Stop comparing Australia’s COVID-19 restrictions to the Holocaust
Published on Mamamia
October 15, 2021
I’m always fascinated by Nanna’s hands. Her slender fingers wrap around mine, clutching tightly.
Her name is Lena Baron, my partner’s grandmother, but I call her Nanna too. Together we drink tea, share stories and hold hands.
Her skin drapes over her knuckles like crinkled tissue paper; the years etched deeply into every crease and groove. 97 years of history.
They are hands that were forced to make shoes and ammunition as a slave labourer for German soldiers; hands that received one loaf of bread for a week in Poland’s Lodz Ghetto; hands that were torn from her mother at the gates of Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. And they are the hands that cradled her three children after starting a new life in Australia.
Hands that survived the Holocaust.