Like most American children, I had the luxury of growing up free from the fears of war and crimes against humanity.

But as a Syrian, I always knew that it existed. That knowledge personalized by the experiences of my family members who directly experienced Assad’s crimes and lived to talk about it passed the intergenerational scare of Assad’s crimes on to me. From a young age, I had listened to the stories my family members who told me about the 1982 Hama Massacre — their own experiences and what they witnessed. My family told me about the siege of the city, the killing of multiple families via firing squad, and of the rampant government kidnapping and torture. I knew my family were victims of Assad’s crimes, but because of their fear to speak out even at home — because in Syria walls have ears — I still never understood the extent.

It wasn’t until a humanitarian trip I took in 2013 where I met a fellow group member that I began to understand the role of my family in Syrian history. She heard my last name and told me that my family members weren’t just victims of the massacre, but that they were activists who had been targeted for speaking out against the government. Growing up, my family’s last name has always been distinguished by its past. To this day, fellow Syrians often hear my last name and remark, “Shakfeh from Hama, half your family was killed in the massacre”.

A few years later my cousin, in the safety of my home in America, told me the story of the imprisonment of our mutual relative for 13 years. My cousin was held for 7 years without charge and another 6 years after Syrian courts recognized his innocence and ordered his release. In that time he almost died of tuberculosis, was beaten and tortured, and now has chronic medical conditions related to torture.

He was released with plastic shoes and 15 lira, not even enough money to buy a bag of chips. He was 6 feet tall and weighed 85 pounds — the result of the prison splitting 3 eggs and 4 olives among 12 men every day — and ghostly because he had been so deprived of sunlight. Cell phones existed at the time of his release, but not when he was taken, so he didn’t know about them or any other new technologies. He was thrust into a whole new world.

He managed to get into a taxi whose driver realized my cousin’s circumstance and helped him track down my family, who no longer lived in the same home he knew. When he arrived at my family’s door, no one recognized him. No one had any idea who he was — that’s much his detention had changed him.

He wasn’t the only person in my family to have been taken. My great-aunt’s husband was taken at the same time as my cousin. She waited 13 years for her husband’s return. After my cousin was released, she asked him if he knew what had happened to him, to which he responded, “He died the first day of his detention under torture”.

My great-aunt was a newlywed at the time of the massacre when her husband was taken. She waited 13 years to find out that he had died the day he disappeared.

My cousin never spoke about what happened to him, only giving his doctor enough information to piece together the ailments he noted during his physical exam. Hearing this story, I made a remark about how sad this was to my cousin to which she responded - with words I’ll never forget - “Our tears are the tears of the whole country” — meaning everyone has the same story. With an estimate of more than 300,000 Syrians detained in Assad’s prison, she is correct. My family’s story is not unique.

I’m grateful to have family who’ve survived the Hama massacre and have thus far survived the Assad regime’s latest genocide–– though I also have family who have been killed and tortured in this war. Which made it all the more painful when I got a call from my father while standing in one of the U.S. Senate buildings for a Syrian children’s campaign letting me know that my great-aunts had been taken. My mind raced as I realized that there’s nothing I could do. In America, I would reach out to the police, the FBI, my Congressperson, my Senator, and the media. But in Syria, all of those institutions function to cover up the crimes of one another. When your family member is taken, it’s as though they are swallowed by the Earth. There is no way to find them –– no way to get them back.

So there I stood in one of the world’s most powerful institutions feeling so powerless and so hopeless. There I cried.

Syria is complicated. For Syrians and Syrian expatriates, there’s the pain of reconciling the fact that the place you once knew is no longer there. There’s the cumulative pain of years of oppression, torture, fear, and loss. There’s the haunting knowledge that you’re only safe because of chance. Because you were lucky and were able to get out –– which isn’t easy. We function with the unique knowledge that a family member or family friend is detained. And we continue with our day to day lives, knowing this information, selectively, forcefully, pushing it out of our minds.

But our memories of the detained are the only way that we can remember our family and friends. Assad’s torture chambers rob us of our loved ones and our memories of them. For Syrians our search for our loved ones, our memories, our activism is how we remember them. These scars are passed down from generation to generation and will continue until we are granted justice.

Our intergenerational scars are just under the surface. With the expansion of Assad’s war on his people, every Syrian has one.