My grandmother died and I’m glad

September the 9th was the 9th anniversary of my Babushka Anna’s death.

She died in 2016, before Trump 1.0, and certainly well before Trump 2.0 and the very public rise of the far right and fascism that we’ve seen over the recent almost-decade.

As I reflected on her life, and her death, I suddenly thought, I’m glad she’s dead.

My grandmother died, and I’m glad.

Not because she was an awful person or hard to know and love (she wasn’t any of those things), but because she lived with the consequences of the horrors that the nazis and fascism wrought in her life, every day.

Take, for example, where I live.

I’m in Australia.

This is a total accident of circumstance.

After WWII, my Baba was a displaced person liberated from a nazi labour camp. She wasn’t allowed to repatriate – not allowed to go home to her small village in what is now Belarus. She had to wait in a Red Cross displaced people’s camp to be sent somewhere as a refugee.

In 1950, she and my grandfather – my Dyedushka – were told to board a ship, and she used to say that they were only told where it was going once they had set off. They hoped for America, or France. Baba said often that she’d hoped for Paris. They had never even heard of Australia when they were told they were sailing there to be resettled.

Did Baba ever complain about being sent here, to this strange place where the seasons were backwards and foreigners were ok, just, if they were white? No. She didn’t complain at all. In fact, she said over and over again to anyone who would listen how lucky she was. “Luckiest person in the world!” she’d say, “Just look!” And she’d sweep her hand out the window at suburban Ringwood, and I’d know that in her mind she saw guns and camps, guards and starvation.

I grew up hearing tales of the nazis coming to their village in what was then Poland, when Germany invaded. Bursting through the door to Baba’s house, lining up her mother, father and two brothers. Separating the two boys and Baba, who was a young girl. And taking her away from her family, while her brothers were marched into the woods and away in the opposite direction.

Baba never saw her parents again, and only made contact with her brothers 50 years (yes, that’s right: FIFTY) after WWII, when perestroika opened the borders again. The communist USSR made communication dangerous and next-to impossible for anyone who was outside their borders before that. Baba sent a letter to her village, asking for news. And her brothers, miracle of miracles, sent one back. They said her mother had walked to the village bus stop often, to sit and wait for Baba to come home.

I remember when her brothers finally came to visit in the 1990s, the reunion, the stories. How do you catch up to a lifetime of news? It was like everyone was talking on fast-forward, double, even triple speed. Baba and her brothers stayed up night after night, just talking. And them going home at the end of the visit: they were old men by then, and the unspoken message in the hugs at the airport was: we’re not sure we’ll ever see each other again.

This rupture of my family is what fascism does.

It ruptures and divides, and alongside that, the fear it stokes corrodes human decency.

It does it in its ideology, dividing families along political lines as the US saw in the leadup to the latest election. It divides families and friends in its actions, through closed borders and travel restrictions, and it divides us all when the violence comes calling, the forced detentions for no reason other than being human in a way that doesn’t suit the dominant paradigm.

I’ve watched as nazis gain confidence to march in the streets. And watched as they cover their faces with balaclavas and bandannas – a weird move in a movement that’s meant to be about white nationalist pride.

I’ve watched as genocides are ignored around the world. And watched as the US elects a convicted felon, paedophile, unqualified bullshit artist to their highest office; one whose role models are authoritarian dictators Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un. The fascist in the White House is just the very large, very shambolic and orange, outer manifestation of the greater issue. Fascism is here, and we’re up to fight it yet again.

I feel like a frustrated small child as my mind screams, “But we said, ‘never again!’”

I believed that we had learned where fascism led. That forevermore we would see the humanity in the other, the ones who are not like us. I thought we’d revel in our differences and celebrate our commonalities. Yet here we are. 

We can tut and shake our heads and call them far right nutjobs, but there have been more than a couple of far right nutjobs in recent history who have been responsible for the deaths of millions of people. Responsible for the destruction of cultures, and colonisation of places they had no business setting foot on other than to wreck the joint for everyone.

The rise to this point, where we’re ready to repeat the history as though we have zero clue where these things lead, is why I’m glad my Baba died when she did. My grief over her passing has been replaced over the last 9 years with relief that she isn’t here to see us slide into repeating the mistakes of history. Anyone with working pattern recognition knows where this ends.

So, Baba, I’ll say this: while I was lucky to have 40 years of your unconditional love and support on this planet, in this odd country you ended up in, in the southern hemisphere, I’m glad you’re not here to see this.

It would break me to watch you watch this history unfold once again. And I promise I’ll do everything I can to stop it this time.