THE SECOND AND THIRD GENERATIONS SECURE THE LEGACY MY HIDDEN MOTHER 3 IT’S IN THE DNA: EPIGENETICS AND INTERGENERATIONAL TRAUMA 6 n her book, Catherine Edmunds sets out to find her hidden mother by focusing “into the personal, the small, the everyday,” to see “what happens when an ordinary A GERMAN JEWISH REFUGEE life is thrown into disarray by extraordinary, vast, and terrible events.” Tammy TURNED AMERICAN SOLDIER FINDS IBottner, a physician, writes about her father’s and grandparents’ experiences; here, HIS PARENTS HIDING IN BELGIUM we publish her chapter on the transmission of trauma through DNA. At a family Shab- 8 bos dinner, Daniel Fachler, a third-generation in Costa Rica, is shown a copy of our 2017 issue and is inspired to send us his translation of his grandfather Shloime’s story A JEW SENT TO A CONCENTRATION of survival. In Canada, Hy Braiter finds his late father Samuel Braiter’s Yiddish memoirs CAMP FOR HELPING A JEW and has them translated into English. Krystyna Plochocki, a hidden child herself, trans- 13 lates her mother’s memories of Ravensbrück, where, in an odd but life-saving twist, she had been incarcerated for “helping a Jew” during the Holocaust. Putting all these family dynamics into perspective, noted psychologist Eva Fogelman speaks about how MY SURVIVAL IN POLAND the second and third generations confront the problems of elderly Holocaust survivors. 15 It took many decades and much courage for Pinchas Zajonc to write about the murder of his family in a Polish forest in February 1944. First-time writer Sylvia Hanna THE YELLOW STAR finally opens up about hiding in an underground bunker for two years. Leo Vogel, born 18 in 1940, tries to summon memories of parents he barely knew. Robert Reitter, raised as a Christian, spends a lifetime dealing with the question of identity. Susan Kalev, born FROM GHETTO, TO BUNKER, TO FREEDOM in 1944, writes about having lived most of her life in “the shadow of the unspoken.” And 22 Irene Eber discusses how the surviving remnants managed to “survive survival” in the first year or two after the war. MY FIRST RETURN TO POLAND, 1963 Refugee Willi Steen was my mother’s first cousin. His mother, Bertha Sternschuss, 25 was my grandfather’s sister. I have a vivid memory of Willi, in his American Army uniform, visiting us in Brussels in October 1944 when he found his parents. I had just returned home from the convent, and my mother and I went to see Tante Bertha often ROOTED IN THE PAST in that one-room apartment on Rue Berckmans. Willi died young, and it is only now, 28 thanks to the Internet and to his son Franklin’s genealogical skills, that I have connected with this branch of my family. I am very grateful to Franklin and Paula Steen for allowing MEMORIES OF LIBERATED LUBLIN, 1945 us to publish Willi’s story and letters. 30 This issue prodded me to acquaint my 17-year-old grandson, Max, creator of the cover, with our family history. Upper left: my uncle Zygmunt Strahl and his bride, THE LAST TO SPEAK OUT Hela. Both were killed by the Nazis. Upper right: former hidden children, including my 32 husband and his twin brother, in summer camp, Olloy, Belgium, 1946. The group photo includes my father and uncle, Tarnow, Poland, 1920s. My aunt Julia (Clara) holds my SECOND AND THIRD GENERATION cousin Pepi, born in the D.P. Camp of Linz, Austria, 1947. Bottom right: My uncle Dr. CONFRONT AGING HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS Maurice Strahl, survivor of Mauthausen, and his wife, Julia, lone survivor of her family, 34 in Linz. The yellow star belonged to my parents. Rachelle Goldstein, editor HOLOCAUST EDUCATION AND DISPLACED PERSONS (DP) CAMPS 38 HIDDEN CHILD FOUNDATION/ADL 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158-3560, © 2018Anti-Defamation League (212) 885-7900 Fax 212-885-5869 THE HATE OF CHARLOTTESVILLE Vol. XXIIIV E-mail: [email protected], STRIKES A HAUNTING CHORD 41 EDITOR Rachelle Goldstein ADVISOR Dr. Eva Fogelman BOOKS CO-DIRECTOR Rachelle Goldstein CO-DIRECTOR, DIRECTOR, SOCIAL SERVICES Carla Lessing 42 DIRECTOR, FAMILY TRACING SERVICES Evelyne Haendel Cover by Max P. Goldstein, Third Generation THE SECOND AND THIRD GENERATIONS SECURE THE LEGACY THE SECOND AND THIRD GENERATIONS SECURE THE LEGACY MY HIDDEN MOTHER By Catherine Edmunds Editor’s note: Catherine Edmunds’ book, My Hidden Mother, was published in England in September 2015 by FeedARead.com Publishing. This Holocaust biography is distributed worldwide and may be ordered from any bookstore or online retailer. Below are Catherine’s commentary on her book and its first chapter, Sailing Out of the Park. Jana with baby Catherine How many people have looked back but by the time she reached her teens, even though this girl’s own parents sur- on the former generation and cried, “I wish concealment had become essential for vive. One of her brothers lives through I had asked about...?” there to be any hope of her survival. It the horrors of Buchenwald, and his story The answer to that, is probably “all of is self-evident that this would have huge is included, in his own words. Her half us,” but asking is one thing; knowing how repercussions on her development as a sister has an extraordinary escape from to record the answers, quite another. I person. The effects on her children, years Slovakia through France, and via Casa- had already written a number of novels later, would be more subtle. The latest blanca and Lisbon to London, where she when I decided to write this biography, scientific research shows DNA may be finds work with the BBC and through so I had a good idea of how to organize a affected by the experiences of your par- various connections eventually manages narrative and set it out in such a way that ents, and this has led me to wonder about to piece together what has happened to it would be readable. I knew there was how much my mother’s past has affected her family, and reunite the survivors. And some interest in the idea of the “hid- my own life, quite aside from the obvious through it all there is music and dance, a den child” because my mother had been point that I would not even exist had she love of opera, of culture, of mathematics, sought out by historians and students for not been hidden. country walks, and stamp collecting. her first-hand testimony—but for them, This biography covers my mother’s My mother thinks she’s ordinary. She’s she was a soundbite, an extra snippet first twenty-five years, from the comfort not. She’s extraordinary. of information to help build a bigger and culture of pre-war Bratislava, through picture. I wanted to go the other way, the inexorable rise of anti-Semitism, to the I find that people in this country haven’t to start at the bigger picture, and focus decision of her desperate parents to hide a clue really what happened, in spite of all down into the personal, the small, the her in an orphanage. She knows she isn’t that has been said. They still haven’t a clue everyday, and see what happens when an an orphan, but doesn’t know that by the what was going on. And it seems strange ordinary life is thrown into disarray by time she leaves, she will be, and the ago- to me. And for instance, a woman in the extraordinary, vast, and terrible events. nizing worry hangs over her the whole rambling club, when I said I wouldn’t be out The novelist in me wanted to write this time. In the outside world, members of today, because of being interviewed about book. The daughter in me wondered what her family are deported to death camps my wartime experiences, said: “What war- I would discover, because this was always while she remains isolated, hidden in time experiences? You were a child!” That going to be a journey into the unknown, evermore fearful conditions. When at last to me is very odd. I didn’t bother to explain. a teasing out of what had been hidden. the war comes to an end, she comes out But after all, even an English child had My mother was keen, so we went ahead, of hiding, only to be faced with the aching wartime experiences, whether they were by means of letters and phone calls. We sadness of loss. She leaves Slovakia for evacuated, or whatever, but this absolute pored over old photos and what docu- good, flying to England in an RAF bomber lack of knowledge of what went on… ments had been saved—mostly school with other orphaned children, none of Jana Tanner, née Gráfová reports, which showed the start of a whom speaks any English. And then, bit lifelong love of education. This is what I by bit, she rebuilds her shattered life; she SAILING OUT OF THE PARK mean about the small, the everyday. We comes out of hiding and learns to live Three small children, Jana, Pavel and all love to look back over our old school again. Eventually she realizes how import- Jirka, cross the border from their home in reports, but they’re rarely mentioned in ant it is that future generations learn what Bratislava to visit Aunt Herma in Vienna. history books even though this kind of really happened—and so she tells people, They are taken for a treat to the famous ephemera gives us a flavor of the times that though the quote at the start of chapter Prater funfair, where they paddle a small lists of dates and battles can never replicate.