“Earlier this week, we were honored to publish a front-page story marking the 101st birthday of Ray Gawendo, a resident of the Norwichtown Rehabilitation and Care Center and a Holocaust survivor whose story is nothing less than awe-inspiring — heartbreakingly tragic, and yet ultimately uplifting.
Gawendo’s early life was marked by tribulations of the sort most of us are familiar with, having learned of the horrors of the Holocaust in history class or read the accounts of other survivors. That familiarity, of course, is only secondhand, far removed from the reality and the depths of suffering victims endured.
That Gawendo remains among us, in our quiet Connecticut community, generations later is testament to the capacity of the human spirit to absorb loss and pain — and to take courage even in the face of utter wickedness and brutality.
Gawendo’s story lifts the spirit, in the end, because she persevered — through more than two years of anguish in a concentration camp in Estonia, knowing her family was already dead; through the Nazis’ liquidation of the Klooga camp, just before Russian liberation, when she was struck by a bullet and played dead to narrowly escape murder; and through decades of postwar life, quietly enduring the memory while building a new family and, later in life, going public with her story and inspiring many others with it.
That story reminds us just how paltry our problems are by comparison. It causes us to reflect upon the many ways in which we, in 2016, are blessed. And it gives us hope: Gawendo’s longevity would be noteworthy for anyone, let alone someone who also had suffered through the Third Reich’s depravity. Few reading this have experienced such a dark chapter — how long might we live, and what might we accomplish?
This morning we wish Ray Gawendo a happy belated birthday and thank her for carrying on the memory of those who did not survive the Nazis’ genocide, and for stirring in all who hear her story a clear sense that no matter how bad things get, it is within us to endure, to persevere and, ultimately, to thrive.
