The Bracelet
How a teenager's experience in 1945 Czechoslovakia has inspired my response to the Israel/Palestine war.
I want to start this post by acknowledging that this is perhaps the most deeply personal post I’ve ever written. Some of this has been percolating in my head since I was a young girl. It seems poignant to share because of what is happening in the world right now. I in no way profess to be an expert in geopolitics. I am a yoga teacher. What I do know is that while there needs to be a political/diplomatic solution to the current situation in Israel/Gaza there also needs to be a spiritual solution for humanity.
The war ended. That should have been the end. But it was only the beginning for her.
They came.
She ran to the Catholic church—the only place she thought she would be safe. The doors to the church were locked. She lost her faith that day.
She was told she could only take with her what she could carry on her body. She lost her home that day.
Her father was taken and she never saw him again. She lost her father that day.
She was loaded into a cattle car. In the chaos, family members—including children— went missing. She didn’t know where she was being sent or what her fate would be when she arrived. She was officially a refugee.
Everyone has heard about the Holocaust but not everyone knows about the millions of people (Jews and Christians alike) killed and displaced after World War II ended. In the Middle Ages (between 476-1300s), Germanic people started migrating and settling in large swaths of Central and Eastern Europe. Most often the existing communities were welcoming and everyone lived together in peace despite having different languages, cultures, and traditions. Throughout the years more Germans were welcomed into areas that had been devastated by large wars. By the late 19th century, ethnic Germans lived all over Central and Eastern Europe and often constituted the population majority in areas closer to the borders of Germany1.
Everything started to change, however, with the rise of nationalism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries2. Instead of living peacefully with many different cultures and ethnicities, people started to believe each culture should have its own nation. Despite the fact that diverse groups had lived (mostly) peacefully for centuries side-by-side, the pull to be with one’s own people forever changed the course of history.
The end of World War I brought massive upheaval to a region devastated by war. Ethnic German communities that had existed for centuries suddenly found themselves located in “foreign” nations. As minorities, these communities were often persecuted and treated poorly by the new majority rulers of differing cultures. This persecution of ethnic German communities combined with severe economic hardship was the catalyst for the grievances that gave rise and life to Hitler’s Nazi Party. The idea of a “German nation” where German people could be free from persecution and could govern themselves on the very lands they had lived on for centuries was attractive to groups of people who were poor, perpetually persecuted, and without representation in a newly formed nation that didn’t represent their culture. The existence of these communities were the basis for Hitler’s territorial claims and played a major role in his decision to invade countries such as Czechoslovakia and Poland.
World War II played out and, obviously, the Germans lost. After the war, the German people who still lived in the nations that Germany invaded were no longer welcome3. In Czechoslovakia, for example, the remaining ethnic German people were forcibly removed from their homes, loaded onto trains, and shipped out of the country, never to return again. Many men who were known Nazi sympathizers were rounded up and killed. This was ethnic cleansing all over again—retribution for the ethnic cleansing the Nazis carried out on the Jews4.
The young woman’s name was Therese, but her close friends and family called her Rezi. She ended up in a refugee camp in the American Occupation Zone and had to contend with squalid living conditions. She often went hungry and people died of malnutrition and disease all around her. But she was lucky.
When the war had broken out she was studying to be a teacher at a college in Vienna. She knew a little English from her studies and was able to find a job working as a translator and secretary for the American military. While she was working on the American base, she met and fell in love with a German prisoner of war named Wilhelm.
This young man had similarly experienced tragedy and trauma in his short life. When the war broke out and the German Army invaded his homeland in what is today Serbia, he was forcibly conscripted to fight for the Nazis or face death because he was an ethnic German. To avoid being sent to the Russian Front, he brought attention to a shoulder injury he suffered in childhood that prevented him from lifting his arm and claimed he would be unable to fight. Because he knew how to drive a car he was assigned to chauffeur for Nazi generals instead. When the war ended the general he had been driving foresaw what fate had in store for anyone associated with a Nazi commander (death). He released Wilhelm from duty and told him to “run” and surrender to the Allied forces. Wilhelm ran for his life, hiding from the enemy until he reached an American base in the American Occupation Zone. He surrendered and became a prisoner of war until he was able to convince the Americans that he had been forced to fight in the Nazi Army unwillingly and he was not a Nazi sympathizer.
An American Major Therese worked for sponsored her to immigrate to the United States. She arrived in Bedford, Pennsylvania in 1951 and was able to bring Wilhelm over shortly after. Therese and Wilhelm married in Bedford, PA in 1953. They moved to Cleveland, Ohio, and started a new life together in a new land. They had nothing to their name and no homes to go back to, but they had their culture, their work ethic, and they had each other. They also carried immense trauma.
For centuries groups of people have been trying to take land from other groups of people. The result is always the same. Anger, resentment, hatred. This breeds violence. A war breaks out. Everyone loses, even though one group will be declared the victor. Some solution is proposed in which no one gets what they want but this ushers in a period of relative peace until enough anger, resentment, and hatred builds again for the cycle to start all over. The human toll of this cycle—beyond the lives of those killed in the wars themselves—is the incredible trauma held by the survivors and their ancestors. This trauma is passed down for generations.
There is nothing more destabilizing in a human’s life than being forced from your home. In yogic spirituality, the first chakra represents stability and safety. Home is meant to be the material manifestation of this energy. When it is taken away or for other reasons unable to provide the security and safety every human needs, problems ensue. Those problems show up as behavioral, psychological, and health issues because, as famed psychiatrist Bessel van der Kolk says, “the body keeps the score.” But that trauma also becomes embedded in one’s belief system, which gets passed down through the generations for better or for worse. The cycle continues unless the anger, resentment, and hatred is overcome through the cultivation of compassion, empathy, kindness, and love.
Wilhelm found a job in Cleveland working in a restaurant owned by another immigrant, an Italian chef named Boiardi (you may know him by his name’s Americanized pronunciation Boyardee and his cans of Spaghetti’Os on grocery store shelves). A few years later Wilhelm opened his own restaurant. After earning enough money, Wilhelm and Therese were able to rebrand their small restaurant and build a local mainstay—Old Austria—where they celebrated and honored the food cultures and traditions of their respected homelands. Though it was known as a German restaurant, the food more accurately resembled the dishes and regional fare they had grown up with representing the many cultures that coexisted in pre-World War II Europe. Hungarian Goulash. Slivovitz. Matzah ball soup. Schnitzel. And of course, the beloved spaetzle.
While Wilhelm and Therese held on tight to their German heritage, they rarely spoke of what happened during the war. They tried their best to put it behind them. Therese often had unexplained tears in her eyes and was unable to ever put words to her journey. It was too painful. Wilhelm suffered from alcoholism for a time; towards the end of his life he sometimes told stories about back then. There was one about burying coffee in the ground to hide it from his superiors in the Army. Another time he described his journey running for his life after the war ended. It all sounded surreal to his grandchildren, who as American citizens could never fathom such a life.
Epigenetics5 is the study of how behaviors and lived experiences can change how genes work and get passed down from one generation to the next. The trauma of war isn't just experienced by the people who live through it. Their experiences can change how genes function. As they have families of their own the effects of traumatic experiences pass on to the next generation. Luckily, these changes can be reversed.
In addition to the gene changes, survivors of war also—often unconsciously—pass down the emotional weight and pain of their experiences. Older generations rarely sought help even though they struggled. Therapy and mental health were still seen as taboo subjects. They didn’t want to be seen as weak and they didn’t want to relive the horrors. It was easier to just forget about it. Except they could never forget. And their children saw the effects of that. It shaped their own worldviews, life choices, and beliefs, which in turn shaped the beliefs of the survivors’ grandchildren, and so on and so forth. War is never forgotten by the ancestors of those who lived through it. That pain lives on in the hearts of the descendants. It might not always be named or known, but it is there.
Therese and Wilhelm are my grandparents.
Every Wednesday during the summer months, my sister and I would spend the day with Oma and Ota. We had a routine of sorts. Ota would make us oatmeal for breakfast and then we’d play a game of Mensch argere Dich Nicht, a German version of the game Sorry that translates in English to “Man, don’t be upset”. Around 9am we’d walk over to the shopping mall nearby where we could walk the rounds with the senior citizens in the relief of air conditioning before the mall opened to the general public. After lunch we’d go swimming in the neighbor’s pool. In the afternoon we’d get to “help” Oma and Ota clean the offices—they owned a building two doors down that looked like an old Austrian chateau and had an early iteration of Buffalo Wild Wings as a tenant plus a bunch of offices behind the restaurant. We liked to check in on the “messy guy”—some accountant who had files stacked everywhere—and the equally messy but more fun seamstress’ office who had colorful fabric scraps carpeting the floor. As we waited for our dad to pick us up, we’d sit on the front porch and try to guess the color of the next car that would drive by.
One morning when I was probably around nine or ten years old we were enjoying an Orange Julius in the mall food court when I noticed a disabled woman. I didn’t have the awareness as a child to know what it meant to be disabled so I said out loud what I was thinking: “That woman walks funny.”
Oma immediately reprimanded me. She told me it was not nice to say things about people’s appearance and that you never know what a stranger is going through. If I was going to say anything at all, I should only say something nice. I felt ashamed but that memory is seared in my mind as a lesson of kindness. Oma then made me find something nice to say about the woman. “She has a pretty scarf,” I replied.
My grandparents, after all they went through, came to America and opened a restaurant honoring their culture and heritage. Though they tried to “forget” all the horrible things that happened to them in their teens, those tragedies lived with them forever. They chose to share their culture and heritage with fellow Americans (and many fellow German refugees) through the joy of food and community. They found peace and joy in their lives through breaking bread together and sticking close to one another.
They knew what it was like to be hungry. Never again. It was a pretty strict rule in my grandparent’s house that you never leave any food on your plate. We were reminded over and over again that there are children in this world who don’t have access to a good meal at this very second. In her retirement, my Oma volunteered for Meals on Wheels delivering warm meals to those who were unable to get one on their own. She taught her children and her grandchildren the power of family, kindness, and joy despite the absolute terror, atrocity, and trauma she endured in her life.
The legacy of war trauma continues today. All the Palestinian, Israeli, Ukranian, Burmese, and Sudanese children who have lived through war will carry and pass down trauma for generations to come6. The cycle of violence will continue until we collectively as a global population understand that it doesn’t matter your religion, your race, or where you come from. We are all human. Your humanness is the only thing that matters. When you reject the idea that there is any one group of people who “deserve” a specific location to live, food to eat, or money to buy things more than any other human, then the world can start to move toward living in peace. My hope and wish is that the survivors of these wars are able to transform this trauma and grief into a force for positive change in the world.
In the
Pulling the Thread with Elise Loehnen newsletter this week , Rabbi Steve Leder, author and senior Rabbi of the Wilshire Boulevard Temple in Los Angeles said:
“I’ve given up all hope of a better past. We can’t have a better past…We have to now talk about moving forward…[W]hen the status quo or the equilibrium is disrupted or punctuated for Jews, it results in an adaptation and an upward evolution of what it means to be a Jew.”
This isn’t true for just Jewish people. It was true for my grandparents. It’s been true for all of humanity for all time. We are here today because of the adaptations and evolutions of our ancestors. Some of those evolutions are for the better and some are perhaps for the worse. Our individual responsibility is to make sure that the path forward is one in which we evolve for the betterment of all society, all people, all of Mother Earth. We are in this together. We are all One.
In the afterword of Man’s Search for Meaning, philosopher, lawyer, and psychoanalyst William J. Winslade says about author and Auchwitz survivor Viktor Frankl:
“…he renounced the idea of collective guilt. Frankl was able to accept that his Viennese colleagues and neighbors may have known about or even participated in his persecution, and he did not condemn them for failing to join the resistance or die heroic deaths. Instead, he was deeply committed to the idea that even a vile Nazi criminal or a seemingly hopeless madman has the potential to transcend evil or insanity by making responsible choices.”
To move forward towards peace in the world, you don’t have to become the next eloquent speaker, famous author, or even a prolific activist. The “responsible choices” to transcend evil that you can make now don’t have to be life-altering. My grandparent’s small restaurant in Rocky River, Ohio brought joy to the local residents and that was enough. They made a positive difference in the local community in their own small way. They successfully transformed the most horrible circumstances in their life into something positive and good. But no one can move through such a transformation alone. It will take incredible support from the entire world to help the survivors prosper.
The United States’ blank-check support of Israel is impacting public opinion about this country on the world stage, especially in Muslim countries. Queen Rania of Jordan gave an interview to Christiane Amanpour on CNN and describes the pain and disappointment Muslim people are feeling right now:
United States foreign policy does not have a good track record helping the Muslim people. In the past three years we pulled out of Afghanistan leaving a complete disaster and left behind—often in danger—many of the Afghani people who helped us. Now our government stands by and approves of the absolute decimation of Gaza and Palestine. Though it may not be the intention of the US government to hurt Muslim people, the public perception in Muslim countries is that the US does not value their lives as much as the lives of others. This will breed more hate and violence in the future. One way to counter that hate is to find within ourselves the courage to show love and compassion for all.
Islamophobia and anti-Semitism are on the rise in the United States. An October article published by Reuters found anti-Semitic incidents up by about 400% since the Israel-Hamas war began with Jewish people suffering from harassment, vandalism, and assault. Palestinian-Americans have been killed and attacked as well. A 6-year-old Palestinian boy was stabbed to death and his mother injured by their landlord in Illinois. The landlord is being charged with first-degree murder, attempted murder, aggravated battery, and two counts of a hate crime. In Vermont, three Palestinian-American students were shot and one is now paralyzed from the chest down. The shooter is charged with attempted murder and the FBI is investigating whether hate crime charges can be added. Senseless acts of violence all committed from the bedrock of hate.
My husband is of Pakistani descent. His skin color is darker than mine and people ask him all the time, “Where are you from?” He was born in Columbus, OH. When he was a child, kids at school would tell him his skin looked like poop. His father, who flew planes as a hobby and is also an ER doctor, would get “looks” when he showed up to watch his daughters’ soccer games after 9/11. Though my father-in-law did not actively practice Islam with his children, all of his brothers and sisters still do and I’ve had the great privilege of getting to be part of an extended family that practices Islam. It is a beautiful religion and I love my family very much. My husband’s own grandparents experienced displacement as well when Pakistan was created in 1947. My sister-in-law currently lives in Pakistan and frequently shows us examples of how the Pakistani media portrays what is happening in Israel/Gaza. It is not favorable to the US.
Queen Rania of Jordan also said in her CNN interview with Christiane Amanpour,
“This is a 75-year-old story; a story of overwhelming death and displacement to the Palestinian people.”
It’s also a 2000+-years-old story of overwhelming death and displacement to the Jewish people.
Death and displacement has been happening to all people across the world, regardless of religion or race. Death and displacement happened to my Catholic and Lutheran grandparents in 1945. It happened to all the Native people in the Americas in the 17 and 1800 and it happened to African people during the same time. It has happened everywhere for every reason and we can’t change the past.
What is evident and true in all of these peoples’ stories—my grandparents, Rabbi Leder, Queen Rania—is the pain. There is so much pain.
In another part of the
newsletter this week , Rabbi Steve Leder said:“A shadow, no matter how dark, or how long, cannot exist unless a powerful light still shines. It is obstructed, but it shines. Hate, is love obstructed, murdered even, but it is not love extinguished. Hate is not the end of hope, but the beginning of a battle summoning us to a deeper faith, to clarity and courage; it is a solemn oath to a more beautiful tomorrow…”
At the end of the day people want to be acknowledged, seen, and heard. Israelis and Jewish people want their suffering acknowledged, not just on October 7, but all the suffering they have endured since the beginning of time. At the same time, Palestinians want their suffering acknowledged too. It’s not about who is right and who is wrong in this situation. It is about who is human. And the answer is everyone. Every human deserves to be seen, heard, acknowledged, supported, loved.
I don't know what the solution is to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. But I do know that the answer is love, peace, and understanding. The how is more complicated. But we have to try.
Viktor Frankl, in describing his experience in a concentration camp during the Holocaust in his book Man’s Search for Meaning, says:
“We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life—daily and hourly. Our answer must consist, not in talk and meditation, but in right action and in right conduct. Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual.”
Each individual has a role to play in society today. Though you may not have a direct connection to anyone in Israel or Gaza, though you may not know anyone who is Jewish or Muslim, you have a role to play.
In the Yoga Sutra, the Yamas and Niyamas are presented as a set of ethical codes and guidelines to follow in order to reach enlightenment. The order of presentation is important. First, comes Ahimsa—non-harming or compassion. Right action must always be taken with non-harming and compassion in mind.
I share all of this with you today because I see so many people asking what are you doing about this conflict? Are you speaking up? I’ve argued with my parents, colleagues, my sister-in-law. I feel deeply about what is going on in the world and it’s not something I can continue to keep buried inside.
I’m asking myself:
What is my individual role and responsibility in this wider conflict?
What is my role as a yoga teacher and where in my scope of practice does today’s conflict fall?
How does my own personal bias based on my ancestral trauma and my own extended family’s trauma impact my processing of what is happening?
Am I looking at objective sources based on facts or am I being swayed by emotional reporting that is spreading misinformation?
Am I acknowledging the humanity of every person?
What is scaring me and how do I feel like I’m holding myself back from participating in the conversation?
How do you transform suffering into positive change?
Maybe you’re asking some of these questions too.
Here are some ideas for what I think individuals can do right now. As a highly sensitive person and introvert, I want to acknowledge that if you’re not an activist and it’s not in your nature to be loud or you don’t have the privilege to walk out of work in protest of the war, the small things you are doing in your own way are meaningful, too. I see you. I get that sitting around meditating from the comfort of our homes in the US is doing nothing for the Palestinian children suffering and dying at this very minute. But I also want people to understand that cultivating compassion is a daily practice that we all need to work on now so that we never again have to experience this trauma as a collective society. Email your elected representatives and demand a cease-fire. Post on your social platforms if you have a following to let people know your position that the bombing needs to stop. But also, do your practice. Keep showing up for your spirit so that you have the fuel to nurture others who need your love, support, and understanding now and in the coming days, months, years, decades, and generations to come.
Here are a few ideas for actively cultivating and practicing compassion:
Learn about your past and find the human element that connects you to the pain and suffering happening around the world today. There is a very good chance your ancestors suffered from land grabs, wars, famine, and disease too. If you need help processing this or if it stirs up ancestral trauma, find a therapist to help you work through it.
Tell your story. That doesn’t mean you have to publish it for the world to read. You can write it down in a journal and share it with a few close friends or family members. The more we share about our own lives, the more others will see that we are more alike than different. At the end of the day, we all want the same thing—peace, safety, love.
Learn about others. Learn about other cultures and traditions and keep an open mind. Just the other day I learned about Kosher table settings and the importance of keeping the dairy and the meat separate. You don’t have to agree with or practice others’ traditions, but learn about them.
Practice yoga. Build your capacity to love and care for those who are not like you. The practice of yoga can help you experience in your body, mind, and spirit the truth that we are all one.
Don’t hold on to hate. Let it go. When someone treats you poorly, understand that it’s not about you. That person is reacting to the pain and suffering they’ve experienced and projecting it onto you. Receive it, forgive, and offer love and kindness in return.
Volunteer to help immigrants and refugees who need support, kindness, and understanding. I have a sister-in-law who works for the International Rescue Committee and does amazing work helping newly arrived refugees in the United States. My sister volunteered to help an Afghan family acclimate to their new home and teach them English.
Congregate. Hold space for, create, and participate in community. Especially open-minded communities that accept all and are committed to honoring the diversity and goodness in this world.
Converse. Engage in constructive conversations with people who are committed to having meaningful discussions about hard things and who are willing to acknowledge what they don’t know and when they are wrong.
Eat around the world. If food is your love language, learn about other cultures through food. Visit restaurants owned by immigrants. Research recipes from other cultures and try cooking and serving them on your own dinner table. Invite others over to try dishes from different native cultures.
Foster diversity. If you have children or know children, teach them about different cultures. Share diverse books and stories. Make that the norm rather than an exception so that the next generation won’t ever understand where hate for other cultures, races, or religions comes from. I love the IG account @theconsciouskid, which shares children’s books that positively represent many different people and their ways of life.
Finally, what does any of this have to do with women’s wellbeing?
Women are the natural caregivers in this world. As mothers, daughters, sisters, wives, aunts, we hold so much pain in our hearts because we feel deeply for humanity. It’s not that men don’t also hold the same capacity to feel and love. They do. But there is something about carrying a baby in your body, birthing that child, and often being the primary caregiver for that child, that makes you feel the pain and suffering of the world a little more tenderly.
As Queen Rania said, a mother can’t imagine the horror of having to lose her child. I have never felt a fear so deeply in my body than in the moment when a doctor told me that my 3-year-old son very likely had cancer. The mere thought and possibility of losing your child is such an immense shock to your spirit; having to live through the horrors of war knowing you can’t protect your child and that you might lose them to traumatic death—bombing, shelling, shooting, stabbing—is unthinkable. But this is happening at this very moment.
I believe that for women to be well, we must lean in to our natural strengths. Those are different for each woman. But what women can naturally bring to any arena they step in is a perspective rooted in compassion, love, and understanding. That is your natural birthright. That is the human birthright. If men won’t wield it, then it is the responsibility of women to bring love and compassion back into the conversations, the policies, the laws, the narratives, the cultural norms.
For women to be well—for the world to be well—we must honor who we are. And I believe we are a people with a deep capacity to love.
This is a call to peace for humanity. I get this revolution won’t happen overnight. There have been people calling for peace since the beginning of time and look at where we are right now in 2023. Yet we cannot lose hope. From the tragedies in the world today we must find purpose and meaning and collectively agree that we are all human. We are all connected. Engage in the spiritual practices that resonate most with you. For me, that’s yoga. For you that might mean going to church, or temple, or the mosque, or the forest. But please, find within you the capacity to see and feel the human suffering happening right now and do the work that is necessary to transform that suffering into positive transformation. This is the work my ancestors have inspired in me and I invite you to step into the arena alongside me.
I recognize that Wikipedia is not often a “valid” source, however for a history spanning this large a time period this entry gives a good general overview of what happened to Germans and how they became ethnic minorities https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ongoing_armed_conflicts
https://web.archive.org/web/20080302155203/http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20080301faessay87203-p30/jerry-z-muller/us-and-them.html
https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/last-million-eastern-european-displaced-persons-postwar-germany
https://books.google.com/books/about/National_Cleansing.html?id=wobiTHpAXbAC#:~:text=National%20Cleansing%3A%20Retribution%20Against%20Nazi%20Collaborators%20in%20Postwar%20Czechoslovakia&text=National%20Cleansing%20examines%20the%20prosecution,after%20the%20Second%20World%20War.
https://www.cdc.gov/genomics/disease/epigenetics.htm#:~:text=Epigenetics%20is%20the%20study%20of,body%20reads%20a%20DNA%20sequence.
These are just the countries with “major” wars happening right now. There are so many more countries who also have ongoing conflict and immense death tolls.
Thank you for this deeply reflective post! It took me some time to get through but it was worth it. So often yoga becomes a sort of navel gazing practice and then it sort of loses it's meaning as we lose sight of the world. The questions you ask are also questions I have asked myself and continue to ask, but it all feels so big and complex. It's posts like this, though, that bring form and light to our collective (and individual) urge to acknowledge that we are all connected, though that can sometimes be a painful thing. Let's keep this conversation going!