I am not sure when the first time I was taken to a concentration camp for a day visit was, but we had been going since I can remember.
My grandpa escaped Germany on one of the last kinda transports at the age of 12, and was sent over to stay with (very distant) relatives. It was impossible to get over unless you had someone on the other side, and my great grandmother essentially saved his life by finding a way to get him out. His father had been given a 'mercy killing' by the Nazis, as he was in hospital with shell shock from the first world war, and my great grandmother did eventually escape Europe, although committed suicide just before my mother was born.
The rest of his family and community perished.
He was never overly vocal about it, but his way of remembering was to go back to Europe, and visit. We visited concentration camps, ghettos, holocaust museums, even the little jewish graveyard in the town he grew up in (all of the gravestones had been smashed up during Nazi rule, so it is not as it should have been). We went all over Europe, pretty much 1 or 2 countries per summer, camping.
I became very aware at a very young age of the monstrosities that man can perform. I was also painfully aware, that had I have lived 2 generations earlier, any one of those Jewish women or children could have been me. That was a very very scary thought to a young child.
I remember having to walk into the old gas chambers, and looking at the ovens. I remember seeing piles of belongings, and walking into the 'medical' rooms. Hearing stories of torture, and seeing pictures of emaciated people - any one of which could have been a distant family member.
I also remember feeling that I could not show emotion - my grandpa, who had lived with this all his life, was 'fine' - and so from that age, I was never aloud to be upset or scared of it.
One of my clearest, and more disturbing memories must have been from when I was about 14. We visited Theresienstadt, which was essentially a holding pen those being sent to concentration camps. It is a large ghetto in the middle of no where in the check republic, and was used for Nazi propaganda (many videos of 'happy jews' were filmed there, interesting, but sick). It was a pretty nasty place to visit anyhow, but the worst thing was when we went into the old orphanage. In there, the names of all of the children that passed through and were killed, were all written on the walls.
My grandpa was going along the walls with "I knew him", "I went to school with her", and "I played with them".
There was no emotion.
I wanted to scream, I wanted to cry - but instead, it all stayed inside. No one ever spoke about the emotions, and no one ever got upset.
It made me feel sick.
There are numerous memories from numerous visits, but they were all emotionally very similar. It left me with the knowledge that no one is safe, and that people can be very dangerous. That groups are scary, and that the world can turn at any given moment. Maybe even that being Jewish is something to hide, or inherently makes us a target.
Worse still, I could never talk about these things. I wasn't able to cry, and there were no hugs or nice words after the visits. My grandpa would be (understandably) volatile, and would regularly begin tantrums because of stupid little things that were unpredictable - and they were usually aimed at us kids. He was often seemingly as scary as the things we had just visited.
The way that my family works, is so linked in with the traumas of the past, that it is near impossible to imagine them running differently. They are making the best of it - and have got a long way from very unfair beginnings.
The work ethic in my family has been the biggest noticable thing from this - and is extremely damaging to the next generations. People who have come from nothing, and worked 4 jobs to survive, and finish with a successful career and 5 children understand hard work. What they don't understand is that it becomes damaging. To expect the best, and expect that level of work from children for so long becomes a way to destroy them - and it has destroyed almost all of us in one way or another.
There is also absolute no emotional maturity (how could there be when your family is ripped to shreds when your so young?), and this is extremely damaging when it comes to raising your own children. They didnt know how to parent, and they certainly didnt really understand how to show love. They tried, and did it to the best of their abilities, but it simply hasn't been enough.
Although only my grandpa was directly linked to the holocaust, the rest of my family had similar experiences from the pogroms a generation or two earlier.
As an adult, its easy for me to step back - but as a child, I was totally unaware of anything. I believed it was me being overly sensitive, and just plain wrong. Of course, the bullying compounded my views on how unsafe people were, and this only got worse with time - in secondary school, people even used to 'hiel hitler' me as I enter classrooms - they all found it extremely funny, but it used to take my breath away with fear.
I had no idea how many little things there were until I started writing this - Im not sure how I feel about it. I am so aware of how much more there is to say, and of how much more extreme things got from here
maybe it wasn't all in my head after all 
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