“That must have been a grueling project,” our daughter, Ellen, said to me when she finished reading it, and she was right.
 
Over the past two months, I sat down with nine Holocaust survivors from Charlotte and coaxed from them their stories of loved ones lost and lives shattered. The passage of time, and the survivors’ advancing age, make the facts hard to come by. Those facts bring tears. Their accents are still so rich, you can close your eyes and imagine yourself back in Germany or Poland. Driving to the interviews after work and on weekends, I got lost trying to find the homes of six of the nine survivors. When I finally arrived, all nine wanted to show me photos of their children and grandchildren – weddings, bar mitzvahs, anniversaries, the stuff of good lives. One survivor told me this is how they defeated Hitler: They survived, they prospered, they live on in their offspring and in the memories they refuse to lose to time.

Permit me this moment of personal and professional pride: My story of nine Holocaust survivors appears in the November issue of Charlotte magazine. The cover story – Where to Eat Now – is far easier to digest than vignettes that capture different dimensions of the Holocaust experience. Buchenwald survivor Henry Hirschmann, 89, wonders how many years survivors have left to tell their stories. Auschwitz survivor Susan Cernyak-Spatz, one of the Carolinas’ most outspoken survivors, says she can’t afford to get tired because Holocaust deniers and doubters never tire of spreading their lies. Simon Wojnowich and his wife, Mary, told me it hurts to talk about it. But they talk about it anyway.

I hope the vignettes, and Chris Edwards’ amazing photographs, give you fresh insights into the darkest slice of the modern human experience. I hope it offers hope, that if Henry, Susan, Simon and the rest of them can survive the Holocaust, you and I can survive anything life throws at us. Above all, I hope it reminds you of the power that comes from telling our stories.

That’s why I came to Myers Park United Methodist Church – not just to write about the life of a flourishing congregation, but to write about the lives of people going through all sorts of stuff. While I was thinking about what to say in this column, a church member e-mailed me. They lost a baby and want to thank the congregation for the gift of a hand-knitted shawl that warms them in horrible times. I took notes at Sunday’s 11:00 a.m. service. A family had their newborn baptized in a gown that’s been in their family for a century.

Stories of loss and hope. Stories of yesterday and tomorrow. Stories of faith. We tell them, and we draw closer together, members of the human family sharing this one good and sometimes not-so-good earth. I hope you’ll take a look at my Holocaust story and see in the words and photographs more than the Holocaust.