Is It Improper to Have Children During Times of War?

Barely out of adolescence herself, my maternal great grandmother, Roizy Tauber, had five children from 1938 to 1944. At this time, Roizy was living in Hungary where the terrible fate of the Jews was just around the corner. As a teenager, I scorned her for being reckless.

Roizy was in her ninth month with her fifth (a girl) when she arrived at Auschwitz. Normally this meant being sent straight to the gas chambers. But my daring great grandmother volunteered to be induced by the evil Mengele as part of an experiment.  This was her single chance to avoid imminent death. She ended up being one of two survivors out of a group of ten who lived through the experiment.

Because Roizy abhorred speaking about her past, how she made it out alive remains a mystery. All we know is that she somehow managed to flee the experiment room without the baby. What happened to the baby? Was it born a stillborn or killed immediately upon birth?  These details are unknown. Yet somehow my great grandmother lived to be liberated, was reunited with her husband and four sons who had managed to hide throughout the war. They proceeded to have five more children.

In Auschwitz, my great grandmother promised she would move to then British-mandated Palestine if she would live.  She made her fantasy a reality and arrived to the Holy Land when the State of Israel was still in infancy. During this time, war and poverty was rampant. My maternal grandfather was born in 1947, the first child after the war. He remembers days of starvation but my great grandmother was not deterred. She was living her dream and nothing would get in the way of tampering with that dream.

Except something did: polio.

My great aunt contracted polio which was deadly at the time. Because Israel was dealing with constant attacks and its medical care was a far cry from what it is today, my great aunt’s life was in grave danger. Left with no choice, Roizy migrated with her family to America so that her daughter could get the proper medical attention she needed to fight the illness.

That is partially how I ended up being born in America. From a very young age I held onto my great grandmother’s dream of living in Israel. As a teen hearing what she went through during the Holocaust, I decided I would never bring children into the world during a time of such upheaval. What was Roizy thinking having all these babies during a time of great persecution and genocide?

Fast forward to 2023. I am living in Israel. Every day I wake up and breathe the fresh Jerusalem air and contemplate how incredible it is that my great grandmother’s dream has come full circle. And because I was struggling with infertility, I was spending lots of time at the fertility centers, with blood work and ultrasounds part of the rhythm of normal life.

And then came October 7, 2023, when suddenly my confidence in living a life of security shattered into smithereens. Should I continue doing fertility treatment during a time of such uncertainty? No longer a teenager, I looked at my great grandmother’s choices with fresh eyes. She abruptly went from being viewed as an irresponsible grandmother to the heroic woman from whom I now draw strength.

My great grandmother did not choose to live during such horrific times. Nevertheless, she made difficult choices that expressed her hope and faith, and her deep commitment to life itself, no matter what the outcome. Hitler left behind a legacy of destruction. My great grandmother left a legacy of over 1,000 descendants and a life of tremendous faith and determination. She couldn’t control her life’s circumstances and put her trust in God Who promised that the Jewish nation would endure forever. With her deep resevoirs of faith and trust in God, she carried our nation’s future generations.

Today I am striving emulate my great grandmother. I too did not choose to live during an era of intense antisemitism and war. Yet, carrying a baby in Israel during these times is strangely comforting. I cannot control my destiny. I realize my survival is ultimately up to God. But I am reassured by my choices that reflect my great grandmother’s formidable faith and commitment to life, which I try to emulate now, choices that reflect my trust in God Who will ensure that the Jewish nation will live forever.