When I was little, I used to look for places to hide from the Nazis. My childhood best friend had a bathroom that was undetectable from the outside. The first time she showed it to me, I thought: this would be a good place, if the Nazis ever come for us. I could hide in here like Ellen hides with Annemarie in “Number the Stars.” It didn’t occur to me until much later that this was a disturbing thought for a nine-year-old to have. Even then, I never considered that other Jews might have the same instincts. To look for places to escape impending doom.
After Donald Trump was elected, and several Jewish cemeteries were desecrated in the span of a few months, I read an article in which a Jewish woman wrote about how she too tried to find hiding places when she was young, in case the Nazis rose again. It made me feel better for a moment, less alone. Then, I felt a little like I was drowning.
While working on this article, I spoke to other young Jews about their relationships to trauma and anxiety. During my conversations, I discovered experiences and fears we share. One person told me that while learning about the Holocaust at their Jewish day school, their teacher divided students into those who “looked Jewish” and those who “looked Aryan” to demonstrate how the Nazis categorized people by physical features. As they spoke, I remembered that in fourth grade, while studying the Shoah, my public school teacher told me my blonde hair made me look Aryan. I likely would have survived, he said. I never told my parents about this. I knew that based on these new metrics I was learning, members of my own family would not have been so lucky.
I finally did speak with my mother about this recently—about that incident and how the trauma I carry is inter-generational. She grew up in the same suburban town north of San Francisco that I did, before she moved to farm country further north. I asked her about the fear I carry with me, and she told me a story. The first week after her move, she overheard two women making anti-Semitic comments in a local bookstore. They blamed the world’s woes on the Jews because the Jews killed Jesus. My mother said her Judaism felt hyper-visible to the world in that moment—her hair, her nose, her skin tone—and she felt like she needed to hide. She stopped telling people she was Jewish. She still mostly doesn’t.
I look “less Jewish” than my mother, with my light hair and eyes. I remember my parents joking that if the worst should happen, my dad should take me and run, leaving my mom and my sisters behind. They look “more Jewish,” and without them we might be safe. When I tell people about this, especially non-Jews, I most often get concerned looks in response. But these were the jokes we told. A way to deal with the fear that I was starting to harbor within myself, although I had no direct life experience yet telling me to be afraid.
My mother, too, knew to be afraid before the bookstore. She knew to be afraid because her father always told her that anything could happen. The bookstore was just proof that he was right. My grandfather had an oft-repeated phrase that he used in such conversations: “Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you.”
A friend told me recently that despite growing up going to shul and attending Jewish day schools her whole life, she hesitated taking a job at a synagogue this summer. She told me the thought of being in a synagogue everyday made her nervous, and that her nervousness made her angry. Angry about letting the oppressors win. “As I’ve gotten older I’ve learned more fear,” she told me. I thought about the little girl I watched try and fail to hold back tears during a vigil after the Pittsburgh shooting. I watched her learn a piece of that fear. I knew exactly what my friend meant.
I’ve always made the connection between my anxiety and my Judaism. My dad used to say that we were an anxious people, predisposed to look for danger since people kept trying to kill us. I used to take that joke as he meant it: historically, biblically. That statement has started to have a modern ring to it.
A few months after the Pittsburgh shooting, I had my first panic attack. It was triggered by something inconsequential, but my anxiety had been one the rise since that Shabbat. I could feel it in little moments—a rush through my chest, a clench in my stomach, a film behind my eyes. Usually, these sensations appeared only for a moment. Through therapy, I’ve grown better at holding anxiety at bay, but I’m not always able to. My second panic attack happened at a Hillel book club meeting. The location was a coincidence, really, but it felt symbolic.
I know my mother did not want to pass down her fear to me in debilitating ways, but she wants me to be safe. Anxiety can be a good thing sometimes, she said, if it keeps you out of danger. My mother copes through her vigilance. I am still learning how I cope. Sometimes I turn to quiet reflection or angry writing. Sometimes I turn to celebration of my Jewish identity. I almost always turn to my Jewish community — in song, dance and protest. They have always lifted me up.
I’ve been putting off writing this because I was trying to find a resolution, but none of this has been resolved for me yet. It’s also hard to escape from. The Holocaust was trending on Twitter recently as politicians argued about the family separation crisis. Jews and allies across the country have protested the concentration camps at our borders, chanting “never again means now.”
I am still struggling with what all of this means, and what the best path looks like. As we move forward, I take solace in the power we have to rise up and say what we won’t stand for, to join hands in solidarity with those more vulnerable than ourselves. I know that, just like Jewish children are watching the violence, they are also looking at how we react. They are watching Jewish activists march for what they believe in. They are learning values of social justice ingrained in our faith. I hope it makes them proud to be Jewish. I know I am.
Sarah Asch studies English literature and creative writing at Middlebury College, where she will graduate in February 2020. She serves as the editor at large of the Middlebury Campus and her past work has appeared in the San Francisco Public Press and Tikkun Magazine.
Featured image by REUTERS/Stephanie Keith.
