Only Dead Jews or Born Guilt-Trips from this journey

A Truck in the Scrap Yard

We’ve just closed in on two months in Berlin! Two months of getting sorted while knowing very well things back in the "Old-new-land” aren’t getting better, and actually, quite clearly - the opposite. While we slowly stitch some stability together—surprisingly well, thanks to a handful of truly wonderful people—there’s this quiet intruder creeping in. Let’s call it what it is: guilt. It shows up at night, in weird dreams, with every second breath we manage to take, every other moment we find ourselves allowed to breathe at all. And this guilt doesn't come alone. It comes with anger—the kind I used to feel after brutal breakups. Maybe it’s not so different, too. After all- we split! My country has been doing things I can’t stand for a long time now, and no matter how much we talked, argued, or tried to patch it up, we kept drifting apart, till I said - That's it!

My eyes didn’t “open” on October 7th—they’d been open. I’ve been watching, pushing back where I could, trying to slow the spin. If it hadn’t blown up then, it would have been Hanukkah, Purim, Passover—pick your holiday, and it has been going for some time, only is smaller incidents until this big one - I can't guarantee it's even the biggest yet to come...

This government and its posies were courting disaster, and found it.

The unholy triangle of corruption, fascism, and fanatic religion tightened its grip, and now everyone’s paying the price. Some more, some less.

Then, somewhere between Alexanderplatz and Friedrichstraße, Neta tells me about this Israeli psychologist who opened a whole debate: Israelis leaving Israel, and some are growing these guilt syndromes like stubborn weeds. At first, I thought she meant guilt for the endless pounding of a trapped population in Gaza—because if anything deserves guilt, it’s that. But no, the “vector” of that claim was about leaving families and friends behind. That one. The personal, familiar, close-to-the-bone guilt pinched me into reaction.

I didn’t respond gently. I rarely do when it hits a nerve we both share. It’s a feeling you don’t fix—you wrestle it, and eventually, you just sit with it.

So, I reminded her of a photograph. And what I’ve been chewing on ever since I read about this aspect of Jews cooperating with the perpetrators' train journeys to their final solution destination.

During the Aktion, when broken Jewish families were herded toward their last stop, a rare, brutal choice sometimes appeared. A loosened wire. A still carriage. A second—just one—to jump. Many didn’t. They stayed. Because even when death was a given, living with the thought of leaving them behind felt worse than dying with them.

But some did jump. A few hundred, maybe. They survived. They carried the names, the memories, the screams—forward. They rebuilt. They lived. They also carried something else: guilt. Crushing, endless, illogical guilt. Even they did...

To give a few notable testimonials:

Leo Bretholz — France. Night train, Drancy to Auschwitz. Nineteen, starving, more bones than a boy. He and a friend worked the bars with bloodied fingers until the metal whispered open. No goodbye, no drama. They slipped out, hit the ice, teeth rattling. Behind them, a thousand souls kept going east. The wheels never left his ears.

Klara Prowisor — Belgium, 1944. Told it was “for work.” It wasn’t. At a curve, she and the boy who’d be her husband jumped. Stockings shredded, knees bleeding, but their hearts still beat. The faces pressed against the wood? They never stopped looking at her.

Eva Galler — Her father whispered, “Jump. Live. Tell them.” She did. Snow burned like fire. When she stood, everyone she loved was still on that train. Survival felt like theft.

The Twentieth Convoy — April 1943, Belgium. Resistance fighters cut the locks. Doors flew open, shots cracked the air. Two hundred thirty-three escaped. A hundred eighteen made it past dogs, bullets, betrayals. For the rest, the train rolled on.

So the way I see it, I told Neta - yes—if even they felt guilty, Of course we could feel guilty. We could feel we could have tried harder... We left comfort, food, weekends, air conditioning, and WiFi. But for you and me, and for many others, it was just too much, and the truth is that it could all be seen the other way round too!

-> We were surrounded by so many people who, if they only wished to stop this deterioration, they could have stopped this with us, 15 years ago, and even 2 years ago! To see all the energy wasted now, on repeated attempts to do the same thing and expect a different outcome, reminds me of something Einstein once said, about expecting different results by doing the same action...Donno - Knocking on deaf people's doors forever was not something I intended to do, on the eve of our children. And of course, we feel guilty, and every once in a while, it creeps in. But I’ve decided: I’ll let my guilt float. Untethered. I won’t feel guilty for my guilt!

Instead, I will try my best to try my best for our little family, and as big a circle as I can reach.

❤️‍🩹🌻