In 2005 the UN declared today, January 27, as the International Holocaust Memorial Day – not to be confused with the official Jewish Memorial Day in April and the day declared by the Israeli Rabbinate as the Kaddish Day for the victims whose date of death and burial place are unknown.

In 1995 my parents came back from a short trip to Germany – visiting Buchenwald – the infamous camp where my father was liberated from on April 11 1945, and Ravensbruck – the women-only camp where his mother, my grandmother Chaya Helena Lau, of blessed memory, perished, sometimes in the spring of 1945. She was 45 years old.

I wrote this short story in her memory. It will be soon published in an anthology of writings by children of survivors.

https://amichai.me/bitter-herbs.html

 

May all memories be a blessing, today and every day.