“What’s the difference between a Jew and a Boy Scout?” a friend asked, with a broad grin on his face, as I sat down in my seventh grade science class. “The Boy Scout comes back from camp!” He and everyone else at my table burst out laughing. Did my classmates even know what they were laughing about? Upset but unsure, I feigned a smile. I am ashamed to say I said nothing.
I grew up hearing about the Holocaust through the stories my grandfather, now 92, told about his perilous escape from fascist Italy as a teenager. He described the indifference he saw in the eyes of soldiers and civilians alike, the fear in his parents’ hushed voices as they planned to flee, how his heart pounded as he slid under a fence to reach Switzerland while holding his 3-year-old sister in his lap.
He escaped only hours before German soldiers showed up at his home in Milan to take his family to a concentration camp. It is a miracle that he survived and that I am here today. When I look into his eyes as he recalls his frantic getaway, I see him reliving the history my friend had so unabashedly joked about.
