Ask the Author: Susan Rostan
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Susan Rostan
For many of us, there comes a moment in our busy, yet comfortable lives, when something changes – when the world before us suddenly offers a new perspective, a compelling choice. For me, one of those moments came on a quiet afternoon as I watched my granddaughter Ella digging.
A budding genealogist, I had just put aside my own parents’ family tree and turned to my husband’s family, hoping to go back a few generations. This, I was finding, was an exercise in futility. My husband knew very little about his ancestors, or about the family members who had died at the hands of the Nazis. My mother-in-law Elzbieta and her brother Marian, both survivors of the Warsaw Ghetto, never spoke about their lives in Poland and my husband grew up knowing that this was not a topic for conversation or inquiry. I grasped this rule, having witnessed the consequences of breaking it when a relative asked Marian about her own family’s history, unleashing his explosive anger and pain, with few answers to speak of. With my mother-in-law’s passing, Marian alone could share his story and, along with it, his family’s history. Nevertheless, I could not bring myself to question Marian, even as I sat with my own sadness and resignation.
Ella’s digging inspired me to engage Marian and learn about his family, about Ella’s namesake Elzbieta.
Ella was sitting in my yard digging alongside our puppy LJ and a little earthworm. LJ was attempting to unearth a buried object, casting dirt and debris in all directions, while Ella was carefully removing vegetation, transplanting it, and feeding it to the busy earthworm. The activities unfolding before me gave me the insight I desperately needed: if I am careful and considerate, my own can be undamaging, fruitful, if not beneficial. I would learn that beyond these goals, it was necessary.
A budding genealogist, I had just put aside my own parents’ family tree and turned to my husband’s family, hoping to go back a few generations. This, I was finding, was an exercise in futility. My husband knew very little about his ancestors, or about the family members who had died at the hands of the Nazis. My mother-in-law Elzbieta and her brother Marian, both survivors of the Warsaw Ghetto, never spoke about their lives in Poland and my husband grew up knowing that this was not a topic for conversation or inquiry. I grasped this rule, having witnessed the consequences of breaking it when a relative asked Marian about her own family’s history, unleashing his explosive anger and pain, with few answers to speak of. With my mother-in-law’s passing, Marian alone could share his story and, along with it, his family’s history. Nevertheless, I could not bring myself to question Marian, even as I sat with my own sadness and resignation.
Ella’s digging inspired me to engage Marian and learn about his family, about Ella’s namesake Elzbieta.
Ella was sitting in my yard digging alongside our puppy LJ and a little earthworm. LJ was attempting to unearth a buried object, casting dirt and debris in all directions, while Ella was carefully removing vegetation, transplanting it, and feeding it to the busy earthworm. The activities unfolding before me gave me the insight I desperately needed: if I am careful and considerate, my own can be undamaging, fruitful, if not beneficial. I would learn that beyond these goals, it was necessary.
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