Yet Here We Are: My Baba and Zaide’s Story

By Gabriella Burman, Communications Officer and Next Generation Speaker at The HC

Putting Pieces Together

I come from a long line of women on my maternal side. My grandmother is a mother of daughters; so is my mother; and so am I. We all love to sing, to learn languages, and stuff our children with food. 

That last one is telling. As a child, I knew that my grandparents had survived Auschwitz; I was so fearful of Hitler that when I turned off the lights in the basement to come upstairs after playing, I ran. I did not share the intense memory of hunger that prompted my grandmother to overfeed me, but I understood that it was necessary for me to oblige her.

I knew only bits and pieces of their harrowing experience, for above all else, my grandparents had been determined to protect the innocence of the new branches of a desecrated family tree. They never sat down, start to finish, to tell my mother and aunts their tale. Only around a smoky dinner table with other survivors after their girls had gone to bed, do I imagine my grandparents spoke openly about the past. 

Surviving and Emigrating

Nearly 80 years ago, Baba Lonia and Zaide Marek Kronenberg were newly married in the Plonsk Ghetto. In December 1942, deportations transported them to the notorious death camp of Auschwitz. They were tattooed upon arrival. My grandmother was assigned to work in the Kanada warehouse, and my grandfather was assigned to hard labor. 

By some miracle, the couple survived Auschwitz, but their families were decimated. One surviving sibling had escaped Poland before the war and was able to sponsor them to start a new life in La Paz, Bolivia.

My grandparents learned Spanish in La Paz, where they set up a women’s clothing store, and it became the mother tongue for my mother and her younger sisters. Eventually, my mother left Bolivia for the United States, and when she became a parent, she spoke to me only in English.

An endless supply of stories lives within the Spanish language, but they were little known to me as I grew up, visiting my grandparents first in La Paz and later in Florida.

Sharing Family Legacies

Across the distance of space and time, Mia, a seventh grader in Novi, Michigan, sends me a letter after hearing me tell my grandparents’ story as a Next Generation Speaker at The Zekelman Holocaust Center. 

She relates to my frustration over not speaking Spanish fluently, how it posed a deficit for understanding the depravity my grandparents had endured. “Every day when I walk into Spanish class, I think of you,” she writes, “and I keep pushing on.”

Among the pile of letters I received from Mia’s class, her words affirmed the intrinsic value of storytelling. The challenge of mastering a language had shifted for her, and she no longer thought the way she did before our encounter. Mia had become determined to persevere, a skill that will serve her well in Spanish and life.

Mia’s story exemplifies the power of Holocaust education. One tale at a time, the personal accounts of those who lived and died foster deep introspection. The voices of the past come rushing forward: “What would I have done?” we ask ourselves. “What can I do now?” 

Creating a Better Future

My grandparents never predicted that after the Holocaust, there would be more history to write. 

They never imagined that museums like The Zekelman Holocaust Center or its fellow institutions would establish themselves as memorials and contemplative centers of learning, authoring lessons in ethical behavior and leadership, resilience and resistance. 

These lessons teach us how to lead with compassion, not only for adolescents forging their own identities, but for adults who still have the capacity for change. Yet here we are, and thank goodness. 

When we feel preyed upon by circumstance or challenge, we must not retreat to lick our wounds nor locate a scapegoat for our obstacles. Rather, we can take inspiration from my grandparents, from Mia, from the hundreds of stories shared at The HC, or from those in our communities.

We can assume responsibility for the hands we are dealt and the actions we initiate, and we can decide how we want to live.