"There’s no straightforward way for me to comprehend Nana Erika’s young adulthood: what it would be like to have to leave everything and everyone I know behind because I was being hunted by evil men intent on murdering me," writes Erik Sommer in a new opinion for the Forward.
"I felt conflicted when my brother told my mother, sister and me that descendants of Jews who had lived in Austria between the years 1933 and 1955, could now obtain citizenship through an amendment to the Austria Nationality Act," he continues.
"I wondered if I would be desecrating the memory of my Nana Erika and her murdered family members by becoming a citizen of the nation that destroyed them. It is an existential question for Jews: how do we best honor the lives of those six million lost?"
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📷 Nazi propaganda during World War Two; 'One People, One Nation, One Leader, Heil Hitler', in Vienna, Austria, circa 1940. (European/FPG/Getty Images)
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