Last month, my mom and I took the trip of a lifetime to discover her parents’ homes in Maramures County, Romania. It was something I’d always wanted to do, yet I couldn’t imagine how we would do it. When I found out that the town where my grandfather was from, Sighet, had a gathering of Holocaust survivors’ descendants, I knew I had to seize the opportunity.
I was honored to be invited to speak at the Sighet Town Hall to my fellow gathering participants about the experience of returning to Romania and remembering the Holocaust. The text of my speech is below. You can also watch a video of my speech which was featured in a local Romanian newspaper by clicking here and skipping to minute 51.
My name is Emily Greenspan. My first name begins with an “E” because I was named after my great-grandfather, Eugene, who was killed in Auschwitz.
I am a third generation Holocaust survivor. I am the grandchild of two Jewish people from Maramures county whose incredible luck and remarkable resilience enabled them to survive the genocide that erased most of their families.
Though I grew up in a sheltered environment in a suburb of New York City, at a young age, I learned about what happened to Grandma Lilly and Grandpa Allen and therefore understood that I lived in a world in which terrible things could happen to innocent people.
I wanted desperately to understand how such a thing could happen at all, let alone to my family. I was so disturbed by it that I read every young adult novel I could find about the Holocaust. I imagined myself as the main character of each book, hiding or running from the Nazis. I was quite an anxious child and often imagined bad things happening to my family, fearing, for example, that my parents would get into a car accident and never return home.
Thanks to the support of a wonderful therapist and social justice-minded Jews, I now understand that as a third generation survivor, I carry the trauma of the Holocaust with me in my body, in my mind, in my soul. I believe many of us here today carry this inter-generational trauma with us. I believe we have have the opportunity to heal from it, to be the generation to heal from it, not just for our own good, but on behalf of survivors and those who were murdered.
For all of us to come here to remember the richness of our families’ lives as well as the tragedy that befell them brings peace and justice to their legacies. And unlike many survivors who had to keep quiet about their experience because of the shame and stigma of having survived such a horrible thing, we here, today, have the opportunity in this space - in this town hall nonetheless - to openly talk about what happened, to bear witness, to confront it head-on.
With the support of each other in this beautiful community of surviving families, I believe we can heal and maybe turn a new page perhaps even leaving behind or minimizing some of the traumatized thought patterns that no longer serve us. That of course also takes a lot of self work, self care, and patience, but I believe it’s possible. If my grandparents taught me anything it’s that life is precious. We should not be so overwhelmed by our family’s past that we cannot enjoy the present moment and enjoy the lives we are fortunate to have.
At the same time we will of course never forget. We cannot. And though it’s a heavy burden to bear, we should take it upon ourselves to educate others about antisemitism because our voices as descendants of survivors carry a lot of weight. Our connection to what happened is more powerful than what anyone can learn by watching a movie or reading a book.
On a different note I feel I should share my belief that most kinds of hatred stem from the same ugly root: the fear of what is different. And we are not the only ones who were seen as different. After all, the Holocaust did not only happen to Jews. Disabled people, queer people, and Roma people were also targeted because they did not “fit in”.
I believe all of our struggles are inter-connected. We should have the courage to open our hearts, no matter how hard it might be, to learn about other kinds of oppression. If we hope to fight antisemitism in the 21st century, we should stand alongside other people who face danger just for being who they are. If we as Jews stand in solidarity with other marginalized communities when they need us, they will stand up for us when we need them, too.
I commend my fellow 2G, 3G, and 4G survivors for your bravery in coming here. It’s an incredibly difficult thing to witness both the beauty and tragedy of this place.
May the memory of those lost and the memory of survivors, most of whom are now gone as well, be a blessing.