For the past 30 years, I have shared my father’s stories with hundreds of adults and children through my work in education. It’s my chance to say all the things I never had a chance to say to him personally. And, to be able to forgive him for being less than an ideal father and to forgive myself for finishing so badly with him.
The distance between us grew with every teenage year as we were generations and cultures apart. As far as I was concerned, he was from another planet, expecting unrealistic deliverables from me and I became rude and provocative. He was cold and disinterested and it was nasty at times. At 18, I left for university thousands of kilometres away.
With a collective sigh of relief from my family, I headed back to university in the fall, determined to escape into my educational world, deciding my major would be in history. Later that year, I took an intensive course on the Jewish experience in Europe and for three weeks, three hours a day, I faced the Holocaust.