1

For me, solitary confinement began on March 20th, 2020.  That is almost two years ago.  March 20th was the time we really began to absorb the fact that we were in a worldwide crisis.  A new and strange virus was circulating in the world, people were dying everywhere, particularly people over sixty.

My apartment was the best place for me.  I had all my things, I could write, I could be involved in the HILR and Temple programs on zoom.  And this could not last forever.  We were wrong.  It is now January 2022 and we really don’t know how long it will last.  The second variant has evolved and who knows if there will be a third or a fourth or even a fifth, ad infinitum.

I heard on the news today that a new variant, a third, is appearing in Europe.

On one level, you get used to it.  At least I did.  I am not depressed.  But there is a melancholy I feel, I am at the later stages of life.  Do I have any power or control over what I wanted this last stage of life to be?  Does anyone? 

In 2021, two new babies were born into our family–Noah and Killian.  But their parents, my grandchildren, are careful, rightfully so.  But how do I feel?  Estranged in a very deep and personal way.  I have seen both.  Noah several times and Killian once.  I can’t go to their homes, see their weekly changes and growth and rejoice in the longevity I have and the expansion of my family from four of us, my three children, and me to, now, almost twenty.  I respect my grandchildren for the protection of their families, their newborn babies.  But I miss the old way.  Will it ever go back to normal? 

2

Besides my family and me, there is the rest of America and the rest of the world.  Will we recover?  What price will we pay for this long siege?  What price will I pay? 

My food habits have almost gone berserk.  I ate three popsicles yesterday.  Today, I will try and limit myself to two.  Two months ago, I lost eleven pounds, I had some kind of illness.  Two weeks later I gained back the eleven pounds and now again, I need to watch what I eat.  Solitary confinement is a great setting for eating all the wrong things, not doing my exercises, and taking my daily shower at three in the afternoon instead of in the morning. 

When I was young with three small children, I was often at home for several days.  One or more of the children was ill and I was the mother, nurse, maid, and wife.  The good wife that I was, I picked up the toys before Charly came home.  After a long day’s work, it was better to come to a neat home with quiet children and no toys all over the living and dining rooms.  That was a difficult time for me, but I never thought of it as solitary confinement but it was in a way.

Yesterday it snowed all day.  Today I dressed warmly, put on all the right clothes including boots, and went out for a walk.  Oh, to breathe that nice clear air.  But the streets were dangerous, places I had to walk carefully because they had not cleaned the snow and they were very slippery.  Back home to solitary confinement.

3

I watched the Australian tennis final this morning, I love Nadal.  I have watched him since he was a young player, nineteen I think, with a long ponytail.  My son watched it at 3:30 a.m. and he told me the results.  Everyone thinks that is crazy but I love watching tennis.  I don’t need the tension to appreciate it.

I took several literature courses with Bob Steinberg at HILR.  He died several years ago.  At the first session of one of his courses, he showed us how he always read the last few pages first.  And I have learned to do that too, it allows me the freedom to enjoy what I am reading without unnecessary tension.

So here I am in solitary confinement rambling on about lots of things that may have nothing to do with being so alone.  But then, what does someone do in this kind of setting.  How do people in jail sustain the experience, some for years?  Do they ramble on?  What do they write on?  They surely don’t have computers. 

new-born babies.  But I miss the old way.  Will it ever go back to normal? 

4

Besides my family and me, there is the rest of America, and the rest of the world.  Will we recover?  What price will we pay for this long siege?  What price will I pay? 

My food habits have almost gone berserk.  I ate three popsicles yesterday.  Today, I will try and limit myself to two.  Two months ago, I lost eleven pounds, I had some kind of illness.  Two weeks later I gained back the eleven pounds and now again, I need to watch what I eat.  Solitary confinement is a great setting for eating all the wrong things, not doing my exercises, and taking my daily shower at three in the afternoon instead of in the morning. 

When I was young with three small children, I was often at home for several days.  One or more of the children was ill and I was the mother, nurse, maid, and wife.  The good wife that I was, I picked up the toys before Charly came home.  After a long day’s work, it was better to come to a neat home with quiet children and no toys all over the living and dining rooms.  That was a difficult time for me, but I never thought of it as solitary confinement but it was in a way.

Yesterday it snowed all day.  Today I dressed warmly, put on all the right clothes including boots, and went out for a walk.  Oh, to breathe that nice clear air.  But the streets were dangerous, places I had to walk carefully because they had not cleaned the snow and they were very slippery.  Back home to solitary confinement.

5

I watched the Australian tennis final this morning, I love Nadal.  I have watched him since he was a young player, nineteen I think, with a long ponytail.  My son watched it at 3:30 a.m. and he told me the results.  Everyone thinks that is crazy but I love watching tennis.  I don’t need the tension to appreciate it.

I took several literature courses with Bob Steinberg at HILR.  He died several years ago.  At the first session of one of his courses, he showed us how he always read the last few pages first.  And I have learned to do that too, it allows me the freedom to enjoy what I am reading without unnecessary tension.

So here I am in solitary confinement rambling on about lots of things that may have nothing to do with being so alone.  But then, what does someone do in this kind of setting.  How do people in jail sustain the experience, some for years?  Do they ramble on?  What do they write on?  They surely don’t have computers. 

Charly, my ex-husband, once had an internship in a jail and they had a visiting day.  I went.  I know people live in jails, but seeing the jail and the bars and the people in it is another experience.  How do they do it?  People watching everything they do.  And they do it for years.  And what about the people in solitary confinement.  They often cannot even see outside their cell.  How do they manage?

I am having trouble managing my solitary confinement in a beautiful apartment in a lovely building in Brookline.  Yesterday I watched the snow falling and it was surreal.  Do they ever see snow from their captivity in jails and solitary confinement?

This is part 2 of my recollections of World War II, a time of atrocities and resilience. These are things that should not be forgotten.

I remember those weeks we watched T.V. as the Allied forces liberated the concentration camps.  We could not believe what we saw, people so emaciated, they could not move, ovens where they had been cremated, rooms with crowds of people standing naked, thinking they were waiting for a shower.  Slowly, they were gassed.  It was unbelievable but real.  We could also see the faces of the Russian and American armies that liberated these camps.  They could not believe what they saw.  It was beyond everyone’s ability to imagine this level of cruelty and mass extermination.   

The newspapers and T.V. were also filled with stories about the Japanese, the camps they had for captured American soldiers.  John McCain, the hero, and later Senator, was severely tortured.  Who could watch such atrocities?

I was still going to college when I became a nurses’ aide.  I worked on the days I was not in school and on weekends.  We wore blue and white uniforms and I was assigned to St Luke’s Hospital on Morningside Drive and 112^th St.  One of my first assignments was to help a woman clean up the blood on her body, her clothes, and the bed.  She had attempted to self-abort and this was a Catholic hospital.  Another day a woman had diarrhea all over the bed and I was assigned to clean up.  I did all these chores and many more.  And the nurses, all nuns wearing habits, were so compassionate and caring.  For me, this experience turned out to be more than a nurse’s assignment.  I learned much about life that I did know in my sheltered Jewish environment in the Bronx.

At this later stage of life, I don’t see films anymore about Nazis and what they did.  I really can’t bear it.  Although not religious in a theological sense, I feel strongly about retaining my Jewish identity.  I read about antisemitism but still don’t understand it.  Why do people hate others just because they are Jewish?  When I was first married, we were living in Washington, D.C. and I heard a man in People’s Drugstore say to someone else,” I won’t Jew you down.”  I was shocked.  I never heard that expression before.

Israel independence was announced by David Ben Gurion in May, 1948, much to the dismay of the Arab world in Israel.  The conflict between these two worlds is still going on.   But it became a haven for Jews all over the world, those who escaped death during the Nazi years, and many Arabic Jews who fled their countries, seeking a safe haven.

The historic perils of that time still live on.  In the obituary columns in the Boston Globe (July 11, 2021) and The New York Times (July 16, 2021) there were articles about “Esther Bejarano, 96: death camp survivor who fought antisemitism,” and “Esther Bejarano, Survivor Who Fought Hate with Hip-Hop, Dies at 96.”  Her parents and sister were killed.  She was inducted into forced labor and later joined the orchestra at Auschwitz-Birkenau.  They played as Jews were brought to the camp for extermination.  “We played with tears in our eyes,” she said in 2010 during an interview with the Associated Press.  

According to the articles, she married, had children, lived in Israel, and died in Germany where she was born.  Resilience was the order of the day and often astonishing. 

The impact of that time never seems to end.  Every now and then an article appears about the art and artifacts that were stolen from Jewish families and synagogues during the Holocaust.  The journeys of these highly regarded and expensive works of art were diverse and often ended up in various museums in Europe or peoples’ homes. What to do with them when discovered?  Often the original surviving owners would search for years for the art and archives that had been stolen from them during the Nazi period.  Many of the original family were dead or old and frail.  (Boston Globe, July 24, 2021). 

On April 15th, 2021, Boston celebrated Israeli Independence Day by lighting up a bridge in Boston with blue and white lights, the national colors of Israel.  Hundreds turn out every year for the celebration.

After this generation dies, who will remember the atrocities of this period in history?  Or will the impact of these atrocities remain forever?   Have we learned anything about avoiding such horrors?  Who knows?