My mother, Ruth Bindefeld Neray, wrote:
“I don’t want to be regarded as an Auschwitz survivor. Rather, I want to be seen as a human being who overcame this terrible nightmare and triumphed.”
So how did she triumph? Let me share with you just some of the ways.
Every Sunday in the camp, she recited poetry with her friend Lise. Verlaine, Rimbaud, Victor Hugo, Lamartine, Mallarmé. Standing outside, in the cold Polish winter air, by the fence that overlooked a forest in the distance.
When they told Ruth to weave ropes for the German army, she sabotaged her work by using the weakest cloth she could find – until her sabotage was discovered and she was hauled into the Komandante’s office.
When they tried to strip away her dignity by forcing her to fight over scraps of bread with other inmates, she chose instead to visit the communal washroom while the bread was being distributed, so she could have the only working tap of cold water all to herself. “Would a tiny piece of bread make a difference to my hunger?” she wrote. “I didn’t think so. Instead, I could wash myself in peace and take my time.”
When she returned to Paris, and felt like a stranger in a strange land, she began to work again, as an artist who painted designs on silk for high-fashion boutiques. The painting helped take her pain away. She refused to give in to the feelings of depression and hopelessness that threatened to overwhelm her.
She fell in love with my Dad, Georges, a gentle man with a kind smile who loved children.
And I was born on March 7, 1955, exactly 11 years to the day that Ruth was deported to Auschwitz. For Ruth, my birth was thetriumph of life over death, a counter-balance to all the innocent children she had seen marching into the gas chambers.
I was – and am – a living expression of Ruth’s triumph. I am a very lucky man, because I’ve lived my life in the pure 1000-kilowatt light of her unconditional love. And that’s an incredible gift, because my direct experience of Ruth’s love has given me the power and capacity to love my beautiful wife, Robin, and my sweet children, Reed, Graham and Hart, in a similar way.
But there are many other examples of Ruth’s triumph. I’m sure you all have some. Here are a few more of mine:
- Ruth in her late 70s, striding up a hot desert trail in Utah, walking faster than anyone in our family, proudly dressed in her hiking boots and shorts from Mountain Equipment Co-op.
- Ruth at the ocean in Massachusetts, happy to be alive and smelling the ocean air, eagerly eating a huge boiled lobster with her bare hands, lobster juices squirting in every direction.
- Ruth returning to Paris with Robin to revisit the places of her youth, showing Robin her parent’s apartment, her lycée and the café where she bought her pain au chocolat every day before school.
- Ruth waking up each day, glad to be alive.
- Ruth walking through the streets of Paris with Graham, her grandson, now grown-up and working in Paris, and treating him to foie gras and croque monsieur in their favorite restaurants.
- Ruth telling her Holocaust story to both adults and children, including speaking to my own children’s classes. This was a triumph in two ways: first, she survived to tell her story to the world, which was of utmost importance to her, and second, she had to overcome the nightmares she always had before and after the talks. But she never turned down an invitation to speak, and she focused on what her listeners could learn about people and life rather than on the brutal details of her experience in the camps.
- Ruth making a tradition of going with me to the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. Each time we’d stop and spend some time with one of her favorite paintings — Renoir’s “Dance at Bougival,” which shows a dancing couple — because Ruth loved the grace of the young lady’s pose and the lustful gaze of the male dancer. We always ended our visit by sharing a glass of wine and a light lunch in the museum’s garden restaurant – a fine triumph indeed.
- The triumph of music. Giving me piano lessons when I was a child. Going to a Bruce Springsteen concert with Michel and his family, and remembering the experience with tears of joy in her eyes. And when she and I listened to Bruce Springsteen together in her hospital room a few weeks ago – her “Brucie” as she called him — her face and eyes were lit up.
- Listening to the Beatles with me on the car radio when I was 9 or 10. Later, singing “All You Need is Love” with us in the car — one of her favorite Beatles songs.
And as the Beatles sang, triumphantly, “Love, love, love … There’s nothing you can do that can’t be done … All you need is love.”
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