I love it.

My great auntie, an Auschwitz survivor, called my mother up today.

 “this is how it began, before they put us on the trains”

And then hung up.

She’s 95 years old and she has never admitted to being Jewish, to being a survivor. I was 7 years old when I overheard my dad and mom talking about, I just  learnt about the Holocaust in school, we saw photos of those skeletal humans. My small kid’s brain couldn’t grasp it. You have to understand that in Jewish elementary school you learn about the Holocaust before you hit grade 3.

I am 30 years old now…and she still denies her Jewish heritage. The trauma was too great, the horror too massive. The fear so deeply ingrained.

Until today…today she said it out loud. 

Her story is incredible, how she came to be a part of my mom’s family is a pretty magical story. I hope that before she dies, I can hear it from her mouth and not just the secondhand telling from my parents and grandmother.

Can you imagine what kind of trauma it must have been for her to be watching the news and see all this white supremacy bullshit? 

It’s been 72 years…72 years of saying nothing. The Holocaust was a taboo subject if she was even remote hearing distance…Even after she heard that I’d been assaulted by a group of skinheads…she said nothing.

It was the newsreels of what happened in Charlottesville, Virginia that shook something loose.

- Honey is mostly sugar (WoW!) it is 80% sugar and 20% water (double WoW!)

- There are over 20,000 species of bees, but only 4 make HONEY

-Honey is the ONLY food that contains all the substances you need to survive (Including WATER)

-Children under the age of 1 should not eat honey… why? because sometimes it contains bad stuff called botulism and can cause them to get botulism poisoning (that sucks, even infants should taste the deliciousness that is honey)

-Honey will crystallize under optimum temperatures (this has a lot to do with how you store it)

-Bees produce honey to eat during the winter when there are no flowers and no nectar for them.

-A honeybee would only need an ounce of honey to be able to fuel a flight around the world (this makes for a very cultural bee!)