MY PARENTS WENT THROUGH THE HOLOCAUST and All I Got was This Lousy T-shirt

Chapter One: (From my memoir available @ amazon.com)

I WAS BORN NERVOUS THEN MY MOTHER SCARED ME

World War II ended in 1945, but in our house the fight’s still on. When Hitler stopped doing it to Ma and Daddy, they started doing it to each other. It’s not their fault. People get good at what they do often, and they like doing what they’re good at. Ma and Daddy are good at fighting. I want peace talks, but who listens? Nobody. That’s the problem. I turn the TV up loud.

I want my family life to be a Dick Van Dyke episode. It’s more like a psychotic episode. Jerry Springer in Yiddish. Yiddish is what Ma and Daddy speak. It’s dramatic. Lively. It’s the language that brought you, “OY.” It can make any bad situation seem worse. It can also be pissy. If Eskimos have ninety words for snow, Jews have a hundred for idiot. Jewish people can do contemptuous-snooty-disgust better than any other people in history. And like Jews throughout history, Ma and Daddy are always prepared for their next battle.

Ma and Daddy’s English vocabulary is limited, “crazy,” “on sale,” “eat this.” Daddy has always wanted Ma to call him “Darling.” She calls him an idiot. Actually, Ma strung you and idiot together. It comes out “Y’idiot!” She’s a master of disgust. Her favorite word is-FEH!

Let me explain feh. Feh means “Get out of my face you stupid piece of dreck.” And to explain dreck-”Everyone and everything that is different.” If anyone says something that conflicts with what Ma knows is right, rather than think about it, she calls it dreck, and with an air of dismissive superiority she waves the dreck away like you’d wave off a bad odor.

Here in Canada, Ma and Daddy speak Jewbonics, a mix of English words and Yiddish tone. It’s a judgmental language loaded with shortcuts and devices to express emotion, mostly sarcasm. Indictments pose as inquiries.

For example, Ma says, “Tell me, vhy are you so crazy?” I try to answer, mistaking it for a question. Questioning is big. One question answers another.

For example, I say, “Ma, can we go to a movie?”

Ma says, “Vhat, I have time to go enjoy myself?” Again, I try to answer.

In Jewbonics, a statement is easily challenged by repeating it as a question, stressing one or two of the words.

For example, I say, “Ma, I get scared when you yell at Daddy.”

Ma says, “You get scared vhen I yell at Daddy?!”

This is Jewbonic code for “You’re stupid for being scared. Besides, you aren’t really scared anyway.”

But I am scared. And to express the fear-and subsequent frustration from being humiliated-I throw back at Ma and Pa Holocaust the words they taught me, “SHUT UP!” My words aren’t heard, so I throw tantrums. I writhe on the ground like Gumby possessed. God forbid anyone in the house should say, “I’m sad” or “I’m scared” or “I’m hurt.” How do you share a feeling you’re not supposed to have???

I have a special form of childhood Attention Deficit Disorder. I can’t hold Ma and Daddy’s attention. The Holocaust, dancing a polka in their heads, distracts them.

The hora is a Jewish dance done at bar mitzvahs and weddings. Dancers are locked onto each other, going round and round in a circle, ending back where they started. Always the same song and dance. Actually Ma and Daddy don’t dance the hora as much as the horror, and they don’t need a special occasion.

The Wailing Wall separates my room from the kitchen:

Ma and Daddy are carrying on a screamfest. It’s been echoing in the kitchen since Daddy turned off Walter Cronkite. I crouch in my room and squish my ears to my head. I can still hear. (The Sony Walkman hasn’t been invented yet; it’s harder to drown people out.)

“Du bist meshugeh!”

“DU bist meshugeh!”

“Du bist meshugeh und fackackt!”

“DU bist meshugeh und fackackt!”

Loose translation:

“Shut up!”

“No, you shut up!”

“No, YOU shut up!”

“No, YOU shut up!” Not much gets accomplished. Nobody shuts up.

I feel like an exasperated parent. “Don’t you two make me come in there!” I try to get them to stop yelling. I might as well tell a tidal wave to turn around.

And the best part is—they tell me I’m the crazy one.

And the worst? I believe them. What the hell am I doing under the bed?

In crazy, I find a word that fits me. There’s a rightness to me and crazy. Me crazy. Crazy me.