Back to Sobibor

And nobody wants to go back there.  Ever.  For any reason.  This was the site of a Nazi extermination camp in in eastern Poland near the Ukraine border.  My grandfather's first cousin David Baumann died there along with his mother and father in law.  His wife Marta and son Lothar died in Auschwitz.  At different times.

I like to say that I often found information to populate this story when I wasn't looking.  It just came upon me.  I've written a piece putting it all together; how I found out.  From my parent's denial that any family members were involved to my preparations to place a special kind of memorial, a stolpersteine in Amsterdam, the city that they last lived.  My parents, in all fairness, did not know about this.  It would not be easy to find out.  But there was an very strong inclination to turn away, to be sure that none of this happened to their family and thus to them.

But it struck me so strongly as this story started to come out in my elementary and middle school years, why the Nazis  murdered and oppressed the Jews?  My family was Jewish, what did they have against us?  I remember listening to the Adolph Eichmann trial on the radio.  Did my mother have it on?  Must have.  But she did not speak of it.  Likely it was not considered suitable for children.