Hearing Omi’s Voice Again

Tonight is my Omi’s yahrzeit.

Omi, is my grandmother on my paternal side and I have been spending time recently listening again to recordings of her testimony, hearing her describe her childhood and life in Germany in her own voice.

Last week, I took my son Menachem to Yad Vashem. Walking through the museum together opened up conversations about our own family, about what Omi lived through, and about the responsibility we have to remember not only the history of the Jewish people, but the particular stories that belong to our own family.

It reminded me that passing on memory does not happen automatically.

Our children may know a name or recognize a photograph, but that is different from knowing a person’s story. I want my children to know who Omi was, what she experienced, what she remembered, and the world she carried with her.

There is something especially powerful about being able to hear her tell it herself. History suddenly becomes personal. A place, a date, or an event is no longer just something that happened long ago. It happened to someone we loved.

One of the reasons I have become so invested in preserving our family archive is precisely this. I want these voices and stories to remain alive for my children and, God willing, for generations after them.

A yahrzeit is a moment to remember, but also to ask what we are carrying forward.

Tonight, I am grateful that Omi left us her voice.

And I hope that my children will continue to hear it. Over the next few months I will be unveiling a well researched family archive, and I can’t wait to share it with my children and far beyond. I’m also hoping to ink up with some distant family that we are only learning about.