you are the last generation

i cried into my lunch today. no, it wasn't the slightly stale peanut butter crackers. it was the life of irena updike, soon to debut as play on broadway at the end of march.

i came into the middle of the discussion with the playwright on the radio; this is a brief rendering of what i heard.

irena was a 19 year old polish catholic girl in 1939 who was hired as a housekeeper for a nazi major. ( i missed alot of details; i have questions, too) somehow she was presented with the opportunity to rescue 12 jews. she hid them in the cellar of the nazi major's house for over a year and a half without him knowing. she wove a gingerly executed dance of moving the jews from attic to cellar depending on who would be where in the home. She was discovered after this year and half and the major put forth this proposition: sleep with me and be my mistress and i will let you keep your jews.

she chose to keep "her jews". she was his mistress. was there some element of eventual love or pseudo gratitude that softened this young girl's choice? no, she always thought him a pathetic, old man and despised who he was.

when the war ended, she was considered a collaborator because she had worked for a nazi. some jews who knew she would be tried for this crime dyed her hair black (the irony being previously jews had been busy dying theirs blonde to save themselves) and arranged for her to be put into a dp (displaced persons) camp under the identity of another jewish woman. when it came for deportation her option was to israel, which at that time was soon to become the site of another war. her jewish friends told the u.n. officials that she really wasn't jewish, but that she was a hero that deserved to have peace and should be sent to the united states. the united nations official granted her a visa to the states. since her only true friends were jews, irena took a job in the garment district of new york city. one day she took a sight-seeing trip to the united nations building. at lunch time the cafeteria was crowded and irena found the last table open. a well groomed gentleman came to her table and asked if he could share it with her as it was the last open space. irena saw this to be true and granted him a chair. staring at her face, he swore he had seen her someplace before. terrible at names but never forgetting a face he asked for some of her background. turns out this was the very same united nations official that had granted her a visa to the u.s.!

after many dates, they married... for nearly 50 years to be exact. when her husband contracted alzheimer's disease, irena's finances didn't allow for putting him in the kind of home he needed for proper care. a local rabbi stepped in and installed her husband in the best jewish rest home available at no cost ever to irena. he was the only non-jew in the entire facility. he remained there until his death.

irena said that when she received a visa to the u.s. she would put a sign on her story that said "do not disturb".

she said she felt terrible shame at having been the mistress to the nazi major. being a devout catholic, she felt she had committed something terrible that god would never forgive. one day irena heard a radio broadcast where some people were denying that the holocaust ever occurred. She turned to her husband and shouted "but i was there!". he told her- "don't tell me, tell THEM". irena toured schools telling each student gathering that they would be the last generation to ever speak to an actual holocaust survivor, therefore, they had a great responsibility to be keepers and tellers of the truth. she never did say how she got the nazi major to agree to keeping the jews. there was her place of implacable shame. it wasn't until the Vad Asham was going to award this nazi major an award for being a righteous gentile (having heard the story and thinking that he allowed irena to keep the jews out of some goodness in his heart) that irena stepped forward and told the full story-- how she became his mistress to save the lives of these 12 and soon 13 ( a baby born under her watch) jews.

some are born to extraordinary courage. without the benefit of years of experience, at age 19 a young girl went against all that she had been taught and waged her life, her virtue, her sense of peace to save what at that time was a despised and condemned group of people. every day she submitted to humiliations that disgusted her. and everyday as she gave of herself, she saved another generation of jews.

who are you? right now this day, march 18, you are part of the last generation.
are you born to courage? courage stated as standing against your religious teaching, your own needs, the current social structure, your own sense of preservation, your dreams, your friends and family, your ?-- you fill in the blank. every day we are faced with choices. probably not of the caliber as irena updike. but i am convinced that you prime the pump of your soul by making courageous choices every day. did god forgive her? i believe god was cheering her on. today is a day to re-evaluate what we are made of--