the debt

I got home twenty minutes ago from a movie with friends. As the title suggests, we saw Helen Mirren's new movie, "The Debt." Despite the constant cringing, audible gasps, and occasional eye-shutting, I really liked it! Probably because the cast was great and the story was interesting, but probably also because I have an ongoing internal debate about my own involvement with my family's history, and this gave me food for thought. I don't want to ruin a movie anyone might see, but you could gather this easily from the trailers:

three agents from Mossad (Israeli CIA, sorta kinda) are tasked with hunting down the surgeon from Birkenau. You know. That truly horrific concentration camp where Nazis did unspeakable experiments on Jews. The surgeon from Birkenau = the Devil's evil twin brother.

My family never went to the concentration camps because they were lucky enough to have been hunted down by Stalin's goons in Ukraine in the 30s during a wave of pogroms instead. Their birth certificates and all family documents were burned so they could escape their town without a trace, so to this day, we don't know how old my grandmother really was when she died, or what her real birthday had been. She got shipped to the U.S., and her older siblings were sent to Argentina. (Eastern-European quotas and what not...) Or at least that's what my mom has pieced together over the years. We have postcards written in Yiddish with Argentine stamps and a few family photos. We know that my great grandfather, Isaac, was a cobbler and that his wife died when my grandmother was very very young. We certainly know she never got over it. She way an angry woman, and she spent her life failing to cope with her trauma.

The dozens of Holocaust and Jewish-related films I've seen over the years fascinate me. Some kids go through comic book phases in elementary school, or read Goosebumps, or heaven forbid, read Twilight. When I was 9 and 10, I read books about the Holocaust. I don't know what I was looking for or hoping to learn. I'd say I don't know why my mom let me read such potentially scarring books, but that's a question I could raise about much of her parenting. I guess I needed to understand my family - my grandmother, really - in a larger narrative since I disliked the woman so much as an individual. I wanted her to be important somehow, I wanted to rationalize all of the nasty things she said to me, and her fits of rage I saw so often. She must have an excuse for being so mean - and the Holocaust is a pretty convenient one. Though she never experienced it herself, per say.

As I prepare for this big move to Istanbul on Monday, I've been asking myself what parts of my life I'll have to leave behind in the U.S. Not only my belongings (we're talking 75% of my wardrobe, 99% of my books, four cats etc.), but me, Anya. Anya the unrepentant loud-mouth liberal. Anya the feminist. Anya the aggressive atheist. Anya the evangelical vegetarian. Anya the Jew? Yes. For once, I don't think my "technically Jewish" inheritance is going to do me any favors. In fact, it's most certainly going to be a liability. How strange. I wonder how the lies will pile up. I wonder how they'll make me feel.

Despite the inevitable shittiness of that, I have to say I'm very excited about the freaking awesome location of my soon to be new home. For one, check out how CLOSE Ukraine is. It's just across the Black Sea! And check out Bulgaria, and Greece, and Romania! And then, just to blow your mind, check out how fucking HUGE Kazakhstan is!

Road trip, anyone?