Break the chain of hate by Sue Robin

Random thoughts flit through my addled brain. I remember Uncle Leon. We called him Uncle, though not one by birth, but respect. He was the second husband of Aunt Sylvia, also by respect, though she was, in fact, a distant cousin. A somewhat thicker version of my father—who was all of 5’2”—Leon was balding with silver hair and a toothless grin. He also had numbers tattooed on his arm. Finding out what that meant as a small child was traumatic.

Uncle Leon would drop Aunt Sylvia at our house early on a Sunday morning and then go off to work. My mom said Uncle Leon was a junk man, and I had images as a small child of him on a cart with a horse, selling things like in the old Westerns. It is only as I type this that I realize that it could not have been true in the 1950s! But he did buy and sell things, doing well enough to acquire apartment buildings and raise a family.

Aunt Sylvia would pick up the Sunday paper at the foot of the driveway and bring it to the back door. I would gleefully let her in, and we sat and read the paper together until the rest of the family stirred. I’m not sure how old I was when this ritual began, as I started reading before kindergarten. The funnies were in color, so the Sunday paper was always a treat. I have had a loving relationship with the newspaper ever since—until fairly recently.

Uncle Leon would come back later in the day to share a spread of Jewish food: lox, bagels, cream cheese, white fish, and kippers. There would be a plate of cucumbers, onions, and tomatoes, too.

He would visit with all of us and always offered my siblings and me a treat, a coin or two, or a toy. He once brought me a sweet doll and silver dollars, but I would not take them from him because I was frightened of him. He was not mean in any way, but I was fearful, nonetheless.

To be honest, most men frightened me at that age. Uncle Stan and my dad were the only men I went to easily. Our next-door neighbor was particularly terrifying to me, and the man across the street with the same build as the neighbor sent shivers down my spine. I learned in my teens that the man next door had abused his wife and daughters. Maybe I had grokked that without being told?

With Uncle Leon, it may have been that I sensed the horrors he carried with him. The tattoos on his arm held stories no person should read.

While Leon survived the concentration camp, the generations that followed, who had family members who directly experienced the Holocaust, carry that trauma in their DNA. We recognize the meaning of the hatred and fascism that are festering in the world today.

How do some people grow up to honor certain values, respect the rule of law, be filled with kindness and love, and others not? How much is nurture vs nature, and how much is what we are taught—not in the classroom as much as by what we carry in our DNA?

I will search till my dying days to find a way to break the chain of hate and ugliness. It has gone on seemingly since the beginning of time. One tribe against another, one nation against another. One war after another. I do know that two wrongs do not make things right and that the depth of hatred appears to be deeper than the sea. I have spoken before of the pendulum of life swinging from one end to the other. I am so damn ready for a bit of homeostasis.