EPIGENETIC TRAUMA ON MEMORIAL DAY
When she was 47, my grandmother, Symcha Goldberg, was murdered by Nazis either on the cattle cars transporting Jews from the Lodz ghetto to Treblinka, Poland, or in the gas chambers inside the extermination camp itself. We have no reports from those who might have survived the hundreds of thousands who were killed at Treblinka.
I have welcomed the addition of historical email signatures designating the Native American tribe that used to occupy the physical space where the emailer now resides. Native Americans were also victims of genocide so that their lands could be usurped. It’s the least we can do to honor their memory and the true history of their genocide.
That’s why on this Memorial Day, I’d like to honor the memory — of which I have learned only secondhand — of my grandparents, both Holocaust victims, by including them on my email signature:
Sylvia Paull
granddaughter, Symcha Goldberg, Treblinka 1942
granddaughter, Herman Goldberg, Poland or Germany, 1939
