I was 15 when I learned my family (Catholic Croatian Yugoslavians) had survived Dachau, the longest running concentration camp in Nazi Germany. 🧵
I was watching Schindler's List with my grandfather Franjo Penic, and at some point I looked over to see him weeping and shaking. I was stunned. Here's the stoic patriarch of the family whom I'd never known to show any emotion but patient neutrality or lighthearted joviality.
It never occurred to me that a Holocaust story about Jews in Germany would have anything to do with my Catholic Yugoslav family. (I realize I was probably taught in school about Nazi persecution of Slavs during WWII but I dunno, somehow it didn't sink in).
I certainly didn't think when I sat down to watch that movie with him on a random Saturday afternoon that it would lead to witnessing my grandfather breaking down while reliving those horrible years.
My grandfather was the oldest of 11 children born to Anastazija and Josip Penic. At the time they were caught trying to flee our (still tiny) village of Antunovac prior to Nazi invasion, only 9 of the children had been born (and full family photos were hard to come by).
They fled on foot: 2 adults and 9 children - an infant, a 1 year old, a 2 year old, a 3 year old...you get the idea.
My aunt Marija told me once I was old enough to request more details that sometimes they'd be walking and hear military vehicles coming so they'd jump into ditches or hide under dead bodies. Somewhere north, they were apprehended and loaded onto trains, exactly like in the movie.
The baby died in my great grandmother (Mala Baka)'s arms during the passage. Another sibling was lost in the chaos of one of the transfers and to this day, we don't know what became of him. (To me, that is one of the absolute worst parts of this horrific family history).
They were taken to Dachau - the remaining 7 children and my great grandparents. One of my great uncles met his future wife there, another Croatian child who had been captured earlier from another part of Yugoslavia. (He's passed but they were the cutest, most loving couple ever.)
It's from him, Dragutin Penic, and another sibling Ivan, that we know a lot of this, although before his death, my own grandfather Franjo sat down and recorded several hours of oral history onto VHS, which I am still slowwwwly translating and transcribing.
The way my uncle tells it, they were being led to the showers (gas chambers) when someone yelled, "Amerikanci! Amerikanci su dosli" (Americans! Americans have arrived!) and mere hours before their death, Dachau was liberated and its prisoners aided in going home or to America.
My great grandparents went back to Yugoslavia, went on to have 2 more children (that's 11 total - not counting the unofficial family we almost certainly have in Argentina where my great grandfather sailed annually as manual labor for a shipping route).
My grandfather and my great uncles and aunts finished growing up back in our village. They had families of their own there. My grandfather even arranged for electricity to be brought into town for the first time.
This is the same village my parents were born and raised in as neighbors, where they fell in love, decided to have children and then determined we should be raised in America - Mesa, Arizona to be precise.
It's the same village where my family still lives, where my youngest son did his sacrament of First Holy Communion last summer in the same church my family has attended for 100 years and the village where so many of my own most impactful & fond memories originate.
We stayed in Croatia with my parents for 9 months last year while I was on sabbatical. Since COVID limited travel, we spent a lot of time inside Croatia and other parts of former Yugoslavia, making a point of visiting the anti-fascist and anti-Nazi monuments dotting the Balkans.
This year, there's already so much fervor in Arizona and nationally to erase histories, to erase identities and to silence and intimidate teachers and students alike from speaking truth and building human connections.
Thinking about this and all the diverse, important, meaningful histories and identities - especially those of queer, Black, brown and indigenous peoples - that some white extremist/Neo-Nazis want to eradicate makes me even more committed to ensuring that erasure doesn't happen.
Our stories, our differences, our identities matter. And later this year, our VOTES at the state and local level will matter too - more than ever. Let's not forget that. #HolocaustRemembranceDay #Vote

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