From Generation to Generation: A Conversation With Lillian John

Lillian John at a family wedding earlier this year.

Lillian John, 20, is the youngest of my seven nieces and nephews. Her dad, Nick John, is my husband's brother. Her mom, Grace John, was born in Taiwan. Lillian is now a sophomore at the University of San Francisco--a Jesuit college. She is majoring in finance, but was required to take a theology course. She chose a class called Jews, Judaism and Jewish Identity taught by Dr. Oren Kroll-Zeldin.             
Lillian told me that she chose the course based on three things: 
1)the fine reputation of the teacher, 2)a good friend was taking the class with her and 3)if she got stuck, Aunt Lauren could help her out. As part of her class, she attended services at  San Franciso's Congregation Emanu-El, established in 1850 and Congregation Sherith Israel established in 1851. Another assignment was to interview a Jewish person about how the Holocaust and knowledge of the Holocaust affected their view of the world. We spoke at length by phone on Sunday night.  


When our phone call ended, I put down my i-phone and whispered "L’dor vador". It’s a phrase that's often recited in Jewish prayer which means from generation to generation and refers to continuity, and the responsibility of passing on faith, prayer and cultural traditions from generation to generation.


Thank you Lillian for blessing me with that opportunity.
And thank you to my grandparents and great grandparents who had the foresight to come to America in the early 20th century--literally enabling my life to be possible.

Here is Lillian's report:

I interviewed my aunt, Lauren. My aunt is sixty years old and she is an Ashkenazi Jew.  She was born in Queens and now lives in Menlo Park. Lauren is in an interfaith marriage with my Uncle George who is Catholic. Lauren calls herself an observant Jew because she attends Shabbat and keeps the holidays. However, she does not practice Halakah nor is she Kosher. In June, she is going to have her Bat Mitzvah at Congregation Beth Am in Los Altos Hills. She is working very hard learning and practicing her Hebrew.

Congregation Beth Am 

When did you first learn or hear about the Holocaust? How did it make you feel?

The first time Lauren heard about the Holocaust was when she was ten years old. She saw a numbers tattooed on one of her neighbors’ arms. There were a lot of Jews who survived the Holocaust in her neighborhood and many of them had tattoos. She asked her mother what the tattoos meant and, her mother told her that the neighbors were in a prison camp in Europe. Her mother did not tell her the horrors of the Holocaust or what happened in the camps. Lauren had to read “The Diary of Anne Frank” for school but, she still did not know what happened in camps because the diary ends when the family is captured. When she was 11 or 12 she went to Amsterdam with her family. They visited the Anne Frank house and, she saw graphic pictures of what happened during the Holocaust. She finally realized what actually happened and, she felt very sick from looking at the pictures. When she got older, movies and documentaries about the Holocaust were released and she had more knowledge of what had happened. She felt very disgusted watching the films.  

Did your family go through the Holocaust?

No one in Lauren’s immediate family went through the Holocaust. She told me if they did, she would not be here talking to me. Her father's family came to American before World War I from Russia and Poland. Her mother's family came to America in 1920 because they wanted religious freedom and the Jews were being persecuted in Eastern Europe. They wanted to leave because they believed things would get worse. Rose Goldstein (grandmother) wanted her sister Breina (Great Aunt) to come with her to America. Breina did not want to leave Russia because her husband did not want to go and she did not want to leave him. Twenty-one years later, the Nazis invaded Russia. Breina and her husband’s family did not go to camps. Instead, the Nazis lined them up on and shot them into a ravine. The family did not hear anything from her and they wanted to find out if she was okay. Years later, after the war, they found out what happened to Breina and the family.

This is a photograph of the synagogue in Shepetovka, Ukraine, where my maternal grandparents worshipped. It was a stone building that was built in the late 1800s. It no longer exists, but
Shepetovka now has a two room synagogue that was first rebuilt by the Soviets after WW II and used as a basketball court. More recently, the synagogue was rebuilt by the tiny Jewish community. There are now approximately 175 Jews in Shepetovka, compared to the estimated 3700 Jews who lived there when my grandparents left in 1919 .(source: http://jewua.org/about-us/)

How did the Holocaust affect your family?
Did it affect you as well?

The Holocaust affected her mother greatly. Her mother talked about the Holocaust all the time. Lauren’s parents believed it could happen again. Even though her parents were born in the U.S., they never felt completely safe. If something political happened, they would wonder if it was good or bad for the Jews. Lauren does not have the exact same feelings as her parents. She does not feel the same danger but, she is aware of genocides and sees it more as a global issue. She did have a panic attack when the white supremacists had the protest in Charlottesville. The supremacists shouted “Jews will not replace us” and they chanted the same things as the Nazis. Seeing this on T.V. made her very scared and shocked. It did remind her of the Holocaust because there were Nazis doing the exact same thing during the War.

Do you feel resentment towards Germans or Germany?

Lauren said it took her a long time to get over hating the Germans. She thought they were horrible. She had this idea that all Germans were evil and, she would never go to Germany. In her twenties, she started to work with people who were from Germany. She was surprised how nice they were and all of them felt bad about the Holocaust. Now, she has no issues with Germans or Germany because she has met and worked with people who were from Germany.

Do you think the Holocaust re-shaped you as a person?

She thinks it did re-shape her as a person. Lauren is aware of what evil people are capable of. She thinks that this awareness changes how she feels about the world. She said she wants to be brave enough to save someone in trouble. She asks herself does she have the courage to do so? Also, Lauren is grateful that her relatives left Europe and came to America. She believes she could not leave everything behind. Lauren wishes she could be as courageous as her relatives.  

I was surprised that she had a direct relative that was involved in the Holocaust. I was not expecting her Great Aunt to be shot instead of going to the camps. When she told me this I felt very sad because it was cruel. Also, I thought she would still have hard feelings for the Germans because they did horrible things to the Jews. If I was her I probably would still feel resentment. I agree with her about having courage. I don’t think I would be willing to sacrifice my life for someone in trouble. It would be a tough decision for me to leave everything and go to another country. It was great talking to my aunt because I got to know a lot more about her and her family.

This is a memorial to the Jews that were shot in the forest outside of Shepetovka into mass graves in 1941 and 1942. My great aunt Breina was one of them.