Leslie Benitah: What Survivors Pass Down in Silence

Okay, I'm deeply touched by what you just said.

Not just because it was Passover.

Again, we have a worldwide audience, so if you don't know Passover, you can look it up, etc.

It is a time when, in the Jewish tradition, where families always get together, and it is a time of real interesting and joy because we remember the past we're urged to talk about the past and that we were enslaved and that we were brought out that god brought us all you put us in slavery took us out of slavery and we celebrated and we asked questions such your grandparents

were enslaved

see it's one thing to talk about this idea that this and okay i'll get in the moment i want to say People do have life-changing events.

Rarely do people get the opportunity to know them, even if it's in retrospect, that that was a point.

In other words, you didn't say, well, Leslie, you're going to become a journalist now.

However, as you got to a certain age, let's call it 18.

I'm just making up because you don't have any time.

Say, this is what I want to do.

I need to do this.

Not want.

I need to do this.

to be able to bring out the silences without ripping the scab and causing pain.

Is that fair to say?

It's very fair to say this.

I have other friends who would say, oh, my grandparents or my parents, I hear this from different generations, spoke too much about it.

And I'm very often wondering what was worse, not to hear anything and to imagine a thousand things.

Because it's funny, I asked my twin brother very recently, I said, do you ever recall anybody sitting us down when we were kids and telling us this is what your grandparents went through? Do not question, don't ask too many questions, but this is what they went through.

And he said, no, no one ever sat us down.

No one ever told us what happened.

We just knew because those silences were very loud.

And don't forget when we talk about silences, these are silences during the day.

At night when you sleep, at least when they slept back in the days, they were this was the only time they were not silent.