As you can imagine, my entire life has been adversely impacted by this horrific time in history. As the daughter of a child who had been torn from the arms of her loving parents at just 4–5 years old, this terrible history somehow lives through me. I live with constant anxiety and fear. I worry about having food and water even though I certainly have the means. Every night I think about what I would grab to take with me if I had to run away from evil. In fact I always have a packed "to-go" bag. It took a while for my husband to understand but now he helps me through this rather than make fun of it. I see the same types of fears and anxiety in my children. My daughter could not sleep away from home until her college years. However, having said all this, I will say that somehow, there is also some "good" that came of this. My mother's 3 children and our collective 8 children are all extremely caring, kind and giving people. We always think about others and want to help others. We are all accomplished in our own ways and hope we make our mom proud. We all wish our mom would enjoy life more but have learned that enjoyment for her is mainly security and knowing her family is safe. That is it. My mother is now a great grandmother to three. So I would also like to say that while the Holocaust tried to snuff us out, they failed. They made us, in particular my mother, suffer but we prevailed. As my mom always says, "Imagine how many millions of brilliant and other kind people there may have been in the world had they not perished in the Holocaust ... maybe another Einstein, another Ruth Bader Ginsburg. We will never know."

Nancy (daughter of Ruth Alexander)
October 2021