The Death of Children

Sorry guys, but I'm in an emotional state right now.

I had decided to include my cousin, Sigfried, in my Bat Mitzvah this year as he had no chance to
have his own.

Last week someone came to our class from the "Remember Me" organization where they provide names and available histories to Bar/Bat Mitzvah kids so they can choose a child of the Holocaust to share in their Bar/Bat Mitzvah. He had some lists of kids for us to look at and choose from. I told him of my decision and he gave me a resource to check and see if anyone had done this before for Sigfried.

Today I went to that site and found two things I didn't know before. 1. Sigfried was younger than me - that means he was FOUR years old when they gassed him. (I had thought him to be 6 - like that makes a huge difference) 2. The letter of witness that was available to view on that site was written by my Mother!! She never told me - either than she knew or that she reported it to Yad Vashem in Israel.

I rips me up to think of that innocent little boy being killed for no reason other than his Jewishness. And, it rips me up to think of my Mom carrying all this pain and never talking of it. She KNEW in 1973 that Josef (Jussel), Rosie and Sigfried had ended up at Auschwitz and when.
I only got verification of it last year from the Red Cross.

I still have to find out whether anyone has used his name for their Bar or Bat Mitzvah partner. I doubt it - there were so many, so many.

I have to go back to the site to see if there are other Baendels or, for that matter Sauers to sort through. For that matter, I'll look up my Grandma Martha's maiden name. She came from a family of 12 children - all of whom were married, and some had children of their own. I figured out that there had to be 60 people in my immediate family on my Father's side and he used to say it was a small army when his family got together. There might be a lot more names I can track, at least from the sons of that family. Does it help to know? I don't know. I just need to do it. The website is: http://www.yadvashem.org/ and I looked under the section titled "names".

This is harder than reading of the thousands - it's personal. I think of my own kids and grandkids at four - just past babyhood, but still sweet and innocent. Not that it's OK at any age, my Grandmother must have been in her 60's. But for me, it's the children that hurts so much.