Trying to shield the pain, dad prevented healing
They tried to shield us from the pain. They tried to protect us from the trauma. They suffered in silence for years, coping with the monumental anguish borne of catastrophic war, devastation and holocaust that gripped the world for over a decade.
They were the members of the “greatest generation”, among them my father and my dear friends Henny Simon and Ben Cooper.
I am a war baby. As my mother gave birth to me in July 1944, in New York City, my father was serving as a master sergeant in the Army Quartermaster Corps in France, having been shipped overseas to England in the winter of 1944 to prepare for the D-Day invasion.
On the date of my birth, children in Europe were being slaughtered in the killing fields and in the concentration camp ovens. I did not meet my father until I was a year and a half old. When he returned to the states in late 1945, I refused to acknowledge him, claiming that my daddy was just the man in the brass photo frame on my bureau and not the man standing before me in the flesh.
During my childhood, my father never talked about his war experiences, but the family knew he was suffering. They called it “shell shock” back then. A generation later, we would come to recognize the syndrome as post-traumatic stress disorder. That war affliction and heart disease took my father at an early age. When I was 30 years old, I lost my father and my children lost a grandfather. Ever since then, I have been searching for ways to connect with him.
Because I believe the world itself was in shock and suffering from post traumatic stress disorder after the monumental war, the world was silent for years. Years after my father’s death, I was impelled to learn more about his war experience. After much research and visits to the Quartermaster Museum in Fort Lee, Va., at the same army base where he was stationed before shipping off to Europe and D-Day, I was amazed to learn that he came across the English Channel in the very first wave at Utah Beach, at 6:30 a.m., on D-Day, June 6, 1944.
My visit to Utah Beach with my husband on my 70th birthday, the 70th anniversary of D-Day and my father’s landing on the beach, was a moving closure of the circle for me.
I am in awe of my father and my friends, Henny Simon, Ben Cooper, heroes who did not ask for accolades, and who tried to shield their loved ones from the horrors they faced.
Now we know that their silence did not shield us because their trauma affects family members too. Openness and truth are healthier for us than silence and bearing the pain alone.
Henny Simon and Ben Cooper learned this lesson.
Henny, born in Hanover, Germany, was 14 years old when her world and the world of the Jews in Europe was shattered on Kristallnacht in 1938. Her mother was murdered in the killing fields, but with her youth, indomitable spirit, courage, strength of character and perseverance, she survived the concentration camps and was liberated in 1945. Emigration to the states, a successful business and happy family life followed. However, by the 1980s, the world seemed to be waking up. It was time to peel the scars off the trauma, open the wounds, tell the stories and learn the lessons of history so we would never forget.
Henny Simon, now aged 90, has made that her life’s work. Her partner, Ben Cooper, is a 93-year-young West Hartford native, a World War II Army medic veteran who witnessed the liberation in Germany, at Dachau and Munich. Together they mine their memories and share their stories and wisdom so the world will never forget. That is their mission.
How I would give anything to have my father back so I could hear his stories, share his pain, and embark on the healing process with him. That process was denied to many of my generation.
Having Henny and Ben still with us is a treasure. They have wisdom and warnings to impart which we must heed.
You can join them for a Special Veterans Day Evening program on Wednesday at 6 p.m. at Ahavath Achim Synagogue in Colchester, 84 Lebanon Avenue. Call (860) 884-8945 or write sshesq@yahoo.com to RSVP.