By Lt. Col. Avital Leibovich
In
2004, I joined the Witnesses in Uniform delegation of 180 IDF officers
to Poland. We had the chance to visit some of the major sites of
Holocaust memory, including Auschwitz-Birkenau. We also saw the Lodz
ghetto – the place where my father was imprisoned during the war.
Lt. Col. Avital Leibovich's father as a young boy
Every
participant on the trip had to spend some time preparing beforehand. I
thought that this might be an opportunity to sit down with my father and
have him share his experiences with me. He had never spoken about it
with me before.
I
took him through the entire itinerary of our trip, and I pointed out
that we would be passing through the Lodz ghetto. I hoped that he would
open up and talk about it. But he didn’t say a word. My father wished me
a successful journey, but nothing more than that.
When
we got to Lodz, our guides took us to what remains of the ghetto. I
tried to imagine my father walking down the street, but I had no
information about his time there.
I did, however, experience the unique
feeling all IDF officers feel when they land in Poland. It’s something I
simply couldn’t compare to anything else I’ve done in my life. Our
presence there alone was proof that the Nazis failed in their mission to
destroy the Jewish people.
The
delegation was made up of all types of people – officers young and old,
Jewish, Bedouin and Druze. That’s something that makes the IDF a unique
military force – we invest not only in protecting the country but also
in educating our officers and passing on our heritage and our values
from generation to generation.
When
I returned from the trip, I sat down again with my father. I showed him
all of my pictures, and hoped that he would start talking, but to no
avail.
I
thought I’d never learn what happened to him, but this year something
changed. My daughter was doing a roots project for school, and as part
of the coursework she sat down with my father and asked him to tell her
his story. For the first time ever, we learned that before the war, he
lived in a Polish village called Stieglitz. The Nazis killed all of the
Jews who lived there, but he managed to survive.
It’s
not unusual for Holocaust survivors to avoid speaking about their
experiences. But perhaps it was easier for him to talk to my daughter
than it was for him to talk to me. He needed some kind of trigger, and
grandchildren are often that trigger. It was finally time for him to
pass on his legacy to the next generation.
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