21. The Day We Went to the Museum

In every family, there are subjects it’s best not to discuss. With my father, I certainly wanted to avoid upsetting a man in his late nineties, so I carefully navigated around three topics: the Catholic Church, abortion, and the Holocaust.

Criticizing the Catholic Church was taboo, as it was the cornerstone around which my father ordered much of his life. It followed that abortion was an equally touchy subject. My father, a pro-lifer, once told me he spent an afternoon handing out anti-abortion pamphlets at the mall. He held more than just an opinion on the subject; for him, his views were deeply rooted in the tenets of his Catholic faith. While I managed to nudge his perspective slightly on abortion in certain instances, it felt like a hollow victory.

The Jewish Holocaust presented a more complex challenge to navigate. Why did I avoid asking an old man of Polish-Catholic origin living in a Canadian long-term care residence about the Jews in Warsaw during the war?

Knowing the history I know now of the Nazi occupation of Poland, the proximity of my father’s Mirowski Square apartment to the Warsaw Jewish ghetto, and the fate of my grandparents, I regret I never broached the topic. Why I never asked stems back to my father’s last visit to my Montreal home, while he was still able to walk with a cane, and I took him to the recently opened Holocaust Museum.

He didn’t seem eager to go, but I didn’t think much of it. It was the only Holocaust Museum in Canada, and I thought he would appreciate the skillful way the exhibits were organized to educate people about the atrocities and commemorate the victims' personal experiences. He had, after all, lived through the same war. The visit didn’t quite turn out as I had planned.

As we walked through the museum, examining false identity papers, faded prisoner's uniforms, yellow Star of David patches, letters, and photographs, my father remained mostly silent. After listening to a few recordings of personal testimonies, we took a short break because my father seemed tired. He still didn't say anything. I attributed his quietness to respect for the suffering displayed around us. It wasn't until we were leaving that he made a comment that has stayed with me to this day.

He thanked the docent and said it was an interesting museum. Then he added, "My parents were murdered by the Nazis, and there is no memorial to them."

Neither the docent nor I said a word. This was the first time I had heard my father say anything about the fate of his parents.

After the visit to the museum, my father seemed upset but did not want to talk about it. I knew that when something bothered him, silence was his way of processing it, but his reaction triggered something in me, bringing me back to my childhood and a single instance I misbehaved so badly that my naturally genial father gave me the silent treatment for two days. The childhood experience taught me the weight of his silence, and his wordless reaction after the museum visit left me unsettled. Did he not think the Jewish people deserved this memorial museum in Montreal, a city with a significant population of Jewish Holocaust survivors?

I completely misinterpreted my father's reaction. At the time of the museum visit, I only knew his parents had died during the Warsaw Uprising in 1944, unaware they had actually perished in the Ravensbrück and Gross-Rosen camps because my father had never talked about this. Instead of focusing on his poignant comment to the docent about his own parents, I fixated on his silence and apparent discomfort. This unresolved misunderstanding later made me reluctant to broach the subject of Jews in Warsaw during our late-life conversations, fearing it might upset him or reveal attitudes I wasn't prepared to confront.

Over the years, I had heard comments about Polish anti-Semitism or indifference to their Jewish fellow citizens. These pronouncements were made as if they were indisputable facts. As I grappled with my father's silence, a troubling question arose: Did he harbour any anti-Semitic sentiments?

What had I missed? My parents had been genuinely supportive of my marriage to a Jewish man. They developed a warm and cordial relationship with my in-laws. No hints of anti-Semitism there or in any other instance I could think of during my life.

It wasn’t until after my father’s death that I understood his reaction to the museum visit. An understanding of how my father felt emerged as I pieced together the story of his life, the events that swirled around him, and the moment my father officially heard of his parents’ fate.

In the course of my inquiries to the Arolsen Archives about my grandparents, Piotr and Julianna Switocz, I received copies of two handwritten letters my father's sister, Jadzia, had sent in 1991. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, Jadzia was finally free from the constraints of censorship and repression and wrote to the German Red Cross and the International Tracing Service (predecessor to the Arolsen Archives), seeking information about her parents. Although she and my father knew their parents had been rounded up during the Warsaw Uprising and taken to concentration camps, after forty-six years, they lacked official confirmation of what had transpired. Jadzia sought closure and hoped to discover more about her parents' final days.

Two years later, Jadzia received a response indicating a backlog of over one hundred thousand inquiries from Poland alone. The letter bluntly asked for patience and discouraged follow-ups:

"We do not expect the number of incoming letters to decrease in the near future. We ask for your understanding that providing you with information will take much longer. Do not pursue your case or write to us again, as this will lead to further delays."

It wasn't until six years after her initial letters, more than five decades after the end of the war, that Jadzia finally received information. Her father, Piotr, had been transported to the Gross-Rosen concentration camp on September 5, 1944, from the Pruszków transit camp near Warsaw. Her mother, Julianna, was taken to Ravensbrück concentration camp from the same transit camp on the same day. A few weeks later, Julianna was transported to Sachsenhausen and then back again to Ravensbrück. That’s the only information she received.

After decades, Jadzia now officially knew their fate, though the exact circumstances of their deaths remained unknown. She had something tangible, a letter to hold in her hands, but I am certain it gave her—and the over one hundred thousand others who had also sent letters—little closure.

Jadzia must have written to my father when she received the news. I can only imagine the pain of having no closure or certainty about how and when their parents died, with no cemetery stone on which to lay a bouquet of flowers. The Holocaust Museum exhibits stirred memories and emotions that my father had long suppressed, making the experience far more personal and painful than I had anticipated. I now understand that his silence wasn't just about processing what he saw in the museum, but also about grappling with the weight of his own family's tragedy.

This long wait for a reply, and the subsequent lack of true closure experienced by my father, Jadzia, and countless others, speaks to the enduring impact of the German occupation of Poland, and the complexities of post-war politics. It's a reminder of how these tragic events can echo through generations and shape our lives—and, in my case, the conversations I had with my father—in ways we might not immediately recognize.

What remained unsaid carried the heaviest meaning of all.