Corona Daily 218: Holocaust to Covid-19

Toby Levy is an 87-year-old volunteer lecturer for Manhattan’s Museum of Jewish Heritage. This week the New York Times has published her opinion piece titled “the Holocaust stole my youth. Covid-19 is stealing my last years”. For those who haven’t read it, I am taking the liberty of re-telling her story.

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Toby was born in 1933 in Chodorow, a small Polish town then, now part of Ukraine. Her family lived in her grandfather’s house. The Russians occupied the town from 1939 to 1941, followed by the Germans from 1941 to 1944. Her father was popular among Jews as well as non-Jews. In 1942, after a neighbour warning about Germans planning a mass killing, Toby’s father built a hiding place in the cellar. Her grandfather who didn’t wish to hide was shot in the kitchen. The family heard the shots.

Later, when they feared they would be sent to a ghetto, another neighbour hid them. Toby’s father built a wall inside the barn and a small hiding place for nine people. Just four feet by five feet, Toby, her siblings, parents, aunt, uncle and grandmother were compressed in that place along with pigs and chickens. The place was infested with lice and rats. Later, they added a window from which kids would look out. Toby spent two years in that minuscule barn room. They considered every day a miracle.  

Toby calls herself a miracle child, because most Jews who were sent from Chodorow never came back.

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Now in her eighty seventh year, when coronavirus came, Toby reminded herself she was a miracle. She must make it through the pandemic.

These days, she feels a little bored. She used to play canasta with some friends, that has stopped. Her grandkids call her on Zoom. She gives a few online lectures for the museum when possible. She reads, cooks a little bit, solves puzzles. She keeps herself busy, tries not to give up. It bothers her that valuable time is slipping away in her old age.

She feels sad a whole year is lost. She lost her childhood, her teens, and now one full year from whatever few years left. As a Holocaust survivor, it is her mission to tell her story to as many people as possible. She misses her live audiences. One of her grandchildren, living in Maine, had a baby boy last year. Toby has seen him only on Zoom and fears he will never know her.

She has a male friend from a synagogue with whom she would take car trips, even went to Israel once. She can’t do those trips any more. She has the feeling her life is shortened.

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Toby understands the fear people have, and they must take care.

However, she emphasizes, the virus fear is no comparison to the terror she felt as a child. Fear without any boundary. During the war and the holocaust times, she didn’t know if she would survive the day. She had no freedom whatsoever. She couldn’t speak loudly, couldn’t laugh, couldn’t cry, could hardly move.

But in coronavirus times, she has freedom. On waking up, she looks out to see the world, feels happy she is alive. She reminds herself: No one wants to kill her.

Toby knows this is going to end. She is already planning which places she will visit first, and all the things she will do, when the pandemic ends.

Ravi