I knew my mother and grandparents survived the Holocaust, but their experiences and the horror of the Shoah were never discussed when I was growing up. We lived in a quiet community, not so different from Sandy Hook, where I have lived since 2003. As a child, I never feared going to my local elementary school, synagogue or movie theater. The notion that places like that could be the site of mass shootings was unfathomable at that time but are all too commonplace now.