Speaker 1: Family Secrets is a production of I Heart Radio. I'm
Speaker 1: Danny Shapiro, and this is family Secrets. The secrets that
Speaker 1: are kept from us, the secrets we keep from others,
Speaker 1: and the secrets we keep from ourselves. In my family,
Speaker 1: the number six million had been ubiquitous. Grandma would use
Speaker 1: it as a non sequitur when my father was growing
Speaker 1: up and claimed to be bored. Grandma would say, bored.
Speaker 1: When I was your age, we had no food. Your
Speaker 1: family is dead, six million Jews dead, and your board.
Speaker 1: When I refused the fourth bowl of chicken soup, she
Speaker 1: pulled out the number as well. Six million Jews die
Speaker 1: in the Holocaust, and you're not hungry? Six million was
Speaker 1: printed on a poster that hung on their living room wall,
Speaker 1: greeting guests with that integer twisted up in a barbed
Speaker 1: wire star of David. That's Noah Letterman. As a journalist,
Speaker 1: Noah has written about travel, sports, even beer, but his
Speaker 1: deepest exploration is a memoir A world erased a grandson's
Speaker 1: search for his family's Holocaust secrets. I grew up in
Speaker 1: a town on Long Island, pretty Jewish town, and my
Speaker 1: grandparents lived in Brighton Beach, New York. Probably moved there
Speaker 1: from like Canarsi, which is also in Brooklyn, maybe when
Speaker 1: they were when I was eight years old or something
Speaker 1: like that. And you know, between Brighton Beach in Brooklyn
Speaker 1: and Great Neck, New York, I really sort of lived
Speaker 1: in these two very Jewish worlds, and they were quite different.
Speaker 1: I mean, Long Island was, you know, a nice suburban area,
Speaker 1: and Brighton Beach was a little more like beach town
Speaker 1: if you could picture it in Brooklyn, so uh it was.
Speaker 1: It was filled with all of these survivors um and
Speaker 1: Jews from the Old Country, as well as you know,
Speaker 1: various other populations, and it really just sort of always
Speaker 1: felt like I was moving between these two very different worlds.
Speaker 1: And whenever I was in Brighton Beach, I was always
Speaker 1: curious about all of these men and women who had
Speaker 1: had these numbers, you know, these these tattoos, uh scrawled
Speaker 1: on their arms. Most of my friends, all of their
Speaker 1: grandparents were born in America, where I had these two
Speaker 1: grandparents who had come from Europe, came with nothing and
Speaker 1: really had all of their murdered family members is hanging
Speaker 1: on the bedroom wall. So to visit with my grandparents
Speaker 1: and to see these numbers and to see these people
Speaker 1: who I had never known but should have been, you know,
Speaker 1: my great uncles and my great grandparents and cousins however removed. Um,
Speaker 1: it just left me with all of these questions. And
Speaker 1: so you know, when when a kid, I think, is
Speaker 1: denied stories and answers, it just makes them more curious.
Speaker 1: And I was always sort of like interested in in
Speaker 1: my family's history on those on those trips to Brighton Beach.
Speaker 1: How old do you remember being when you first actually
Speaker 1: noticed the numbers? You know, I think growing up the
Speaker 1: numbers always just seemed like they belong there, and I
Speaker 1: think it was like it was more striking to me
Speaker 1: when people didn't have the numbers on their arm when
Speaker 1: I was really young. That's how I remember it. And
Speaker 1: then obviously I got to a point where, you know,
Speaker 1: I realized though there there there are a lot of
Speaker 1: people of my grandparents generation who don't have these numbers,
Speaker 1: and it obviously means something very different and and it's
Speaker 1: very unique in a in a very terrible sort of way. UM.
Speaker 1: So I think I was always aware of the numbers,
Speaker 1: just the meaning of these digits on their arms changed
Speaker 1: for me. Describe your grandmother for me, Um, so she
Speaker 1: was this very stubborn, domineering and loving person. You know,
Speaker 1: she grew up in a time where she starved every day,
Speaker 1: and she made it her business, um to feed every
Speaker 1: single member of her family. Um. You know, there's even
Speaker 1: a story of her inviting a cab driver who dropped
Speaker 1: her off because the guy was hungry. So she felt
Speaker 1: it her duty to feed this this guy I And
Speaker 1: you know, she took feeding to the extremes. So she
Speaker 1: never sat down at the table to join us for
Speaker 1: a meal. Um, but she always stood over us and
Speaker 1: hounded us to eat, eat, eat, And these were the
Speaker 1: commands that she always gave. And you know, through food,
Speaker 1: she controlled us, and through food she showed us her love.
Speaker 1: And she was just this like sweet woman if she
Speaker 1: loved you, and she could be, you know, quite the
Speaker 1: opposite if she didn't. But for every single member in
Speaker 1: the small family that she and my grandfather created in America,
Speaker 1: you know, she loved us all and and she and
Speaker 1: we could do no wrong in her eyes. So um, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's that's sort of her in a nutshell. That's great.
Speaker 1: And and how about your grandfather? Describe your grandfather? My
Speaker 1: grandfather was also loving I called him Poppy um, and
Speaker 1: you know, he and I would just spend our days
Speaker 1: whenever I would come over to visit playing cards. Um.
Speaker 1: He'd always sort of let me win in the beginning
Speaker 1: and then you know, show me that that he still
Speaker 1: you know, controlled the game at the end. And then
Speaker 1: if we weren't playing cards, we were watching wrestling on television.
Speaker 1: And you know, he and my grandmother had this very
Speaker 1: um interesting relationship where they just you know, went at
Speaker 1: each other all the time. But you know, he always
Speaker 1: sort of let her win. But then he would look
Speaker 1: over at me, give me a little wink and a
Speaker 1: nod that, uh, let me know that he somehow, in
Speaker 1: his own way had had the upper hand at things.
Speaker 1: But he let her think that she was winning the fight.
Speaker 1: And I guess she probably also thought she was winning
Speaker 1: the fight. But you know, they I think they loved
Speaker 1: each other very much, but I never saw it expressed
Speaker 1: when when I was there. It was just them going
Speaker 1: at it all the time. But you know, towards the
Speaker 1: end of every fighting, guess today I shouldn't say and
Speaker 1: see expressed, because at the end of her sight she
Speaker 1: would always go over and say, you know, oh, my
Speaker 1: husband and give him a little loving pinch or a meal.
Speaker 1: In your book, pretty early in your book, you described
Speaker 1: as a kid knowing that your grandparents had kept their
Speaker 1: stories secret. I think that was the line, actually, you know,
Speaker 1: And am I correct? And remembering that you would, you know,
Speaker 1: sort of snoop around, kind of looking for what they
Speaker 1: didn't want to talk about. Yeah, So as a kid,
Speaker 1: they kept all the stories from me, um and and
Speaker 1: the main reason for that was what I would learn
Speaker 1: later on is basically they told their children. So my
Speaker 1: father and my aunts everything about what they had been through.
Speaker 1: And this traumatized my father and and and it traumatized
Speaker 1: my aunt. They have this like one shared nightmare um
Speaker 1: of hearing goose stepping, seeing this fog all around them,
Speaker 1: and feeling like they couldn't move. And when they told
Speaker 1: my grandmother about it, she realized that disconnected to the
Speaker 1: time where she was thrown from a barn uh loft
Speaker 1: and she couldn't move, and right after that, her mother
Speaker 1: was murdered while they were holding hands. Just think about
Speaker 1: a nightmare so vivid and powerful, so connected to traumatic
Speaker 1: family history that a brother and a sister actually dreamed
Speaker 1: the same recurring dream being the children of Holocaust survivors.
Speaker 1: The second generation informs so much of the inner world
Speaker 1: of Noah's father and aunt. My father actually slept with
Speaker 1: this suitcase pack beneath his bed because he sort of believed,
Speaker 1: not like, would the knockis come to Brooklyn, New York.
Speaker 1: He was pretty certain of that, But you know, will
Speaker 1: I be ready to run when they do arrive? Um?
Speaker 1: So you know, to have that sort of ingrained in
Speaker 1: your in your being when you live in a relatively
Speaker 1: safe place, UM, is pretty troubling. And my aunt, you know,
Speaker 1: I think partly because of the stories and maybe also
Speaker 1: to sort of challenge my grandmother's you know rain. Um.
Speaker 1: She she had all these eating disorders because it was
Speaker 1: sort of like the one thing that she could control,
Speaker 1: like not to eat her food that her mother forced
Speaker 1: onto her plate and and sort of monitored that that
Speaker 1: that this would go down her throat. As far as
Speaker 1: you know, who they were as adults and how these
Speaker 1: stories affected them, um, you know, my my aunt was
Speaker 1: always seemed much more fragile than my father, and my
Speaker 1: father had a very you know, he had a great
Speaker 1: sense of humor, and I think it was his way
Speaker 1: of sort of deflecting and when I started writing this book,
Speaker 1: and I would go to my aunt and father and
Speaker 1: ask all sorts of questions. Everything was buried, nothing was remembered.
Speaker 1: Let's take a quick break here. Noah grows up in
Speaker 1: suburban Great Neck, but always in the shadow of what
Speaker 1: had transpired two generations before him, haunted by the stories
Speaker 1: his grandparents carried and the impact of those stories, he
Speaker 1: begins to internalize it as some kind of responsibility. If
Speaker 1: anyone in the family is going to unpack the history
Speaker 1: of his grandparents and what they went through, it's going
Speaker 1: to be him. Then, when Noah's eighteen, his grandpa dies
Speaker 1: and he's afraid that all of his grandpa's stories will
Speaker 1: die with him. I'd always been the grandchild, I think,
Speaker 1: with the most questions when it came time to, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, to sit around at the meals. I was
Speaker 1: always trying to get nearest to my grandfather and and
Speaker 1: ask the questions. But it wasn't until I think my
Speaker 1: grandfather died and I'm standing in the cemetery burying him, um,
Speaker 1: and I'm and I'm sort of looking around, and I'm
Speaker 1: noticing that all of the all of the gravestones have
Speaker 1: the stars of David on the appropriately at the Jewish Cemetery,
Speaker 1: but inside those stars of David, a lot of the
Speaker 1: tombstones had Holocaust survivor Holocaust survivors written within the star.
Speaker 1: And I looked over at my grandfather's casket and then
Speaker 1: out at the cemetery. It really felt like we were
Speaker 1: burying all these stories, you know, all these things that
Speaker 1: I would never learned, or so I felt at the time.
Speaker 1: Then later on that that day and week um, when
Speaker 1: we had the Shiva, all of my grandparents friends started
Speaker 1: to come to the apartment, and you know, these Holocaust survivors,
Speaker 1: they would like shuffle in and sit at the table.
Speaker 1: And for all the years I had known them, they
Speaker 1: always sat there and spoke in this like coated Yiddish.
Speaker 1: And you know, it's probably comfortable for them to speak
Speaker 1: in Yiddish, but also it was convenient for them to
Speaker 1: not have to, you know, have this kid snooping in
Speaker 1: on their conversations and not have the burden of like
Speaker 1: damaging another another young kid in the family. So they
Speaker 1: spoke in Yidish. But at the shiva, and you know,
Speaker 1: at this point, I'm eighteen years old. I think for
Speaker 1: my benefit, they started speaking in English, and they started
Speaker 1: telling all these stories about my grandfather. Noah hears two
Speaker 1: incredible stories during the Shiva as the old Jews sit
Speaker 1: at the table nothing on bagels and lucks in the First,
Speaker 1: his grandfather, who's working on the ship that's taking him
Speaker 1: and Noah's grandma to America, is accosted by a sailor.
Speaker 1: My grandfather had a job on the ship, and this
Speaker 1: other sailor came up to him and he was an
Speaker 1: anti Semit and basically just said, it's a shame that
Speaker 1: you should see the end of this war. And then
Speaker 1: my grandfather knocks him out, and you know, to me,
Speaker 1: that was just such like a phenomenal moment because it's
Speaker 1: this little Jew who's standing up to this like six
Speaker 1: ft six anti Semite. And then you know when when
Speaker 1: he's taken to the ship's captain, the ship's captain just
Speaker 1: looks at the giant sailor and the little Jew and
Speaker 1: he laughs. But you know, in my mind, I'm realizing, Wow,
Speaker 1: this is like a really brave and tough man. And
Speaker 1: then that was confirmed for me even more when when
Speaker 1: I learned this story that took place in the Barn
Speaker 1: and the Barn story takes place during the Holocaust, when
Speaker 1: my grandfather is essentially high in this barn with a
Speaker 1: friend and um a Nazi walks in on him and
Speaker 1: he demands my grandfather's boots. My grandfather Poppy, he doesn't wanna,
Speaker 1: He doesn't want to turn over his boots, so instead
Speaker 1: he tells his friend to extinguish the light, and he
Speaker 1: runs this pitchfork through the Nazis throat and he leaves
Speaker 1: him dead there. These stories make Noah hungry for more.
Speaker 1: He worries that now many of them are gone forever.
Speaker 1: His grandma falls into a period of mourning that lasts
Speaker 1: five years. During this time, she cries and whales her
Speaker 1: husband's name repeatedly and essentially waits to die herself. When
Speaker 1: Noah tries to speak with her about the past, she
Speaker 1: responds by saying, boy, it's too much. So when it
Speaker 1: comes to his grandparents stories, he's now in a holding pattern.
Speaker 1: His father won't talk about it, his aunt won't talk
Speaker 1: about it, his grandma won't talk about it. After he
Speaker 1: graduates from cal Noah sets off to travel. He's a surfer,
Speaker 1: a detail I love about him, and he essentially follows
Speaker 1: the waves wherever they take him, this was purely a
Speaker 1: trip to catch waves around the world. You know, so
Speaker 1: I essentially just had a backpack and a surfboard, and
Speaker 1: I was working jobs, uh, saving up the money from
Speaker 1: those jobs, and just you know, buying flights to the
Speaker 1: cheapest place I could go, and you know, trying to
Speaker 1: live off like a few hundred bucks in a month,
Speaker 1: like Central America. And then I had buddies all over
Speaker 1: like New Zealand and Australia where I'd find work there,
Speaker 1: and you know, it was just the sort of break
Speaker 1: away from the life I had known. And one of
Speaker 1: the things that I had always known in life is
Speaker 1: to trust nobody, you know, because I grew up with
Speaker 1: not my grandparents stories, but the the warnings sort of
Speaker 1: implied by their experiences and their and their histories. This
Speaker 1: is this idea that you know, your own neighbors will
Speaker 1: turn on, this idea that you'll never be safe in
Speaker 1: your own home. And I guess that, you know, in
Speaker 1: some way which was never said to me, always kept
Speaker 1: from me, but somehow I understood that. Um, when I
Speaker 1: went off on this trip, I didn't trust people, and
Speaker 1: I think that was sort of like one thing that
Speaker 1: had to change, you know, and and and I think
Speaker 1: overall it mostly did. I don't think you could ever
Speaker 1: change that completely. But you know, I was sharing hospital
Speaker 1: rooms with other random strangers. I was, you know, hitchhiking
Speaker 1: through various Central American bill in cities and throughout Australia,
Speaker 1: and I guess, you know, at a certain point I
Speaker 1: had to put my entire belief system aside and try
Speaker 1: something different to get by it. After a year, Noah's girlfriend,
Speaker 1: who was a year behind him in college, meets up
Speaker 1: with him in Europe. Money's tight and they're getting by
Speaker 1: staying in hostels, cooking their own meals. But at some
Speaker 1: point his girlfriend checks her at M balance and it's zero.
Speaker 1: She probably had been hacked or something. You know. We
Speaker 1: realized that if we wanted to sustain any sort of
Speaker 1: global travel, we'd have to go farther east, because at
Speaker 1: the time two thousand four, most of these countries were
Speaker 1: not in the euro Things are really cheap in the
Speaker 1: East as compared to the West. Farther east, inching dangerously
Speaker 1: close to the one country. Noah was never ever going
Speaker 1: to set foot in the place where the atrocities happened
Speaker 1: to his family, Poland. He started in Hungary and Hungary.
Speaker 1: I saw the this new museum that was built and
Speaker 1: it was really the first time in a year I'd
Speaker 1: seen this word. But it appeared on the side of
Speaker 1: the building. It's at Holocaust Museum, huge letters. Well, I
Speaker 1: walked into the museum and we wound up sneaking into this, uh,
Speaker 1: this private tour for these Americans. You know, they invited
Speaker 1: us to join them throughout the museum. And then when
Speaker 1: my girlfriend and I got to the Czech Republic, we
Speaker 1: saw thee Joseph of which is the Jewish quarter in
Speaker 1: the Czech in Prague, and it was preserved because Hitler
Speaker 1: wanted to create this sort of museum to an exterminated people.
Speaker 1: So well, essentially all the synagogue are still there, and
Speaker 1: you know, obviously he failed in his plan to commit
Speaker 1: full extermination, but it saved this little community over this
Speaker 1: little town. And then when I went to a concentration
Speaker 1: camp for the first time, you know, I started to
Speaker 1: have all these questions and feelings and memories of my grandparents,
Speaker 1: sort of like flood back in. Noah doesn't know what
Speaker 1: to do with these feelings and memories, so he reaches
Speaker 1: out to the one person who he thinks will understand
Speaker 1: what he's going through. I sent this email to my father,
Speaker 1: but I also kind of half expected that he would
Speaker 1: just right back, like lea me alone, I don't want
Speaker 1: to talk about it, as he always had when I
Speaker 1: was growing up. But oddly enough, he sends me this
Speaker 1: email with my grandparents addresses in Poland and all the
Speaker 1: camps that they had been in, And I had never
Speaker 1: known this information existed, Like I didn't know he knew
Speaker 1: any of the camps besides Auschwitz and ma Donic because
Speaker 1: they were sort of like household names when I was
Speaker 1: growing up, you know, like when whenever anybody would ask
Speaker 1: my my father, like what his parents had gone through,
Speaker 1: you know, he'd say, house was in my Donic and
Speaker 1: now let's not talk about it anymore. Where had your
Speaker 1: father kept this list? So they kept a list in
Speaker 1: the liquor cabinet. So I think if I was a
Speaker 1: little bit more daring as a as a young man
Speaker 1: and you know, rebellious, I would have had access to
Speaker 1: this information reaching for the vodka and instead of finding
Speaker 1: the list of yeah, or maybe it would have turned
Speaker 1: me off to alcohol. But in any case, I had
Speaker 1: their addresses, and I was one country away from Poland,
Speaker 1: and I thought, wait a minute, like what could be there?
Speaker 1: You know, what could I find out? I can't shy
Speaker 1: away from this now, And so it was really the
Speaker 1: first time I had legitimate information, and so I kind
Speaker 1: of amended my one rule and I went into Poland.
Speaker 1: And that's sort of where all of this became possible.
Speaker 1: We're going to pause for a moment for a word
Speaker 1: from our sponsor. Increasingly, Noah's explorations make his inner world
Speaker 1: more and more populated by his lost relatives. He had
Speaker 1: always been haunted by a family photograph of his grandma's
Speaker 1: of an enormous clan gathered around the sader table that
Speaker 1: passover thirty of them. There were no memories of these
Speaker 1: people because they they just sort of like haunted us,
Speaker 1: like ghosts, you know, hanging there and this and this
Speaker 1: one family photograph, and you know, whenever I asked about
Speaker 1: who they were as a kid, my grandmother just summed
Speaker 1: it all up with the same word repeated three times
Speaker 1: every time, and it was just dead, dead, and dead,
Speaker 1: because that was everybody's story. Every single person in that
Speaker 1: photograph had been murdered except for my grandmother, and my
Speaker 1: grandfather had no photographs. And he also had no people
Speaker 1: left in his family either, because every single person had
Speaker 1: been murdered um when when his town was liquidated, you know,
Speaker 1: so I didn't even have names to attach to any
Speaker 1: of those people. And I think as I started to
Speaker 1: learn more, you know, and when I learned more, because
Speaker 1: I came back from Poland, my grandmother opened up. I
Speaker 1: went to her apartment in Brighton Beach and remember being
Speaker 1: a nice day. Everybody was sort of like down on
Speaker 1: the beach, enjoying, uh, enjoying the ocean, playing volleyball and
Speaker 1: walking the boardwalk. And then there I am with my grandmother.
Speaker 1: She's crying to the ceiling. Still she's she's got this.
Speaker 1: She had this necklace made of my grandfather where he's
Speaker 1: like laser printed into gold and she wears him around
Speaker 1: her neck like he's a he's a god. And you know,
Speaker 1: she would carry this photograph of him to every room
Speaker 1: in the house wherever she went. So it was it
Speaker 1: was both touching and and and and pathetic. Um. But
Speaker 1: this was like the life that she sort of subjected
Speaker 1: herself too, and it was just full of of self
Speaker 1: inflicted suffering. And you know, to watch that for thirty
Speaker 1: minutes when everybody is enjoying the day outside and these
Speaker 1: two scenes are juxtaposed together. Um, I couldn't take it anymore.
Speaker 1: At ten minutes would go by, and you know, twenty
Speaker 1: minutes would go by, and you'd just be watching the
Speaker 1: second hand on the clock, tick pass, tick pass. And
Speaker 1: then so finally, at the thirty minute mark, I just
Speaker 1: said to my grandmother, you know, I went to Poland.
Speaker 1: And I figured, you know, at first I shouldn't say
Speaker 1: anything like that, because who knew what it would trigger.
Speaker 1: Her eyes lit up, and she she leaned forward and
Speaker 1: she asked me if I went to the Muslim plots,
Speaker 1: and she also had this strange smile on her face.
Speaker 1: And I call it strange because Ompstion plots was the
Speaker 1: place that the Jews were transported from two basically their death.
Speaker 1: Pretty much everybody who went to the Omph Plots would
Speaker 1: die because they wound up in a concentration camp. This
Speaker 1: was not only just like this depot into the concentration camps,
Speaker 1: but it was really, you know, the depot into all
Speaker 1: of my grandparents Holocaust stories. And you know, from then on,
Speaker 1: we just sat at that table and she told me
Speaker 1: her stories what made her open up. And I think
Speaker 1: it's because maybe she realized her time was running out
Speaker 1: and she wanted to tell her stories. Maybe it was
Speaker 1: because she was tired of suffering the way she had
Speaker 1: forced herself to suffer over the death of my grandfather
Speaker 1: um or maybe it was you know, she felt like
Speaker 1: I did what was necessary two understand her as much
Speaker 1: as I possibly could in you know, the year two
Speaker 1: thousand and four. You know, because obviously I'm a Jew
Speaker 1: from New York who is known a pretty you know,
Speaker 1: easy life compared to what my grandparents had gone through,
Speaker 1: so there's no way to get any to get anywhere
Speaker 1: near what they had experienced. But maybe she felt like,
Speaker 1: all right, I saw their house, I saw their street,
Speaker 1: I spoke to the neighbors who probably turned on them.
Speaker 1: So you know, maybe I did what was necessary of
Speaker 1: a grandchild who just willing to take on the burden
Speaker 1: of the stories and and the importance of the memories.
Speaker 1: And how long after that did she pass away? We
Speaker 1: had about six years where where we sat at that table,
Speaker 1: you know, every week, two weeks, three weeks, how you know,
Speaker 1: however long between visits, and we'd sit there for a
Speaker 1: couple of hours or however long she could handle, and
Speaker 1: she would tell me her stories and UM, yeah, so
Speaker 1: six years of that. I mean, what a gift that
Speaker 1: you gave her. Um, you know that she also gave you.
Speaker 1: But I'm imagining that you weren't looking at the second
Speaker 1: half of the clock anymore like that. It was now
Speaker 1: there was, you know, like something broke open and her
Speaker 1: where she was able to to speak about all this
Speaker 1: in a way that was very different from before. It
Speaker 1: was like two thousand and five six and I thought
Speaker 1: to myself, I'm going to write a book because I
Speaker 1: started getting answers to my questions. And I figured, you know,
Speaker 1: when I'm going to write a book about about my
Speaker 1: grandfather because to me, he had always sort of been
Speaker 1: like the hero, right, like the guy who I would
Speaker 1: learn would break out of a cattle car that went
Speaker 1: to Triblinka. Nobody escaped Treblinka, and yet here's this guy
Speaker 1: who escapes the cattle car going to Triblinka. Everyone who
Speaker 1: went to Treblinka died, but not him. Here's this guy
Speaker 1: who runs a pitched fork through some Nazis neck and
Speaker 1: and and lives to tell about it. Here's this guy
Speaker 1: who was part of the Warsaw gheto uprising. He worked
Speaker 1: as a sewer ratte right, one of the guys who
Speaker 1: essentially broke out of the Warsaw Ghetto and traded for
Speaker 1: arms and food so that they could live to fight
Speaker 1: another day. And he was just such a phenomenal person
Speaker 1: and a tough guy. And I guess, being a grandson,
Speaker 1: maybe there was something silly in me that, just like
Speaker 1: I was more attracted to his stories than to hers,
Speaker 1: for whatever reason. And so when I sat down with
Speaker 1: my grandmother to ask her questions like, oh, tell me
Speaker 1: about Poppy and the Warsaw Ghetto. Tell me about Poppy
Speaker 1: and Mike Donic a concentration camp. Tell me about Poppy
Speaker 1: and Auschwitz, she just shrugs and said, you know, I
Speaker 1: don't know about Poppy and the war Saw Ghetto. I
Speaker 1: don't know about Poppy here or there. But I could
Speaker 1: tell you about what happened to me there. And that
Speaker 1: was such a powerful moment for me. And to think
Speaker 1: that like my grandfather was, you know, capital s survivor
Speaker 1: and she was just this lady who survived was was
Speaker 1: a ridiculous thing for me to think. And so you know,
Speaker 1: I think she gave me a gift as well, to
Speaker 1: to just open not only to share her stories, but
Speaker 1: to open my eyes to like the reality of things.
Speaker 1: There's one story Noah tells about his grandma now whenever
Speaker 1: anyone wants to know more about her, which sums up
Speaker 1: her courage and her conviction. This one time in the
Speaker 1: war Saw Ghetto, she is um, She's walking down the
Speaker 1: street and there's just bonfire, and she could feel the
Speaker 1: heat before she turned the corner. And when she does
Speaker 1: turn the corner to see the fire and all those
Speaker 1: these books burning, This Nazi says to her, I wanted
Speaker 1: to go up into that building and bring down the books,
Speaker 1: throw down the books. So you know, she complies. She
Speaker 1: goes up into the building and she sees that these
Speaker 1: are books with with her God's name in it. And
Speaker 1: you know, she she looks down at the book burning
Speaker 1: and she says herself, this is not something that she's
Speaker 1: gonna take part in. So instead of throwing the books
Speaker 1: out the window like the Nazi had instructed her to do,
Speaker 1: and as the Nazi was yelling for her to do
Speaker 1: when she looked out, she takes a little string and
Speaker 1: ties up the books and walks downstairs with them, and
Speaker 1: when she gets there, the Nazi points a gun in
Speaker 1: her face because she defied orders, and she just closes
Speaker 1: her eyes and accepts the bullet. And obviously that bullet
Speaker 1: never came. But the books are ripped out of her hands,
Speaker 1: and you know, I guess in her mind she did
Speaker 1: what she had to do to to stand for what
Speaker 1: she believed in and had sort of you know, very
Speaker 1: telling about who she was at the person. The Letterman story,
Speaker 1: like many stories of inherited trauma, is so much about
Speaker 1: the way that the aftermath of trauma shapes our lives
Speaker 1: from one generation to the next. When it's buried, hidden,
Speaker 1: pushed to the side, it festers and creates new difficulties,
Speaker 1: suitcases beneath beds, shared nightmares, eating disorders. But then sometimes
Speaker 1: it passes like a lip torch, into the hands of
Speaker 1: a curious child who has questions he can't let go of,
Speaker 1: and that child grows up to research and report a
Speaker 1: story that restores dignity to the lost and gives his
Speaker 1: grandmother the gift, however painful, of having her own life
Speaker 1: witnessed and scene. I think my father and my aunts
Speaker 1: have a a new found perspective of on on who
Speaker 1: their mother was. You know, I think they they both
Speaker 1: found her to be very difficult. Um. She was difficult,
Speaker 1: but you know, at the same time, she was this
Speaker 1: person who went through such suffering to you know, to
Speaker 1: survive the war and to create a life for generations
Speaker 1: that would follow. Um. So I think. You know, every
Speaker 1: time my father would come home after my grandfather died
Speaker 1: and and he was like cursing her for for driving
Speaker 1: him a crazy, because she did. She she made his
Speaker 1: life miserable. UM, and she said things that were very hurtful.
Speaker 1: He was just able to then like put it all
Speaker 1: on perspective and say, wow, like this is what she
Speaker 1: went through, and I could take a few punches from
Speaker 1: from this lady who gave me life. So I think, um,
Speaker 1: I think that was cathartic for him as well. And
Speaker 1: I think both of them just appreciated having these stories written,
Speaker 1: you know, having them recorded, and having them have a future.
Speaker 1: You know, whether it's a wider audience or whether it's
Speaker 1: just my children when they grow up sitting down and saying, wow,
Speaker 1: were my great grandparents. No one has two young daughters
Speaker 1: who will never know. Those thirty people gathered around the
Speaker 1: Stater table all the branches of their family who were killed.
Speaker 1: How will they metabolize the story of their ancestors, what
Speaker 1: kind of meaning would have for them, and how does
Speaker 1: a family hold such a story generation after generation. I
Speaker 1: think they'll maybe understand what the Jews and more specifically
Speaker 1: our family had gone through. But I'm sure that there's
Speaker 1: also like a mythical quality to reading a book about
Speaker 1: people that you've actually never met. Um So, while you know,
Speaker 1: my grandfather and my and my grandmother were real people
Speaker 1: to me, to them though, you know, I guess they'll
Speaker 1: be sort of legends, and I guess if that's the
Speaker 1: only way to keep them alive from my children and
Speaker 1: still be it. But I think there's also plenty for
Speaker 1: them to understand and to appreciate, as far as like
Speaker 1: what it means to have great grandparents who survived the Holocaust,
Speaker 1: and what it means to have such a small family.
Speaker 1: Even though you know we're a few generations removed from it,
Speaker 1: it's still lingers. Many thanks to my guest Noah Letterman.
Speaker 1: Noah is the author of A World Erased, a Grandson's
Speaker 1: search for his family's Holocaust secrets. You can find him
Speaker 1: at Noah Letterman dot com. Family Secrets is an I
Speaker 1: Heart Media production. Dylan Fagan is the supervising producer, Lowell
Speaker 1: Bolante is the audio engineer, and Julie Douglas is the
Speaker 1: executive producer. If you have a family secret you'd like
Speaker 1: to share, you can get in touch with us at
Speaker 1: listener mail at Family Secrets podcast dot com, and you
Speaker 1: can also find us on Instagram at Danny Ryder, and
Speaker 1: at Facebook at Family Secrets Pod and Twitter at fam
Speaker 1: Secrets Pod. For more about my book Inheritance, visit Danny
Speaker 1: Shapiro dot com. For more podcasts. For my heart Radio,
Speaker 1: visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever
Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows,