23andWTF?!*
“Hi! I’m your sister?”
I was washing dishes when the email came.
From: 23andMe
Subject: A DNA relative has sent you a message
You want secrets, huh? Well this ain't fiction. 100% true. But it's personal (and recent) so you'll have to endure just a couple more secrets...
Anonymous author. Dark corner of the internet. Odd handful of readers. So shhhh!
Hands still wet from the dishes. About to instant message my biological sister question mark. Question mark?
Wait... what???
A year earlier I’d spit in a cup for a mail-order DNA test. 99 bucks. And now: 'Hi exclamation point I’m your sister question mark (?!).'
Sarah Jacobs. Sarah fucking Jacobs. (Jacobs???)
Mom's got a ton of secrets, but "Sarah Jacobs?" No way.
Wait... Dad?
Dot dot dot. Sarah Jacobs is typing.
..........................
It was just before Esther's 14th birthday when the Nazis came.
She pleaded with her father to shave his beard. German officers would use combat knives to shave Jews caught with beards on the streets of Krakow. He wouldn't do it.
She never spoke of the Holocaust to her children. She never told them how she'd remove her armband to climb under the ghetto wall to walk the streets of Krakow. How she'd carry banned books beneath her coat to study in forbidden schools.
She didn't want to talk about it.
Not the time the tanks rolled in. Not the time she left home with only one bag to move into a cramped apartment in the ghetto. Not the time she fist saw the inside of a concentration camp or was separated from her parents never to see them again.
And certainly not the rape, torture, and deaths she witnessed for half her life until being freed from Auschwitz by the Red Cross at age 27.
Wait... So how do I know all this?
..........................
Sarah Jacobs is typing.
..........................
The story she'd tell would uncover secrets that had hidden the truth of my origins for 39 years -- a story by all accounts remarkable at several generations (and way too big for this weekly challenge).
Getting to the bottom of it thus far has included an interview with my mom. (Actual quote: "Oh, honey I thought it was another guy!"). An urgent trip home for some bonding with the man who lovingly raised me. (He's cool with it). A week's holiday with my teenage daughter to break the news. (Also cool with it). And a flight to Berlin to break bread (ok, we smoked a joint) with the biological father who never knew I existed.
In a surreal twist, my newfound biological brother (did I mention I have a brother?) sent me a documentary film about our biological grandmother's harrowing experience surviving the Holocaust.
Later this week, I'll visit Sweden where both my grandparents were rescued and reunited before emigrating to Brooklyn, opening a Jewish deli, and having a baby boy. Of course that boy would turn out to have his own incredible story, including a surprise introduciton to a grown son he never knew existed.
Wait... so now what?
Sarah Jacobs (not her real name) and her (our) brother have agreed to meet me and my daughter later this fall to honor our grandparents with some Jewish deli in LA.
And in the interest of truth and honoring the legacy of Esther and all of us who've suffered too many secrets, I'll keep chipping away at telling the story.
*23andMe is a wildly popular commercial DNA testing company based in the US