The Things that Drive Us

Mrzyglod, Poland before 1936 by Henryk Poddebski.

This is how I picture Dora's childhood at the edge of the Carpathian mountains.

A little place almost (but not quite) cut off from the wider world. This town, this eternal landscape - it's in her blood. All Dora has ever known. But it’s not her. Hemmed in by the smallness of it all, Dora dreamed of different life. And for all of our family, we're lucky that she did.

But how was Dora going to break out of the traditional life she was born into? Getting pregnant at 16 without a husband pretty much took care of that. Young and rebellious, she may not have thought of all the consequences. Dora’s pregnancy was a shanda, something every Jewish girl spent most of her life trying to avoid. The shanda, the shame, the disgrace, the scandal, the embarrassment. The shanda of one family member effected them all. In little towns like Mariampol, there weren’t any secrets. Everyone knew. Dora didn’t just bring the shanda on herself, she brought it on her whole family.

This wasn’t a small thing. Dora had four younger unmarried siblings. Her out-of-wedlock pregnancy, the shanda, ruined their lives too. In a close knit community like Mariampol, how would they ever find matches? And the all important matchmaker? She would just cross their names off her list.

Dora wasn’t having it. She wasn’t going to let her life, and the lives of the people she loved, be forever defined by the shanda. Her shanda. She was determined to create a better life, not just for herself, but also for her fatherless daughter, her widowed mother and all of her siblings. A life far from the judging eyes of her little hometown. She wanted redemption. Somehow, she would make it up to all of them.

If only Dora could have known that the start of her ruin was also the start of our family’s rescue. Not long after Dora brought the family out of Europe, Mariampol’s Jewish community was murdered, and it’s Jewish cemetery and communal buildings were destroyed. Today, there’s hardly a trace of this once thriving Jewish community.

It would have been so easy for Dora to come to America and disappear, escaping her shameful past. But Dora loved her family, and she was driven to make things right for them. Guilt and love. Powerful motivation.

And as for me? I’m more simple, driven by an insatiable curiosity.