My Dining Room Table
Photo by Ben Ostrower on Unsplash
By Erin Deborah Waks
The dining room table in my apartment belonged to a Holocaust survivor.
It was given to me when I moved house by family friends and holds, for me, a significance that I can only attempt to put into words.
Yesterday was Holocaust Memorial Day and, in addition to that, the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the concentration camp Auschwitz-Birkenau. This day represents so much to so many people; as a young Jewish woman and the descendant of eastern European Jews who fled Latvia and Lithuania to sunny South Africa to escape escalating anti-Semitic violence, it holds particularly poignancy to me and many of my contemporaries.
But, it must be said, opportunities to hear from those who directly experienced the horrors of the Holocaust are becoming fewer and further between. Having had the privilege to hear from such speakers myself, I am grateful for the chance I have had to understand the true personal, brutal and traumatising impact of the persecution of the Jewish people during this period. That is not something I take lightly.
In a few years’ time, we won’t have this privilege any more. The survivors, who have led long and meaningful lives, will pass the torch to the next generation to share their stories. I hope the next era of Jewish - and non-Jewish - young people will continue to share these harrowing histories so that we never forget this dark chapter in our past.
I like to think that my - and, in truth, I hesitate to call it ‘my’ - table has seen so many memories and so much joy being created around it, upon it.
It has hosted - and continues to do so - endless Friday Night Dinners, Chanukah gatherings, supper parties, arts and crafts nights, date nights, Galentine’s and Valentine’s parties, brunches and lunches and dinners and coffee breaks in between. It has seen, I am certain, generations gathered for the Passover seder, just as now it sees a bunch of twentysomethings sharing their young adulthood together.
It is not the most remarkable table to look at. You cannot know what it has seen, the stories it has heard, just by glancing at it. It looks, in truth, perfectly ordinary. But it holds the history of a lifetime of one man who experienced true evil all because he was Jewish. To be the guardian of something that has borne witness to the life he lived, the life he got to live, the Jewish life he created in defiance of those who wanted to destroy him, is an honour I treasure.
