One of the recurring themes in my memoir, The Silk Factory: Finding Threads of My Family’s True Holocaust Story, is that most people who went through the Holocaust never talked about it to their children or grandchildren.

Perhaps it was due to a sense of guilt – they survived when so many millions did not. Perhaps it was a conscious decision to “spare the children” the horrors of genocide. Perhaps it was due to their fears that they could never do justice to what they had experienced, and that to misrepresent the Shoah was to somehow cheapen or debase it.

What a tragic mistake that has turned out to be, regardless of why the silent remained silent. As my memoir has made its way in the world, I have received numerous private messages of this sort:

“There are a number of mysteries in my own family history (and no one left alive to shed light)… and a sense of missed opportunity. It didn’t occur to me to ask my grandparents’ generation for details of the mysteries until long after they were gone.”

I was able to reconstruct many historical facts as I went through the journey I describe in my memoir, but not everyone will be as lucky.

If you have relatives who lived through this period, imagine telling their story to your own children, and see what gaps emerge in your storytelling. Imagine what questions they might have that you wouldn’t be able to answer.

Then, don’t waste any time. Go find those relatives, the remaining witnesses to our history, and ask them to help you answer those questions and fill those gaps.

There isn’t a moment to lose, because the mirror into the past darkens with every passing day, dimming our ability to speak to the future, which is all that is left us.