My paternal grandmother, Kreindel Graff Rosenberg was born in Ulanow, Poland in 1892. She was the second of eight children, four boys and four girls. Her father, Raphael Graff, was also born in Ulanow. Her mother, Sura Ita Beer Graff was from the town of Oleszyce, Poland.

It took me decades to compile those facts.

Growing up, my Holocaust survivor relatives were either vague or chose not to remember their family history. Later, as they grew older, they were more willing to share their memories but it was too late. I had moved away and was busy building my own life.

Last Friday, 10 Adar was the fiftieth anniversary of my grandmother’s death.

I lit a candle in her memory and said kaddish.

I had never done either for her before.

But having a daughter in a Tel Aviv bomb shelter moves the needle.

Kreindel by all accounts was an extraordinary woman.

She was tall, blonde, green-eyed, self-supporting, intelligent, observant and possessor of a quick wit.

Her children were, each in their own way, awed by her.

My father, the eldest, greatly respected her and was probably most like her.

He told me one story that has stayed with me my entire life.

They were in Tajikistan and were starving. My father developed jaundice. His sister suffered from anemia. My grandmother secured horse meat which she fed to her children but she would not eat it as it was unkosher. When I heard this, I realized that she had fed her children more than the food. She had fed them spiritually. She had, by example, taught them, “We are apart from other people and we have to hold our head high despite being hunted and hounded from country to country”.

By the time I met my grandmother, she was a somber, prematurely aged woman. I was six years old and try as I might (I really wanted a grandmother) we had difficulty communicating.

We seemed to have little in common.

I wanted to be a cowgirl.

She had a life that beggars description.

She had fled Ulanow with her husband and children and spent the next six years in the Soviet Union moving from Lvov, Poland to Novosibirsk, Siberia to Dushanbe, Tajikistan and after the war ended, to Stettin, Poland, Poking, Occupied Germany, Tel Aviv and finally, Haifa, Israel.

But she didn’t tell me these things.

I found them out long after she had died.

My paternal aunt is the only one left of her immediate family.

Though a grandmother and great-grandmother, she is still influenced by her mother and often repeats things she said or did.

“Anyone who oppresses the Jews will suffer a bad fate” her mother told her.

My mother, a non-Polish Jew (a big deal in my family’s post-war lives) had a different saying, one I didn’t quite understand at the time, but now realize was prophetic.

“The end of a thief is a rope.”

The aphorism referred to all evildoers not just a literal thief.

My grandmother is buried on a hill in Haifa. Her white tombstone is pristine despite (or because of) decades in the strong Mediterranean sun.

Her name “Kreindel” is spelled out in black Hebrew letters.

Kreindel, I learned, was a late medieval name. It means “crown” and refers to “the crown of the torah”, perhaps expressing a prayer that this daughter of Israel would grow up to be a shining symbol of the torah’s glory.

Yesterday, in schul, I prayed that my daughter and Klal Yisroel be safe during these days.

A missile landed a few doors down from her apartment building in Tel Aviv, blowing out the windows and front door.

She and dozens of others were huddled in a nearby shelter listening to the incessant rockets, both incoming and defensive.

I hope that when this war is over she will travel to Haifa and visit my grandmother and place a few stones on her grave for we are a people who value the lives of those who came before us as well as the lives we chose to live.

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)