Having bumped into someone I hadn’t seen for a number of years after she moved to an aged home, I promised to visit her in her new home. A warm, friendly woman, I truly had wanted to see her again and to catch up.
I hadn’t got round to arranging a visit because, well, life intervened: there was shopping to be done, other things to sort out, and so I put the visit off until I felt I would have the time. But, as you can probably guess, I found out recently that, sadly, she passed away.
And my immediate feeling was one of regret. Why hadn’t I made visiting this woman an immediate priority?
The same thought came to mind when I listened in to a workshop at the Holocaust & Genocide Centre presented by an American woman, Karen Kruger. Relating the fascinating story of her own quest to find her true identity – which you can read about on page XXX of this edition – she made the point that, after many years of research into her family’s history, she has one regret: that she did not ever sit her uncle down to find out from him all he knew of the family story. Similar to my regret, this uncle died before she got round to interviewing him. And so she effectively lost a potential gold mine of information about her mother and other family predecessors.
This happens so often. But we can easily avoid the regrets: all we have to do is prioritise the thing that we know may be a fleeting opportunity. Whether it’s spending a bit of time with someone who will enrich your day (and who will probably be enriched in return), or whether it’s setting up time to sit down with the family member whose grasp of your ancestry is unique, prioritise it now. Other things can wait.
In this edition, there is a great example of what the above editorial refers to. Ryan Fabian, a young Capetonian now living in the UK, has spent many an hour researching the fascinating World War I experience of the ancestor who first settled in Cape Town, Kuno Fabian. Among other things, it’s meant tapping into the recollections of his great-uncle, Henry Fabian.
We also continue our reporting on the Cape Town Holocaust & Genocide Centre’s tour to Poland during July. We reflect on the experience of one of the participants: she felt that, in visiting the city of Krakow in Poland, she connected with family members she never actually knew (because they were victims of the Nazi terror), only to bid them farewell in her recognition that they did not survive the War.
With best wishes from the Cape Jewish Chronicle for a Chag Chanukah Sameach!
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