‘Did Any of Your Family Perish in the Holocaust?’

Silence.
What is Holocaust?
There was the Great Patriotic War.
Grandma and Grandpa survived,
Fought even,
Heroes, medals…
We don’t talk about the War.
Grandma cries easily
Over everything.

At some point, I was let in on a secret,
Heavy,
Shameful,
Unofficial.

Grandma Rachel
(that’s your great grandma)
Stayed behind
In Zaporojie
(Zaporojitza?)
To help a pregnant daughter-in-law
(Not Jewish)
She was shot.
And her name might not have been 
Rachel.
We don’t talk about that,
Because it’s not Great and Patriotic.
Grandma cries easily
Over everything.

Grandma Lena
(not grandma but grandma’s sister)
Lives in Zaporojie
We are old enough now
We visit a hill,
With a plateau on top,
surrounded by village houses.
No ravine
No forest
No vista
No monument.
Grandma and grandma Lena cry.
Like the ones,
Before whom a dead one lies
So many years later.

We circle it.
Like the ones in the mikdash
To whom misfortune occurred.
But nobody asks: 
What happened to you?

We don’t talk about it.
We don’t ask.
It’s not the Great Patriotic War.
It has no name.

Years pass.
I learn that this is called Holocaust.
But only for those who were in the West,
Whose narrative includes numbers
And fences 
And documentation.
Great grandma Rachel remains invisible
Not a survivor.

I learn that her death has a name:
“Holocaust by Bullets”.
The neighbors knew.
The locals knew.
Who else knew?
Who else decided that her death is not worth it?
Grandma cries easily
Over everything.

My son asks for a school project:
“Do we have a survivor story?”
We do.
You great grandma,
My grandma
Survived.
Her mom–didn’t.

But
There are no numbers,
No fences
No documentation.
The story is rejected.

Aliyah dreams
Jewish agency
Proof of Judaism?
Can a hill in Zaporojie,
Without a plaque
Bones
Scream to the heavens and prove
Beyond shadow of a doubt
That I am Jewish?

Grandma Rachel did not get buried in a wooden box.
I, her descendant,
Do not fit into a box.
Forever excluded
From the neat, polite, squared off
Process.