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View this post on Instagram "My parents were resisters and fighters. My mother, Eta Chait, was a saboteur, ten months in a Gestapo prison, two years in the Polish woods as a rescue partisan with baptismal papers and a crucifix. She was a punisher of Jew-murderers, and a group ‘surgeon’ because of a steady hand that removed a bullet from her own infected leg after she'd crawled from a pile of bodies under which she'd lain waiting for Nazi murderers to depart. She was the lone survivor of a family of twelve. My father, Henry Wrobel, escaped into Russia after the deaths of his parents. Until June, ?1941?, Henry (Gennady in Russian) lived on a kolkhoz (communal farm). With the German invasion of the USSR, Gennady entered the Soviet Army as a scout and combat soldier. During the battles for Poland, a severe head wound put him in a coma for 22 days. A Soviet mobile hospital saved his life and brain (also saving my mother's leg). My brother, born in Poland, my sister, born in a DP camp in Germany, and I, born in Brooklyn, are the children of a couple of ‘tough hombres.’ My parents taught us that the foremost role of Jewish resistance is to fight for the memory of the dead - the beaten, broken, terrorized, starved, diseased, deceived. The majority of resisters and fighters, after all, were also killed. ‘Hero’ and ‘victim’ blur within actual contexts. . .My mother and father were heroes. . . I have no illusions about myself in such conditions, and as a teacher I cultivate in my students a most un-American uncertainty. None of us know what we may or may not be equipped for in extremis. My mother, valedictorian of her high school, captain of its soccer team, university aspirant, never expected to sleep in holes in the woods, smuggle guns, place wounded children with farmers, punish denouncers. My father, son of an Orthodox orchard-keeper, young proletarian working in a foundry and wood mill, avid reader of leftist literature (though he could barely write), handsomer than Tyrone Power, with girlfriends aplenty, seldom thought to leave the fields and towns of Poland.” ~Anna Wrobel, educator, historian, poet. #jewishmaine #holocaust A post shared by Documenting Maine Jewry (@mainejewishhistory) on Mar 22, 2019 at 4:44am PDT
"My parents were resisters and fighters. My mother, Eta Chait, was a saboteur, ten months in a Gestapo prison, two years in the Polish woods as a rescue partisan with baptismal papers and a crucifix. She was a punisher of Jew-murderers, and a group ‘surgeon’ because of a steady hand that removed a bullet from her own infected leg after she'd crawled from a pile of bodies under which she'd lain waiting for Nazi murderers to depart. She was the lone survivor of a family of twelve. My father, Henry Wrobel, escaped into Russia after the deaths of his parents. Until June, ?1941?, Henry (Gennady in Russian) lived on a kolkhoz (communal farm). With the German invasion of the USSR, Gennady entered the Soviet Army as a scout and combat soldier. During the battles for Poland, a severe head wound put him in a coma for 22 days. A Soviet mobile hospital saved his life and brain (also saving my mother's leg). My brother, born in Poland, my sister, born in a DP camp in Germany, and I, born in Brooklyn, are the children of a couple of ‘tough hombres.’ My parents taught us that the foremost role of Jewish resistance is to fight for the memory of the dead - the beaten, broken, terrorized, starved, diseased, deceived. The majority of resisters and fighters, after all, were also killed. ‘Hero’ and ‘victim’ blur within actual contexts. . .My mother and father were heroes. . . I have no illusions about myself in such conditions, and as a teacher I cultivate in my students a most un-American uncertainty. None of us know what we may or may not be equipped for in extremis. My mother, valedictorian of her high school, captain of its soccer team, university aspirant, never expected to sleep in holes in the woods, smuggle guns, place wounded children with farmers, punish denouncers. My father, son of an Orthodox orchard-keeper, young proletarian working in a foundry and wood mill, avid reader of leftist literature (though he could barely write), handsomer than Tyrone Power, with girlfriends aplenty, seldom thought to leave the fields and towns of Poland.” ~Anna Wrobel, educator, historian, poet. #jewishmaine #holocaust
A post shared by Documenting Maine Jewry (@mainejewishhistory) on Mar 22, 2019 at 4:44am PDT