My grandma is one of the strongest people I have ever known. A Holocaust survivor, she had lived many lifetimes of fear and tragedy before even stepping foot on United States soil as still but a child.
Bookending her life were two incredibly fearsome struggles that I wouldn’t wish upon even my worst enemy. But that should by no means discredit the center of her story.
Rising up from the annihilation of nearly her entire family, she was forced to abandon everything she knew, journey alone to what to her was a foreign country, a country in which she knew almost no one and did not speak the language. From that point, she was able to form, and serve as the backbone to, the family I am so privileged to be a part of.
I feel that I speak for everyone who knew her in stating that her resilience, compassion, and love are what shaped us into the people we are today. Her signature strength and perseverance, the very strength and perseverance that has inspired me so profoundly, remained until the very end. Fighting through the unbearable agony she must have been in, in her final days, she managed to acknowledge understanding of our words, and attempted to respond via slight movements.
As sad as I am for her to be gone, it warms my heart to know that, after all of the pain and suffering she has endured in her life, she can finally take the rest she more than deserves. After building such an incredible family herself, she has finally reunited with the family that was taken from her at such a young age.
Painlessly, she now rests in their embrace.