Dana Mitch: I Was Detached About My Family's Holocaust Story....Until I Went to Buchenwald

On this episode of Our American Stories, Dana Mitch tells the story of her trip to Buchenwald, the largest concentration camp on German soil, and how she reconnected with her family because of it. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:10):
And we returned to our American stories. Up next a
story from writer Dana Mitch. Today, she shares a piece
of her family's story, a piece that occurred in Buchenwald,
one of the largest concentration camps and the largest on
German soil. Take it away, Dana.

Speaker 2 (00:33):
A few months ago, I stood at Buchenwald in a
large open field that was covered in an endless expanse
of rocky gray gravel. The ground that I gazed at
before me was where the barracks once had been. On
that unnaturally humid and sunny afternoon, thunder ominously clapped from

(00:56):
heavy storm clouds that loomed off in the distance. The
Skuyes certainly echoed my state of mind. As for anyone
that visits a concentration camp, it was a particularly sobering
and gut wrenching experience. But for me it was more
than just emotional. It was personal. Why was I there

(01:20):
to learn about my grandfather, who had stood on that
very ground some seventy eight years prior, and reconnect with
his life, his journey, his story. The morning after Chris Soolnacht,

(01:44):
at the age of twenty five, my grandfather was arrested
by the SS and taken to Buchenwald as a part
of the special Program, the first ever mass deportation and
interment of Jews at that camp. He arrived on November thirteenth,
teen thirty eight, before the barracks were even built, and
for three or four days and nights he waited among

(02:06):
ten thousand other Jews in the freezing winter rain to
receive a roof over his head and a twenty centimeter
wide wooden sleeping plank. Many who were there with him
during that time didn't survive, and I will always remember
the tears that came to my grandfather's eyes in the
video interview we have of him as he hesitatingly rehashed

(02:29):
the horrors that befell those around him, frequently and at random.
He was one of all too few who was miraculously
able to flee Germany during the Holocaust, and I owe
my life to his luck. But his journey wasn't over
when he got to the United States. Mere weeks after
officially becoming an American, he was drafted into the Army.

(02:54):
He was shipped off to Europe, back into the eye
of the storm, just five years after his time at Buchenwal,
and as a soldier in a replacement depot. Despite only
having gone through basic training no infantry training, he was
nevertheless thrown into combat during the Battle of the Bulge.

(03:14):
He fought against the Nazis with the ultimate goal of
invading his homeland, and yet again narrowly lived to tell
the tale. He ended up living a very full life.
He passed away in nineteen ninety nine at the age
of eighty five, when I was just eleven years old.
But as for my return to Buchenwald, it was actually

(03:37):
another more recent death in the family that served as
the catalyst. By the time I stood on the same
ground that my grandfather had this past September, my father
had been gone from us for nine months. He was
my grandfather's first born, and he had wanted to be
able to share his dad's heroic story with the world.

(03:57):
So my visit both to Buchenwald afterward to my grandfather's
hometown was to remember the two of them, my grandfather's
persistence and my own father's admiration. It was to pay
homage to the sacrifices they made and the pride they
held in raising a family in continuing our lineage. The

(04:21):
reasons behind my journey ebbed and flowed in my mind
as I read a passage that was embedded in stone
amongst the gray gravel I stood on at the camp.
It read so that the generations to come might know
the children yet to be born, that they too may
rise and declare to their children. As a member of

(04:44):
the third generation of Holocaust survivors in the US, this
struck a chord with me, living now at a distance
both across generations and oceans, from the horrible tragedy that
resulted from Hitler's Nazi regime. I had always felt somewhat
detached from it. In fact, few of my friends knew

(05:04):
the extent of my grandfather's story, that is until I
recently chose to rise and declare it. And now as
my own father's firstborn, carrying forward his lineage, it's something
that I too, am committed to rising and declaring for
future generations as well. There's something sacred about the kind

(05:25):
of cycle created by generations, which is really just to
say people that share a heritage over time, and in Judaism,
we observe these sacred cycles that connect us with our
earliest ancestors in one way, the most through the high
holidays of Russhiashana and Yom Kipur. In that light, it

(05:47):
should come as no surprise that the name of the
book that we use on these holidays, the Machsor, shares
the same root with the Hebrew word for return hasarah.
We rely returned to these traditions, thus completing a sacred
cycle to remind us of all that we have inherited
and all that we will carry forward when distilled down

(06:10):
to their roots. That's what yum Kapor and Russiashana are
all about, respectively, remembering and thinking back on our past
and looking into the future. As I stood at Buchenwald
several months ago, on the ground that held all that
it did, my present moment joined together the history that
came before me, and my future yet to come. Through

(06:34):
that return, I made into a difficult past, one that
altered destinies and set my own life into motion. So
many years ago, I began a kind of intergenerational remembering.
But I also felt that I began a kind of healing,
because in that moment, I realized that even though my
grandfather and father were both gone, I still carried parts

(06:57):
of them within me that I would perpetuate into the future.
This year, my hope is that we can all make
our own important returns, whether they're on foot or in
our minds, because when we seek out the source of
who we are, we end up moving forward into the
new year with the two things that have always kept

(07:18):
us firmly rooted, remembrance and hope.

Speaker 1 (07:27):
And a terrific job on the production, editing and storytelling
by our own Monte Montgomery. And a special thanks to
Dana Mitch for sharing her journey to Buchenwald and what
got her to do that, what prompted her to do that.
She ended with two words, remembrance and hope, and it's

(07:48):
hard to have one without the other. Memory is so
important in our lives, story, narrative, so important, as Reagan
had said in his farewell speech, President Reagan, if we
forget what we did, we'll forget who we are. And
that wasn't a Republican statement or a Democrat statement, it
was a human statement. And Dana found herself at Buchenwald

(08:10):
because her grandfather had been there and she wanted to
honor his journey. And he got out of there miraculously
and found himself back at the battle of the bulge
not many years later, going after Hitler and what did
she learn from that? In the end, she learned her
own story. She was learning more about her father's story,

(08:31):
firstborn to the grandfather, and connecting it all. It's what
we do. You're in American Stories as best as we
can each and every day. Stories of remembrance, stories of hope.
And we want your stories, your stories of remembrance and hope.
Send them to our American Stories dot com. That's our
American Stories dot com. Sad ones, happy ones, everything in between.

(08:57):
The boy. If there isn't a struggle through some pain
and suffering, well you're leaving some things out. Daine and
Mitchell's story, the story of her family, the story of
Jewish families around the world, and in the end, the
story of all of our families. Here are now American Stories.