My parents were not liberated from the camps, per se. My father escaped, and on a death march my mother was beaten and left for dead on the side of the road. But those were all secrets kept from me, because: 1) our immigration to America was sponsored by a Catholic church, 2) my aunt had converted to being a Catholic and belonged to that church which also sponsored her immigration, so she did not want anyone to know we were actually Jews, and 3) because I was a little kid and they were afraid that I would spill the beans. So while I knew our family was different from regular American families just because we were immigrants, and sensed that we were also different from the Hungarian ex-pats with whom we formed a tight social circle, I knew nothing more and knew better then to ask any questions. So I just went along, obliviously living my kid life, doing my best to fit in.

At the age of 11 the unveiling of the truth began when a letter arrived from Israel and my aunt blurted out that it was from her brother. I asked if he was Jewish and she said yes. I thought my father was going to blow his top, he made such a scene. After all the yelling, they sat me on the sofa. I felt very small as I looked up at four angry adults staring straight down at me. My brother and cousin thought the good little girl getting into trouble was hilarious, snickering as they slunk off to a corner to watch the show.

Then the bomb was dropped. If I revealed the secret that we were Jews, we might be deported back to Hungary, where my parents would be imprisoned if not executed, and my aunt and uncle might go to jail for lying about our religion on our immigration papers. I looked at the four adults wide-eyed and mouth agape, feeling this huge weight of responsibility landing on my 11-year-old shoulders, thinking all of our futures depended on me keeping my mouth shut. Overwhelmed, I glanced over at the two boys, who were laughing so hard I wasn’t sure if I should believe the adults. It all seemed crazy, but I didn’t ask questions, and just in case, I kept my mouth shut. And so began my captivity, held there by secrets.

The first time I heard the word Holocaust was in my eighth-grade history class, accompanied by a photograph of Hungarian Jews about to be killed in a death camp called Auschwitz. All of this was news to me, and I wondered if my parents, who were Hungarian Jews alive during World War II, if they had ever heard about the Holocaust or Auschwitz, since they had never mentioned it.

That night at dinner, against my brother’s advice, I asked them. They both froze mid-bite, the color draining from their faces. My father sputtered, “how did I know about the Holocaust or Auschwitz?” I told him that was the lesson in my history class that day. As my parents’ eyes met, some sort of silent communication happened because my father turned back to me, saying, “you know your name in Hungarian is Piroska, after my mother.” With trepidation I said, “yes.” Then he said, “she died in Auschwitz.”

The shock of that statement hit me like a punch. I became dizzy, as I felt the floor of my life starting to dissolve underneath me. I finally got up from the table and stumbled into my room, closing the door. I laid on my bed in the dark, trying to catch my breath. I could not process that my grandmother was murdered, that what we studied in history that day, and only for that one day, was not just some far-off story having nothing to do with me, like the pilgrims symbolically landing on Plymouth Rock. Instead, what we studied was actually my story, my parents, my grandmother, my family, my heartbreak, and I was not allowed to tell anyone.

So my incarceration was complete, unable to escape, even though I did not want this history, did not want to be Jewish, did not want to be Hungarian, did not want a weird name, did not want to be an immigrant, did not want to be a refugee, did not want parents who spoke English with heavy accents, did not want to be different. All I wanted was to fit-in to America, yet never quite could before I knew this information, and after I knew, realized I never really would, destined to always be an alien in the land in which I lived.

As I got older, when I asked my parents questions about the Holocaust, which was rarely, they would answer, always in nearly a whisper, letting me know that this was a topic not to be discussed in the open. Around the age of 20, to my parents’ chagrin, I decided to embrace who I was, a Jew. I thought, maybe I never really felt like I fit in anywhere because I belonged in the Jewish world. However, I couldn’t find my place there either. When I married a Jewish man at age 39, I inherited three kids before having one of my own, and I set about creating a Jewish home, finally finding a sense of belonging that I had missed my whole life.

With my parents there were no big discussions, no big revelations. I learned the story of what happened to them when I was 31, from my aunts and uncle in Hungary when I first visited. When I came home with the stories, my parents confirmed and elaborated a little, but by their reticence they clearly let me know to leave the topic alone, and so I did.

As I look back on my parents’ lives, although World War II ended and they had survived, I don’t know if my parents were ever liberated from the Holocaust. By their actions, I don’t think so, as it seemed the pain of their experiences was always the touchstone from which they moved forward. That heavy weight got passed down to me, and I have carried it all my life.

Two years ago I finally went to Poland on “The March of the Living,” an annual event in which thousands of individuals, from around the world, walk together from Auschwitz to Birkenau on Holocaust Remembrance Day, Yom HaShoah. I arrived alone, feeling as alien to the group of 32 individuals with whom I was going to travel as I generally felt everywhere. But soon I started to mesh, to feel comfortable, to feel like I belonged, recognizing we had a level of understanding with each other, as we were all 2nd Generation, that I did not really have with others in my life. When we went to Auschwitz, I had this extraordinary experience going through the gas chamber, feeling as if my grandmother walked in there to her death, and eighty years later, I, her namesake and legacy, walked out.

That evening there was a group meeting to process our experiences of the day, which ended up rather contentious. I had spent my life sitting in the back of the class, only speaking when called upon. I had been warned by my parents to never raise my hand, that my safety and survival depended on making sure I went unnoticed. Yet when the meeting was about to break up, as hard as it was for me, I raised my hand. I could feel the room sigh, like “Oh God, we were just about to make our escape and now we have to stay here for yet another story.” I steeled myself as I related how I had been raised, how I had not known, how I found out, how that has affected my life, and how today I felt the shackles lift as I walked out of the gas chamber and into the daylight. I’ll never forget the reaction. You could hear a pin drop and then I was enveloped into an embrace by all in that room that has never left me.

And I lived on that high until October 7th of 2023, when my whole sense of safety, acceptance, and freedom as a Jew came crashing down not only by the horrific events that transpired in Israel, but by the world’s response. I’ve lost my footing, not knowing where I belong, as women, students, politicians, friends, institutions, universities, several groups of which I was a member, much of what I had trusted and believed in, betrayed me, just as my father foretold. To my shock, all this time their anti-Semitism had been hidden just under the surface, rising with a vengeance, cloaked in all kinds of justifications.

So I only had a few months of liberation, before a new sense of insecurity, alienation and confinement settled over me. I don’t know how it ends this time, but I do know I won’t have another fifty years to find out.