On Writing

Confusion surrounds my mother's identity -- not only as an immigrant, but also as a survivor. Ruth Gruber My mother and I attended a speech by the rescuer Ruth Gruber, who in 1944 was assigned a secret mission to Europe to escort one thousand Jewish refugees and wounded American soldiers from Italy to the US. Scanning the audience of several hundred people, Gruber began her speech by asking the group, ...

German flag American flag When my son was six years old, he pointed out a black, red and yellow flag on a plastic place mat that featured the flags from around the world. "Look, Oma," he said. "Your flag!" "That's not my flag," she told him. "But you're German." "I was German. Now I'm American." "But you're still German, Oma." She didn't see the irony; he had called her by ...

The late Iris Chang wrote in The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II, "First they kill. Then they kill the memory of killing." Her book documents the Sino-Japanese War atrocities perpetrated by the invading Japanese army in Nanking in December 1937. Many involved in horrifying crimes -- victims, perpetrators, bystanders -- often become unknowingly complicit in "killing the memory." They don't talk for decades. At a ...

The shadow of trauma darkens the next generation In Motherland, I described how my mother's childhood experiences defined me. I wrote about "the moment in which I was made long before I was born, the experience I never had but couldn't escape." How can someone have a scar without a wound? By either obsessively retelling their stories or engaging in all-consuming silence, both survivors and former Nazis transferred their traumas ...

Several readers told me they gave family members a unique holiday gift: Motherland and a recording device -- with the hope that reading the book would inspire the relatives to tell their stories. Reader Lori McCarthy, who is working on a project celebrating family stories and traditions called "Keeper of the China" (keeperofthechina.com), writes, "Your book has made our little family appreciate the many branches of our family tree even ...

Frieda and unknown girl, October, 1939 Some of you have asked me to post the picture of Frieda described on page 10 of Motherland. Here it is and here is what I wrote: "On the back of it (the picture) someone had written "9 Okt. [October in German] , 1939. The woman is standing, slightly hunched...with one hand on her matronly hip, and her other arm around a girl of ...

My grandmother, Frieda Westerfeld, age 40, in 1938 One of Frieda's letters Trapped in Nazi Germany, my grandmother, Frieda Westerfeld, wrote letters to her family who had escaped to America and South America. Since I have written books about our family history, relatives have sent me those letters to archive. Here are a few excerpts from Frieda's letters written between 1938-1941: After she had sent both of her young daughters ...

My grandmother, Frieda Kahn Westerfeld (age 8), and her three brothers in 1906. She was killed in Camp Biaski in Lublin, Poland in 1941 at the age of 43. For descendants of the Holocaust, family history is one of the great losses. Most of us have few photos, documents or objects from the family's past. We have no storyline of history. We feel an acute sense of discontinuity, dislocation -- ...

My German friend Gert Krell writes: "Guten Rutsch!" "That's what we say in German when we wish someone a 'Happy New Year!' The term 'Rutsch' implies gliding or sliding, in this case into the new year, with the additional implication that people might literally ‘rutsch’ (i.e. slip) on the winter snow or ice. So better have a ‘Guten Rutsch’ than a bad one. "Etymologically, the whole 'Guten Rutsch' probably has ...

Holocaust Memorial at the Darmstadt Train Station The names of Jews who were deported from the train station are etched upon the shards of broken glass.