I didn't want Shayna's middle name to be Hillary.
When I was 4 months pregnant, Brad mentioned that his mother wanted us to name the baby after her mother, Henia. The quickest way for me to hate an idea is to tell me that my inlaws suggested it.
So, for the next few months, everytime Brad brought up having Shayna's middle name be for his grandmother, I only had the choicest of choice words for him. This went on for months and before I knew it, it was July and I was scheduled for a c-section August 4. Brad wasn't backing down and Brad always backs down. So, I decided to do some research on this woman whose name was being shoved down my throat.
Henia was born in Poland. She was the only member of her family to survive the Holocaust. No one in Brad's family talks about her experiences very much. I had seen the picture of her family taken some time in the mid 1930s, but other then the picture, I didn't know much about her. That picture though says a lot.
There were 16 people in the picture. In it, Henia was surrounded by her parents, grandparents, brother (who could have been Brad's identical twin), aunts, uncles and cousins. It's heart wrenching to look at that picture and know that in the next few years, 15 out of the 16 would be gone, murdered.
I Googled Henia last July and read a little about her. I was hoping to find something that would jump out at me and tell me "forget about your mother in law, this woman is worth naming your child for."
Henia had told her story back in the 1980s to an archive. I found a brief synopsis of her time during the Holocaust through the Washington D.C. Holocaust Musuem's website.
While working at the Mauthausen camp, she tried to escape. For 2 days she hid in the woods. She was caught by the Nazis. 2 Nazi guardsmen brutally beat her, breaking her nose. As she lay on the ground, one of the Nazis pointed his gun at her. The other Nazi said "Don't waste a bullet on her, she's dying anyway."
Don't waste a bullet on her? I shudder to think of what may have been if she had been "worthy" of that bullet.
Henia didn't die in the woods that day. She dragged herself back to the concentration camp and survived. She also went on to have 3 children, 7 grandchildren, and 5 great grandchildren (so far). Her legacy is one to be proud of. I am proud that that she is a part of my children's history. After reading her story last summer, I decided that I couldn't think of any other person whose name I wanted to give to my daughter.
As Shayna is nearing her first birthday, I've been thinking a lot about who she is and who I hope she becomes. I hope that she will draw the strength and courage that her great grandmother had. I pray that Shayna's life will forever make a mockery of that Nazi who thought that her great-grandmother's life wasn't even worth the bullet in his gun.
