Sorry if this is the wrong place to post this. I used the Holocaust tag because it's relevant to the post, and I don't want to upset anyone not expecting to see it mentioned, but this is mostly a vent and also kind of looking for advice.

My grandmother is Jewish, and she was born in Germany during the Holocaust. Because of the circumstances, she wasn't raised Jewish, and she had to hide her status. She immigrated to America and married my grandfather, a Christian, and raised my dad to be Christian, and I was raised mostly atheist.

I've never really considered myself Jewish, but it's something important to me. The knowledge that someone you love spent so long running from evil people is really shitty knowledge to have, and it probably influenced who I am. People assume I'm Jewish when I talk about my grandmother being Jewish, but it feels wrong. Even based purely on my heritage, it's a weak tie, and a sizeable number of Jews don't consider patrilinneal descent enough anyway. Even if we talk just from a reform perspective, it's still wrong to really call myself Jewish. I barely know the Torah, I didn't have any of the typical Jewish experiences, and my dad outright doesn't consider himself Jewish. Claiming honestly anything more that just "Jewish heritage" (my go-to when I'm asked about it) is just a lie.

It feels kind of like that was stolen from me. If this world wasn't so evil, I probably would have been raised Jewish. I would've learned all of that in school, or at least been taught it at home, and it would just be another part of my identity. Instead it's this confusing thing that's probably always going to be tied to the horrible knowledge of how my grandmother was hurt.

Part of me wants to convert, but I don't know how my family would react. They can be kind of. Judgemental. About everything. That would also mean opening the can of worms of antisemitism. This might sound bad, I hope it doesn't, but my grandmother was raised non-Jewish to protect her from antisemitism. Would converting be wasting her sacrifice? I actually have a choice here. If I convert, I open myself up to antisemitism. I've seen how horrible people have been lately, and there's definitely been a rise in antisemitism. A few weeks before I left for college, there were full-blown neo-Nazis in my city marching with shirts talking about "the Jews" replacing white people. Those people are fucking terrifying to me, and I don't trust the direction America is heading. There's always this thought in the back of my mind of what if there's a second holocaust. It's terrifying 24/7. Disclaimer, I have really severe anxiety, so I logically know the chances of that are very small, but my brain will latch onto anything and obsess over it.

Idk, I kind of just needed to get this off my chest. I'm too socially anxious to talk to someone about this IRL. I wish people evil enough to commit genocide just didn't exist, and everyone could just appreciate different religions and cultures without any of this shit, but our world fucking sucks apparently.