Explaining the Unexplainable

As the mother of Jewish kids, you know that eventually, you are going to have to discuss the holocaust.  I was strolling through Target with Rachael the other day when she turns to me and says, "Did you hear that everyone is mad at Justin Bieber, because he went to some girl's house and said something bad?".

I explained Bieber's visit to the Anne Frank house, and why his comment was egocentric and myopic.  Our conversation then turned to Anne, herself.  I had read Anne's diary when I was 10 years old, and remember that it was one of the first books that made a significant impact on me.  30 years later, I still recall various passages from Anne's diary.  I told Rachael about Anne and her family hiding in the attic of her father's business with another family and two other men.  I told her about their life in hiding; how they had to limit their movement during the day and weren't allowed to go to the bathroom until everyone left work.  I told her about the brave woman, Miep Gies, who risked her own life to keep the Franks and the other hiders alive.

She asked if Anne's father and Miep were still alive.  No, and I'll have to Google it.  She asked me why they published a little girl's personal diary.  It was one of the best records as to what it was like for Jews in hiding during the holocaust.  If Anne was alive today, how old would she be.  In her 80s.  How did she die?  She died from starvation and typhoid, which is a nasty thing you get from eating rotten food, because that is all she had to eat.  Have you ever been to Anne's house?  Yes, Daddy and I went to Amsterdam when I was 30, and my main priority was to see Anne's house.

Then her questions turned to the holocaust, in general.  Explaining the holocaust is kind of like explaining algebra.  I don't understand either one, except that eventually algebra has a logic and a reason to it, whereas the holocaust doesn't.  How do you tell your little girl that had she been born, not even a century prior, in Europe that she would have been rounded up and systematically murdered?

During our conversation, she said so many times that she didn't understand, but neither do I.  I've never understood baseless hatred, and I don't think I ever will.  I tried to give her some of the usual reasoning about Jews having gained so much wealth and prosperity in Germany during a depression that the envy of the German people made the successful minority a target.  I gave her the philosophical religious reasoning that when the Jewish people divide themselves, they open themselves up to destruction.  I spared her the secret conspiracy reasoning that Hitler was, himself, at least part Jewish, but despite all of the explanations, she still told me she didn't understand why.

I told her that I would buy her a copy of Anne's diary if she wanted to read it.  Rachael said she didn't want to read it now.  She would like to read it later, because when she's older she will probably understand it better.  I smiled and said, "okay", because I don't have the heart to tell her that no matter how old she is, she will never understand the holocaust.