I am so proud of my great grandfather, Leo Birkmann, even though the German side of the family never talk to us and I don’t really know anything about them. I never knew it until a couple of years ago of why I was acting the way I was in life. My mother started writing a book about her grandfather Leo because she wanted to save his memory and because when my mother was a small girl, Leo used to tell her many stories. After my great grandmother died, my mother took all of her letters and started looking deeper into the history of what Leo experienced, and Leo was definitely a survivor. I told the story of how Leo survived the war he had a wife and a five year-old son. He was 30 years old and he was sent to Africa. Everyone there was going to die in battle, but Leo’s commanders sent him back home with official orders using an excuse of sending a portrait home because Leo was a painter and he often painted portraits or landscapes. I have a pencil drawing and a watercolor of Leo on my wall. Both of them are the crematoriums of Auschwitz, but there are hundreds of paintings from Leo, very beautiful oil paintings, which are owned by my mother, and she has determined that the museum will inherit them, and I will never be an owner of them. I don’t feel very sad about that because I feel that I’m more like Leo than anyone and I feel that I’ve inherited Leo’s legacy more than anyone has. All of my family were built to be survivors. My father is American and my father‘s father is American. My father‘s father was an electrician for a train and at this time train was a new technology. The trains only came around in the 1800s but already in the 1900s my father‘s father knew how to repair engines and he could do the electrical work on train engines. My father‘s father lived in Houston Texas. He used to drink a lot of alcohol and he would beat the children, and he used to beat his wife all the time almost every day for anything and everything that they may have done wrong. He used to beat them even when they were not guilty. One day when my father was 12 years old, he learned that his father had died while his father was working on the train. He was electrocuted. It was at that time that my father because he was the second oldest of second seven children my father had to take care of all of the younger brothers and sisters. When I was a girl, my father told me that I was not allowed to have any friends. I remember that I would never talk to any of the other children on the playground. I was afraid to make friends with anyone and I was always being beaten at home, I was also always trying to run away from school. I was five years old, but I was very independent.
My mother used to take us to church every Sunday and my father used to stay home and rest. My father always wanted us to be quiet when he was home from work. My father always watch the news or he watched war movies, and my father was a marine what it means to be marine. It means to be stronger than the average soldier. We’re not just army men. We have to have the physical endurance that it takes to be a marine we absolutely must be better than average, and it would not be tolerated to be weaker than that. I never knew about Leo Birkmann all of this time growing up, but I didn’t know my father and I didn’t know that we always watched all of the military movies and I always was very interested and love to hear about all of the soldiers. I remember when my brother was Born my mother was telling us that my father wanted so badly to have a boy, and my father had wished that I was a boy and then when the second baby came, my father wished that my sister was a boy, and then the third baby came and my father was very sad because my sister was not a boy and so my mother said she would have one more baby and we really hoped it was a boy and thank God a boy came and I remember that I wanted to hold my little brother, but I was too small to be able to carry him. For some reason, I’ve never been able to stop feeling that feeling of wanting to hold my little brother, but because I never had friends, I was never around children and even now more than 20 years later, I’ve never seen a little baby boy again which I adore so much but I see the little boys in Gaza and I think about my little brother about how I’m so proud of my little brother. When I was 11 years old, my parents were always away at work, and I had to take care of the family. I was responsible to make sure that when my parents walk through the door that everything in the house was done and that everybody was quietly in their room. When my little brothers and sisters did not do what I needed them to do, I would hit them all the time I used to hit my brothers and sisters a lot, and they never hit me back, but for some reason, they never really wanted to be my friend when I was older. When I was 11 years old things started to get a lot harder in the house my dad would get angrier and one time he beat my younger sister so badly that when she went to work, she could not sit down and when the teacher sent her to the nurse, the nurse found black and blue all over her body I remember that night that when we got home, my father made me and my sister sit in the corner and he beat us and he asked us who told the teacher but me and my sister didn’t know who said anything we didn’t know and it wasn’t us. It was my other sister for some reason we were getting punished, but my other sister was hiding away in her room. After that, the social services made sure that my father was not allowed to hit his children ever again and we didn’t get hit anymore After this year, we stopped going to the public school and my parents paid for us to go to a private Catholic school. I went to the Catholic school for a couple of years and I was never able to talk to anyone or make friends in all the time it was a very small class of 12 students in the whole entire grade, and the principal was a nun, and there was a church attached to the school. We always had to wear the uniform and no one was allowed to break the dress code when I was in seventh grade. I went back to the public school because the private school only went to the sixth grade When I went back to the public school. I was able to make friends with my cousin because we were the same age and for the first time in my life, I actually had a friend. It was a wonderful feeling that lasted three years I remember and this time that’s when I finally Was old enough to be able to take on more adult responsibility. I did not want to have a babysitter anymore when my parents were gone, I wanted to be the babysitter and I wanted to get paid but my mother said I was too young to be home alone and she wouldn’t let me until I was 12 years old. I remember my parents Were very respected in the town because my father knew how to fix computers and my father sold the Internet when the Internet was new and no one else knew about computers or the Internet. I remember all the times that the Internet would break down and my father and mother would both stay at work all night and we would be alone with all of us for children at home alone for a long, long time with no parents. I think my father is very much like his father. Both of them knew about technology to repair machines long before the rest of society knew about the importance of the machines. It was this time before I finished high school. I could not wait to finish high school. I had planned to finish school when I was 15 years old. I was the youngest one in the class and I was going to be finished with 12th grade when I was 15 years old Everybody else in the class of 100 people was older than me. But unfortunately, in this time, the business of my parents was not making very much money anymore because there was big businesses businesses as big as New York City businesses so big that they could swallow us hole and they did they made my father go bankrupt. They sabotage the backbone of the business And they competed with my father so that he could not make any money and it was a very long slow death of the business and it was very hard and I was not yet finished with high school at this time. I had a very hard time getting along with my father And I was always running away and hiding from him. I remember when I was in 11th grade I stopped hanging out with all of my friends and I remember why I remember that my friends used to talk about each other and they used to always say one of us is better than the other one and some of us is better than the other kids, and then they used to attack each other, and I remember the last day that I sat at the cafeteria table And after that I never wanted to sit in the cafeteria again, and I never wanted to talk to any of the friends that I had again, so I stopped eating at the lunch table and I started going to the library every day and every time the library was closed. I got very scared because there was nowhere to go and I couldn’t go back to the cafeteria so I would hide in the bathroom every time. When I was 15 years old things got very hard at in the family life because my father was losing all of his properties. We had three different properties and he had to sell one and we had to move out of the house that we had back into our old house on Main Street I failed math and because I failed math. I only had one more chance to pass math class. It was a very hard math class. I was good at math, but this one was very hard class and when I failed again, I knew that I was going to have to stay back an extra year and I was not going to be able to graduate when I was 15 years old. I decided that I did not want to go back to school and I wanted to get a job at a fast food restaurant so that I could live alone and I was going to try to get emancipated from my parents so that I was legally allowed to be alone because I couldn’t rent an apartment. I remember my father locked me out of the house because I wouldn’t go to school and I wanted to go to work instead, and then when he told the people who are helping me buy a car so that I could drive to work he said if you sell a car to my daughter, you’re going to be in trouble with the law And then the man wouldn’t sell me the car and I decided that day that I was going to try to do something, and I had a big fight with my father and at the end of it I went outside into the garage and I took an ax, and I put the ax straight through the front windshield of his utility van that he used for work And I remember that the police took me to jail and I was in jail when I was in 15 years old and my dad used to laugh with all of his friends and say my daughter is the hatchet girl but I have to tell you being in jail when you’re 15 years old is the most horrible thing to feel. It was the worst feeling and I was so hungry all the time and I cried all the time and the other girls used to look at me from the other cell because I was in isolation and they used to laugh and they used to act so tough and I remember the biggest bully in the jail and I remember that When she started to pick on me, I was ready to smash her into the ground. I was ready to fight her at all costs, and when she finally heard me scream back at her, she was so shocked and surprised because I never talked, and after that, the other girls in the jail started being easier with me. Well, when I was 16 years old, I had to go to jail again because my father called the police to pick me up. I was already in trouble because my sister had taken my father‘s pistol and she brought it to my apartment which was a room above my parents business which my parents let me stay so that I didn’t have to stay in the same house as them so one day my father started attacking my younger sister. He started beating her as hard as he could and she was against the wall and I saw this and I remember trying to grab onto my father and stop him from hitting my sister Julie the same sister that he hit the first time when we were 12 years old When he got in trouble with the law well this time the police came and took me to jail and they said that I was interfering with my father‘s discipline, and that was a violation of my probation. I remember that I cried to the judge, and I said that it wasn’t my fault and the judge did not care at All. The only thing that was needed is that I had to go to jail and I remember that I didn’t want to take my clothes off and put on the jail suit and I remember that there was a lady police man and she threw me across the room and she pushed me until I was so scared that I took off my clothes and I put the other jail clothes on and it was a horrible, horrible time being in the jail. When they let me out of the jail after a couple of weeks in solitary, I had to go back to my parents house because I was not 18 years old. I started to try to go to college to be a lawyer when I was 20 years old and at that time I was able to work in the fast food and make enough money to pay for a one room apartment and I was starting to feel like I could be myself. When I was in my 20s years old, I started to have very bad dreams and that’s when I started learning how to do dream interpretation and I was already a very good writer because I was always writing songs when I was younger so I would listen to all of the nightmares of all of the people on the Internet and then I would answer them back when no one else would answer them I remember there was a bully in the website and he was a psychologist. He was smarter than everybody and he used to make us all feel so small and stupid and I realize then that I was going to have to learn how to do psychology and learn everything about the brain so that I could make sure that this guy can’t keep attacking everybody like that. Then my abilities just kept getting stronger and stronger and I started feeling like I understood the world more because I was getting smarter and I decided that I was going to try to start saving as much information as I can and I realize that I was going to need to make sure that I was going to be able to hold onto all of this information even if it was a very a lot of information. And sometimes that’s hard to do when your life is shattered again and again and you never have a stable place to be so you always have to leave everything behind and start again, but I realize that now I’m going to have to carry this information with me and I’m not going to leave it behind. I’m going to have to be a good soldier and all of my family is made to be good soldiers. Both of my younger sisters became policeman one sister stop being a police, but my other sister is is right now as we’re talking. She is a police in a very big city in America and she’s still in the Navy reserves. My sister is so physically strong that she teaches Fitness lessons and I don’t like to do that much work physically whatever she’s been doing physically is equal in power to what I am doing mentally we are not able to accept ourselves if we’re not better than average. I spent a very long time with the people of Syria because I felt very strongly connected with them. They were people who had to look beautiful when you have nothing to look beautiful with they were people who had to try to be worthy of love when your entire existence is being smashed apart so with the people of Syria, I felt like I was one of them, but they never felt like they were one of me and when I saw everything happening in Gaza, I told the people in Syria we have to go help. We have to go quickly. Let’s go now, but the people of Syria were so broken. They were so hurting so much that they could not even think about going to help Gaza and after I saw that the people of Syria were not going to come with me I said fine. I’m going to go alone and there’s no way on God green earth that anyone is going to ever stop me from being able to go over there to help Gaza. I am just very sad that no one else came with me Because they were too broken. When all of the things were happening in Gaza, I knew that no one was going to come save us because when we were in Syria, nobody came to save us, but I never wanted to tell anybody that I never wanted anyone to ever have to hear the words that no one‘s going to help you you’re going to have to do it alone. You’re going to have to survive when you’re going to have to survive alone.
Since the time that we started working on all the survivors, I have had to cut my family off from contact with me because when they saw all of this information coming into the light, they started to become very resentful towards me and I know exactly what they wanted because I know them my whole life. My family wants to make Gaza feel small and I would not let them do it not for one second not for one day that’s why I cut them off and I’ll never let them talk to me again or have any say in the survivors of Gaza until World War III is over and they got to Taste The true meaning of what they let come out of their mouths.
Everything seem to be going better in Gaza when I got there it was pretty bad. There was a lot of bombs dropping, but somehow we felt like we were gonna be able to get through this and everybody was looking pretty strong at that time but after a while, then came the month of March And when they cut off all of the food and I realize that we were actually going to have to starve and that people were gonna start to get skinny then I started to realize how bad the situation was. I realize that we were going to need help and that I was never going to be able to be Strong enough. We were gonna need a real man a real adult man who is powerful enough who has all of the strength that men have that women don’t have that strength they just women will just never be able to compare to men in power so I knew that we had to find men who are survivors, and I knew that it was gonna have to be those men who are going to be the talking who are going to do the talking. The men have to do the talking. There was no amount of words that I was ever gonna be able to say that was going to be equal in power to the words of these men who are survivors. These men are way stronger than I could ever hope to be and I have on my computer now Nearly 100 men, and we have spent many many months hearing only the words that these men have spoken, and I do feel that these men are with us, even though these men have disappeared from this world long ago.
These are two watercolor paintings of the crematorium at Auschwitz, Poland made by my great grandfather, Leo Birkmann
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