Whiplash - Holocaust - Perspective- 4/16/2007

4/16/2007 Holocaust Memorial Day here in Israel. Early morning. Quiet and sad songs on the radio. On my way to run some errands with my parents, sitting in the back of my dad's German car, I am suddenly pushed forward, stretching my seat belt (thank God I'm a good girl who wears her seat belt even in the back seat), shocked and all, and then… pain. Holocaust Memorial Day, my dad is worried about me, about my back and my neck and so he takes me to the hospital. It's a stupid whiplash. Come on… it's nothing. All the concern and even guilt (although it was the car behind us that hit us hard) is coming from a person who at pre-school age spent a couple of weeks walking 150 miles from Bricheva to Transnistria in Ukraine, carrying a backpack almost as big as he was… surrounded by Nazi soldiers, watching his granny being buried alive because the soldiers didn't want her to slow down the pace. My dad, who used to be a skinny little kid who doesn't eat, not because it's "yucky" ("yucky" was my childhood nickname for warm milk..) but because there's no food. Horrific sights, death, guns, blood, hunger and humiliation have become an integral part of his life at such an early age, and still, his youngest child's stupid whiplash fills him up with such concern, on the same day that brings up all of those unbearable memories. The Irony. One more thing: The car behind us hit our car real hard. In fact, judging from the sound, the shock, the jump, and the effect it had on my back, I assumed that the back of our car was completely totalled. But no, our strong German engineered car has come out almost without a scratch and has actually saved me from a much more serious injury. Nuff irony for one day. I had a lot of time to think at the emergency room today, how lucky I am to have a father like my aba ("father" in Hebrew): I am thankful to be here in this world- beside the obvious fact that his not-so-obvious survival from the Nazis is one of the reasons I have been born, I am also grateful for growing up with a father who taught me how to truly appreciate and celebrate life and how to never take anything that I have for granted.