Introduction: The Power of Choice
Today is Herman Grossman's birthday, as well as the launch of 'Ethics of the Fathers' newsletter. Here I explain what you can expect from this newsletter and how it all began.
From as far back as I can remember I knew I was the descendant of a Holocaust survivor. This knowledge imparted to me by my father changed me. My teachers and community would also educate the Holocaust legacy to me in cultural ways. Whenever we would complain as kids that we were “starving,” they would reprimand us.
“You are not starving. People in Auschwitz were starving, you are hungry. Words have meaning,” adults would say in varying speeches and formats.
When I was in second or third grade I remember sneaking books from the “restricted section” of my school’s library. It was a section that was not meant for kids – but I needed to know concretely what the Holocaust was.
I curled up in the library and took out the Holocaust books. I saw the pictures of starving people, the mountains of the dead in concentration camps, and the portraits of the evil men responsible. I learned about the gas chambers, the trickery of Nazis telling victims they were about to take a shower.
I couldn’t look away.
A friend named René approached me during lunch one day and asked, “Hannah, why are you crying?”
“I’m crying because my grandfather was in the Holocaust. His entire family was killed.”
For years I felt as if I was searching for something lost to me. My grandfather did not testify, and only bits of his story were known. I didn’t know his parents’ or siblings’ names, I didn’t know how he got to Auschwitz. I would Google my grandfather’s name and come up with nothing. I was dismayed.
Then, during the novel coronavirus pandemic, things changed. The world was on pause and I had time to look into something on a more consistent basis. I watched dozens of documentaries, read books, articles, and scanned databases. I was looking for answers: To what I did not know. For what? I had no idea. But this hunger inside of me pulled me into hundreds of hours of research like Captain Ahab into the sea of the unknown. I didn’t think I would ever find anything, let alone the proverbial Moby Dick, but it was something I felt I needed to do.
As I plowed through the labyrinth of Nazi Germany, I began to find the mementos I desperately sought for years. I found documents, photos, records, roll call notes, papers, names, an address, and birth certificates of Herman’s brothers and sisters who perished.
What I was left with, essentially, was my grandfather’s testimony laid out in front of me.
One of the main takeaways from my grandfather’s story is that it refuted what I had learned from many historians and academics about World War II. “Germany did this because their economy went sour,” I was told. But that is a circumstance. The catalyst was humanity’s free will that chose the side of evil.
Herman Grossman, who became an orphan, also had a choice. After everything was taken from him he could have decided to become bitter and reach his hand out to the world to be on the take. But instead, by all accounts, he gave money to those who were less fortunate than he was, despite the fact that he did not have much himself. He was generous, kind, funny, and brilliant. He did not graduate high school, but I’m told that he would read the encyclopedia every year and successfully debate college kids in the local candy store in Canarsie.
Most importantly, Herman left the world a better place than he found it, and I hope to continue to expand his legacy through The Herman Grossman Project’s ‘Ethics of the Fathers’ newsletter. Here, I will explore how to live a life with purpose and meaning through the lens of ancient Jewish wisdom in a universally applicable fashion.
Together, we will learn how to find true happiness through treating our world, our fellow Man, and ourselves with dignity and holiness.
My Holocaust research, with G-d’s help, birthed something I know my grandfather is proud of, and I sincerely thank you for reading and becoming a part of Herman’s legacy of resilience.
I look forward to going on this journey together.
Given your dedicated research of this historical atrocity, how do you justify capitalizing on the scapegoating lgbtq+ people?
Koach!