

I still can’t let go...That seems impossible. Also, what good does forgiving do? Hitler is dead. Why do I need to forgive a dead person?

First of all, know that Hitler, in some way, is in his own personal Hell. His soul, if you believe is eternal, is probably going through its own horrendous torture. In fact, his death was by suicide. Only God knows about his internal turmoil. Secondly, the forgiveness is for you to move forward in your own heart, to clear your own soul and live in more peace within yourself. If you can see that every evil person has his or her own personal tragedy written in their story, one in which love was blocked and most likely used against them in their past, then you can see how angry and destructive human beings can become. If we forgive, we move out of fear and we are no longer victims of the actions.

How does removing our fear keep us from being victims?

Fear is a feeling and energy. When we hold onto it, we actually attract the situation or actions that we fear. If we are living with the fear of persecution, we will be persecuted. If we can somehow let go of the fear, we can be free of persecution.

Sounds so simple…How do we do that?

It is not so simple. It takes awareness, acceptance and trust. We want to hold onto our fear…we believe it has protected us in the past, but that is not always true. It is not working for us anymore. We have to trust that if we take the risk of removing the fear we will be protected in a new way.

Protected…from what?

Protected from each other’s negative power. Knowing that we won’t be attacked by unscrupulous rage if we do not hold that fearful energy within us. If we can be in love with each other instead of in fear, we can actually become protected from the hurtful actions of others regarding that particular fear.


I am not sure I understand all of this?

It’s ok… in time, you will understand.


What can come out of all of this forgiveness and letting go of fear?

Can you imagine that if we can let go of this primal fear as Jews that we have held onto, not only from the era of the Holocaust, but from thousands of years of persecution, what we can accomplish in our lives and in the world today. To start with, if we can let go and forgive the persecutors of yesterday, we can be on the road to letting go and forgiving the people in our lives today; our family members, our friends, our neighbors and even our enemies. We can create a path to peace, first within ourselves and then hopefully, spreading all over the world.

Can we actually create Peace this way?

This is a beautiful way.

Is this message only for the Jewish People?

Of course not, most human beings have the fear of persecution within them from their own history. Think about the African American slaves and even as women in the world today. Many women were persecuted for being "spiritual" or teaching paganism or witch craft. As women, we live with the fear as well. Letting go of this fear is a message for everyone.



My additional thoughts:

Forgiveness is one of the most difficult feelings to access. How do we find new ways to access this emotion in the most extreme examples? Can you imagine how we would feel if we can forgive others on a deep level? Can you imagine how we would feel to forgive ourselves and let go of the shame we feel about the words and actions we have said and done to others in our own lives? We could change the patterns of thinking that we have held onto and move to a better place of love within us and around us.

On another note… I commemorated the Holocaust Memorial a few weeks ago by participating in a Peace Walk with Salaam Shalom in the Santa Monica Mountains. Salaam Shalom is a non-profit organization that brings together Arabs and Israelis to create peaceful co-existence by creating a space where children learn together in a co-operative educational environment in Israel. This way of learning, I believe and hope, is helping to change this region from hatred to love by healing the existing wounds and creating a path for forgiveness in order to move forward with peace. In light of what is happening in the Middle East right now, what would happen if, in our hearts, we started to forgive ?


I saw a bumper sticker this week that read:

“I am black by birth and American by slavery” on a car driving around Los Angeles. This statement made me see that the African Americans in this country have a lot of forgiving to do as well. The bumper sticker reflected the anger and wounds that are still carried around by many. I hope and pray that we can all forgive each other and move forward into a better time and place.