teaser

What a blog worthy day and now that I've been given a laptop to borrow for a week I suspect I'll be blogging on the can. That was dishonest-- my last post was written on the can. I do white lie sometimes.

So much to talk about with my dear blogblog sweetblog honeyconesblogpoo. I decided yesterday to start new blog where for sure no friend or foe can find it and just tell all the stories I have. Very seldomly do I meet someone who badly makes me want to tell them my stories. I've never counted how many stories there where and I've never known these special someones long or trusted them enough to tell them all of them but I do have stories to tell. Everyone does. But, the desire I have to tell them and to tell them well might be less usual. So, I either might turn this into my storytelling blog and each day or week share a story that I'd want to share with that special someone but even better because this way may really bring on the "why the hell" notness even more ,and I'm very very conscious of not being a bore and I love you that much more, ,blogikins,cause I don't notice the attention drift that might occur or I might fear might occur in others.

I sometimes just glance over my last posts to see if anything must be DELETED at once and so far I haven't really cared to delete any of them though I have a load of drafts that still haven't been posted-- but I can't get over the magnitude of typos and how dodo it makes me look. Then, I figure fixing it is silly in this internet age and progress is too constant and present and it feels self regarding and even old fashioned to fix those silly typos on my silly prose. I keep rhyming in spite of myself. Strange.


About two days ago a big story showed up out of nowwhere and I am so backlogged with stories at it is... but this one needs to get told and I think the elements are all there to be a real fat hippo or a story. All true,too. As are all my stories. I've never had the need to lie and life for a long while is obviously stranger than fiction. I'll give a tiny teaser before I commit myself to some offline antics out there, outside the foor doors, you know down the elevator and then outside the garage you know out there where I'm supposed to go and have some fun.

Teaser. Birth certificate arrives from Hungary. A year ago or so. So many of the mysteries of my childhood understood if not solved. My mother's birthdate and age mercifully the same but not her name. But, not a big shocker either because she mentioned it in passing and Hungarian names are insane and full of Z's for no good reason. And, then I get some disturbed wart who shoves me into some monstrous legal system for no reason and mocks my mother's holocaust survivorship without any reason other than the fact that Tig "Mathilde" Notaro is the lowest of the low as is her broken down dog, Stef Willen. Anyhow, if that's not enough the next door neighbor brutally murders the handyman by our door and shoots three bullets in ours while we are home and right by the bullets. And that really is enough considering that is 2009 and what has friggin happened in 2008 but what I think is enough and what the cosmos thinks is enough is really not that similar. So, more and more and more. But, I must focus. Must focus as this is a teaser and not the story. So, though growing up i heard really just such strange fragments from my mother youth I had questions that I didn't dare ask because I didn't want the answer or imagine it would be forthcoming if I did. And, those questions involve some vague guilt-- why did my mother and her 3 brothers survive with their parents(grandfather died after liberation) and why did her maternal grandparents survive and how come in all the stuff I've read about the holocaust I don't remember so many from one family being in the camps and all coming out together. And,as much as I loved my grandmother I always heard that she was the one that got them all to come out alive and I wondered how and what she could have done. And, as charming as I found my grandmother I wasn't blind to her selfishness-- her ability to get what she needed at the expense of others etc. But the answer to such a question could open cans of worms that would breed more cans of worms and answers would eventually grow from there that were too scary to even ever voice. And, I didn't. But blog I'll tell you I wondered what my grandmother must have done and I never really formulated any scenarios but I felt sure that some lousiness. some moral turpitude had to be involved for such a rare and relatively huge amount of survivors in one immediate family. Flash forward years later and I suddenly become intersted in history. My father was a history teacher, my family was really history(Holocaust, Birth of Israel, All israeli wars and then with my mother's coming to America to witness the civil rights movement etc etc) and no real interest. Now, almost halfway to being an octogenerian I'm Fascinated. And, not just my history or jewish history but all history. But, I've got to start somewhere and I start with The Russian Revolution and communism for no reason but strong interest. And then I plan to learn all about all the wars and how they came about and then I'll go way way once I learn a lot about that and last but not least I'll read about the Holocaust-- but not any book that isn't just about what led up to it, how it went on, etc. Otherwise, too depressing and not neccessery for me since I know plenty as it is. And my present is full of the depressing... as it is.
Anyhow,it's a year where my present becomes so immediate and intense that pretty much only Russian history gets learned in any semi thorough way.
About a year ago comes the mail and in in is a birth certificate from Hungary that my mother had to get if she wanted to get the 600 bucks that Hungary was giving to jews who had lost one or two parents under their watch. So sadly we needed the money and I did the paperwork to get it underway. It took a long time, so long that it was forgotten about and there it was and I already wrote about it somewhere in this godforsaken blog so I won't go into much more here than that the spelling of the name and the different name allowed me to email a "tracking service" mentioned by a lawyer who was in charge of taking care of this hungarian money that we needed for lawyers. And, as I do I just type it up real quick and send it off before I have a chance to change my mind. Afterall, I have more important things I should be doing. Within 10 minutes I get back an email from Yad Vashem in Israel and this friendly helpful guy asks me if I have a fax machine. I don't but I'm anxious enough that I arrange for the manager to just get it when it comes. It comes the next morning and is left by the door. about 10 pieces of paper with the dates according to transport records.
First one- Debrecen, Hungary. I knew that.
Second one-- Strashoff-- What is that??
Third one-- Bergen Belsen- knew about that.
Then liberation in April of 1945.
Knew not much about that but fragments-- my mother saying she remembers that it was the Americans and she remembers that it was a black man who saved them and that an american Jewish boy was also there and then a hospital and going to visit her father and he was gone and seeing him buried in a mass grave and this train before my grandfather died and he was there too, and my grandmother seeing "you are all going to die" on this "train" and having the guts to say to a nazi, "We're going to die let us have water before we do. And then telling everyone to come along and them coming as the nazi stood by and didn't stop them. And, then my mother was in orly france and that's pretty much it. Then she gets meningitis and goes to the orphanage and her roomate is going to be Gila Golan, a future miss Israel and then a minor american movie star, and a few more stories though my mother isn't a major storyteller. And my mother is neither a liar or fanciful so I know they are hard to believe but i believe them. And along the way I read about the holocaust, see some movies-- not all and not too many as it hits too close. I read Anne Frank and thinking of it, very few others. And, I just don't come across whole families surviving like mine did. And, I figure it happened but i can't figure out how when it's never discussed in the literature of the holocaust i've read. What I've read again is not exhaustive and i figure the answer is out there somewhere. But, I don't actively look for it. Years and years pass. I know about Bergen Belsen and that's enough -- it's famous, famously bad, and just say anne frank and not much else needed. But, why did Anne Frank who was more than double my mother's age as was her sister die and my baby mother at 5 and a half survive. Well, that's too big a question on any philosophical level but logistically this is how it went down:

Debrecen- April 44- Hungary is the last Jewry to get killed. Vagure memories and then I'm told by an uncle that there were taken from thier home to a ghetto in some brick factory.

then the real mystery and which good old google helps me with in minutes-- Strasshoff.
Google a few different keywords till I get to the heart of it-- And, after that it starts getting down to odder and odder odds and ends up making me feel as if I had very little changce to be here. It feels good and it feels not so good. And, it feels like it explains so much and since I am at a stage where I long ago gave up on senses as realities I'm back to square one and I fill with the same self importance i've always felt but now there is some reason to think it more than arrogance. I had nothing to do with it, sure, but my mother survived and that's too close for comfort. That's another story, back to strasshoff and what that is all about. +