It’s My Life

As I wrote in my post “Heritage” I’ve been researching my genealogy. I feel so blessed to have made connections that I never had any idea about before. I’ve met cousins (often 3^rd through…) and we’ve shared stories which are amazing!

One of the most astonishing things I’ve found are so many similarities, so often I find we think alike and even share favorite expressions — even though we’ve never met before, and often the generation before us had no interaction either. Our mutual likes, dislikes, and even political views really makes me believe in genetic memory!

Now I admit I am not the first one of my relatives to have pursued building a family tree. Many years ago, about a decade, a cousin on my mom’s paternal side tracked down and recorded EIGHT generations! It was a monumental task. Ironically the family tree showed a connection to a person I had known for a few years… talk about a small world.

But there are more trees that intertwine to make me who I am and I have started researching more on my mom’s maternal side. To be perfectly honest my mother was raised in the same small town where many of these people once resided and so many of them remembered her as a child (unfortunately she passed away several years before this cousin reached out to my sister and me). But I’ve formed precious friendships (several through the convenience of the internet).

My dad’s side was quite a bit more challenging as he grew up in a broken home (and again, he passed away rather early as well) so it hasn’t been easy to find out much. Unfortunately the few generations before me have thinned and not a lot of information has been available. I recently found out that my paternal grandfather had a sister but aside from having the name of the man she married I couldn’t find out anything else about her.

Surprisingly, the one grandparent I had little hope of tracking, my dad’s mother, has recently been the newest “tree” in my history. Thanks to that DNA test I took (23andme) I connected with a lovely cousin. We are close in age and grandchildren of sisters. She and I have shared several wonderful conversations about ourselves, our (current) families and so many of the family names that have repeated themselves in both of our lines. This cousin has been involved in a rather extensive family tree which, to my surprise, actually included my parents although neither my sister nor I were known about.

I never could figure out how one figures out anything beyond first cousins – so whether any of these lovely folks I am connected to are related two generations, or longer, ago, we have just all chosen to drop the numerical value of “cousin”. Trying to figure out the number of “great(s)” that comes before a mutual grandparent AND figuring out if you are of the same generation or not gives me a headache. I just prefer to call each relative COUSIN.

Aside from having this yearning to find out more of my roots, I am hoping o compile a bit of a book which I can pass down to my own children, nieces and nephews to help keep the family story very much alive. I know I have a lot of work to do but I am looking forward to this task because, well, THIS IS MY LIFE!

The Numbers on Her Arm

Monday, January 27^th, 2020 marked the 75^th Anniversary of the Liberation of Auschwitz (a German concentration camp in Nazi occupied Poland). The International Holocaust Remembrance Day is in commemoration of the day, January 27^th 1945, when Allied troops found nearly 8,000 sick and starving prisoners and liberated them.

This liberation happened nearly a decade before my birth and as a young child many of the adults in my family spoke in hushed tones about relatives that weren’t lucky enough to have made it to America, and relatives that died in the concentration camps. I was raised amid whispers of different camp names and the evil “Final Solution of the Jewish Question”. Jewish children, safe in America from Nazi Germany’s plans to annihilate our race were sheltered by parents who mourned loved ones and were horrified by what had happened.

My parents had a friend, her name was Anne, and one day I asked Anne about the numbers tattooed on her arm. My mother gasped. Anne took my hand and quietly told me that it was a mark put on her arm by Nazis when she was taken to a concentration camp. And then she somberly old me a “gentle” version of what she had lived through. Knowing how protective my parents always were I innocently asked Anne where her parents were during her ordeal and she told me. And I cried when I learned that she had watched her mother walk into the gas chamber, and she was separated from her siblings all of whom she was sure of their deaths, and her father was shot to death for not working hard enough.

A few years later, in public school, one teacher was brave enough to show our class a film that was taken by a soldier upon liberating one of the camps. There were corpses and tattered clothing, and even remnants of dolls and he told us how many died during this horrendous time; he even told us that more than 6-million Jewish lives had been taken along with thousands of gay men and women, non-Jews who tried to help their Jewish neighbors, Gypsies, twins who were used for experiments, physically and mentally disabled people, Catholic priests, and others who didn’t look Aryan enough. There were parents who were upset about his harsh reality their children witnessed in the film and there were complaints — I think that teacher was fired, we had a different classroom teacher the rest of the year.

Throughout my life I met several more people with numbers tattooed on their arms and poignant stories to tell. And I heard stories of hope as people rebuilt lives. I visited a small local Holocaust museum some years back. And my own daughter visited Auschwitz during a USY (United Synagogue Youth) Pilgrimage to Poland and Israel. And I learned the name of a young relative in my family who died in one of the concentration camps, Sara was just 10-months old.

I was very distressed to read headlines today which implied that growing numbers of millennials have no idea what the Holocaust was. There have always been some deniers, but it happened… the numbers on Anne’s arm were real, the stories I’ve heard from other survivors are real, the film our teacher showed us was real, and 10-month old Sara was real. I fear that #NeverAgain has become a meaningless cry for too many.

We can NEVER FORGET when any people have been tortured, killed, dehumanized, and singled out because of a religion, race, lifestyle or ethnicity. Please teach your children and your children’s children — we must remember so that we can, G-d willing, stop history from repeating itself.

The Railway to Auschwitz

                                                                                                                                  

Who Am I?

I was so excited to find that my “report” was available today, it was more than a week before I expected it. I sent in my “sample” to one of the more popular DNA companies and while I already know SOME of my ancestry (a few cousins and I did lots of research), I want to know more.

Unfortunately my parents died when I was just a young adult and I never had the opportunity to ask questions that I didn’t even think of until I was raising a family. Now grandparents, aunts and uncles are also gone. It is startling to realize that I am now among the elders of my family (I really don’t feel that old!) I have an amazing thirst for my past, where I came from and stories that might also be a bit embarrassing. In many ways my ancestry is what made me who I am today.

My maternal grandparents immigrated to this country as youngsters or teens, I’m really not sure. My paternal grandfather was born in Puerto Rico but that was before PR was a United States territory. I’ve heard romantic stories about my paternal grandmother being conceived (and maybe born?) on a ship crossing the Atlantic Ocean. What made each of them come HERE, to the mainland where I was born and raised? Without their decisions I would not be here. Heck, without my grandparents’ journey to the United States mainland, my parents might not have even met.

I’ve heard rumors of notable ancestors but without substantial proof. I cling to the tales my folks told me as a child about how they met and bits and pieces about their courtship. And even those stories leave questions as my sister remembers some slightly different tales than I do. So I want to know more. I want to leave a WRITTEN history of my family for my offspring and the generations to come. 

A few years ago a distant cousin began a search into our shared lineage (my maternal grandfather’s line) and it was fascinating, it went back eight generations to eight sons, but even that was incomplete as none of the possible daughters were recorded in the many sources. But it was still fascinating to learn some of the details. And imagine my surprise when I talked about some info I learned and an acquaintance that I had known for a little more than a year actually asked me why I was talking about HIS family! I had no idea that I was (even distantly) related to him.

There are those who don’t share my thirst for knowledge of ancestors. Some of these people don’t believe in genetic memories… or maybe are even wary about what they might find out. I respect their sense of “privacy” and not wanting to delve into yesterday — but that is NOT me. I say bring it on, bring on my ancestors and the stories of their lives, bring on my relatives both close and distant. Several of us in my maternal grandfather’s family tree don’t bother with the numerical designations, we are just all cousins.

And yes, if you ever do an Ancestry kit and find my name in your list of DNA matches please reach out, I will always welcome another Cousin!

Memories

As my husband and I are in the process of decluttering and downsizing I am finding so many tidbits here and there that evoke so many memories. Each time I come across a school project that one of my (now grown) offspring did in school I automatically picture them at that age – I swear it’s like a photo just flashes in front of me. I’ve come across so many other memorable treasures as well, some that make me laugh and others that set the tears in my eyes.

Memories are super strong motivators.

I try to give my characters strong memories, even when I don’t share the actual memory with my readers, I know what is in that character’s heart and I let it steer her reactions and feelings. In His LuckyCharm and Within the Law Caitlyn is very motivated by her memories (she is the heroine in His Lucky Charm, her cousin Tom is the hero of Within the Law). Her strongest memory in both stories is about the parents she lost as a little girl from a car accident. The loss doesn’t stifle her but it does make parts of the story very poignant.

In another story, Final Sin, Julie, a paramedic, is very driven in her independence and being a modern woman because of her memories of overprotective and overbearing older brothers. At the same time Jake, her love interest and a homicide-investigating sheriff, is haunted by the failure of his first marriage and his desire not to let his son suffer because of the discord with his ex-wife.

In a previous life I was a Theatre and Drama student (yes, at one time I aspired to act on stage) and it was common to be taught using the Stanislavski Method Acting System. Stanislavski (real name: Constantin Sergeyvich Alekseyev) wanted actors to have sincere motivation behind every action they took on stage. It wasn’t enough for a director to tell them to slam a door, Stanislavski wanted them to actually feel the anger behind the movement. If they needed to cry in the scene he wanted them to remember the sorrow they may have experienced in their own lives.

When I create a character I compose a basic dossier (the more major the character the more detailed the history) so I know what motivates them, what scares them, what makes them happy, and what drives them in all of their interactions. Often I think of my own memories to understand what would evoke the different emotions in my character’s life, and yes, there are many times I cry or laugh right along with them. In Within the Law Tom goes to visit the grave of his high school sweetheart and fiancé, my character wasn’t the only one with tears in his eyes.

Like Stanislavski’s methods, I believe that if my characters are genuine in their emotions then my readers can believe in them and can be involved in the story. Reading a book is supposed to be a little like taking a vacation from the real world, but it’s also supposed to be more than just reading words. I hope that by employing Stanislavski’s Method Acting to my writing I can (stealing a line from Calgon here) take my readers away for just a little while.

Author Chelle Cordero