WEBVTT - A World Erased 0:00:00.200 --> 0:00:10.879 Family Secrets is a production of I Heart Radio. I'm 0:00:10.960 --> 0:00:15.000 Danny Shapiro, and this is family Secrets. The secrets that 0:00:15.040 --> 0:00:17.840 are kept from us, the secrets we keep from others, 0:00:18.440 --> 0:00:30.800 and the secrets we keep from ourselves. In my family, 0:00:30.960 --> 0:00:35.440 the number six million had been ubiquitous. Grandma would use 0:00:35.479 --> 0:00:38.360 it as a non sequitur when my father was growing 0:00:38.440 --> 0:00:41.760 up and claimed to be bored. Grandma would say, bored. 0:00:42.120 --> 0:00:44.520 When I was your age, we had no food. Your 0:00:44.560 --> 0:00:47.920 family is dead, six million Jews dead, and your board. 0:00:49.040 --> 0:00:51.800 When I refused the fourth bowl of chicken soup, she 0:00:51.920 --> 0:00:54.880 pulled out the number as well. Six million Jews die 0:00:54.920 --> 0:00:58.560 in the Holocaust, and you're not hungry? Six million was 0:00:58.600 --> 0:01:01.680 printed on a poster that hung on their living room wall, 0:01:02.080 --> 0:01:05.280 greeting guests with that integer twisted up in a barbed 0:01:05.319 --> 0:01:11.600 wire star of David. That's Noah Letterman. As a journalist, 0:01:11.640 --> 0:01:15.480 Noah has written about travel, sports, even beer, but his 0:01:15.600 --> 0:01:20.240 deepest exploration is a memoir A world erased a grandson's 0:01:20.319 --> 0:01:27.440 search for his family's Holocaust secrets. I grew up in 0:01:28.160 --> 0:01:33.120 a town on Long Island, pretty Jewish town, and my 0:01:33.240 --> 0:01:38.839 grandparents lived in Brighton Beach, New York. Probably moved there 0:01:39.600 --> 0:01:43.840 from like Canarsi, which is also in Brooklyn, maybe when 0:01:43.840 --> 0:01:45.720 they were when I was eight years old or something 0:01:45.720 --> 0:01:50.680 like that. And you know, between Brighton Beach in Brooklyn 0:01:51.360 --> 0:01:54.680 and Great Neck, New York, I really sort of lived 0:01:54.720 --> 0:01:59.640 in these two very Jewish worlds, and they were quite different. 0:01:59.680 --> 0:02:04.400 I mean, Long Island was, you know, a nice suburban area, 0:02:04.920 --> 0:02:09.680 and Brighton Beach was a little more like beach town 0:02:09.880 --> 0:02:14.560 if you could picture it in Brooklyn, so uh it was. 0:02:14.720 --> 0:02:18.480 It was filled with all of these survivors um and 0:02:18.600 --> 0:02:21.000 Jews from the Old Country, as well as you know, 0:02:21.400 --> 0:02:27.480 various other populations, and it really just sort of always 0:02:27.480 --> 0:02:31.120 felt like I was moving between these two very different worlds. 0:02:31.880 --> 0:02:35.440 And whenever I was in Brighton Beach, I was always 0:02:35.520 --> 0:02:37.880 curious about all of these men and women who had 0:02:38.000 --> 0:02:42.120 had these numbers, you know, these these tattoos, uh scrawled 0:02:42.160 --> 0:02:46.880 on their arms. Most of my friends, all of their 0:02:46.919 --> 0:02:51.440 grandparents were born in America, where I had these two 0:02:51.480 --> 0:02:56.280 grandparents who had come from Europe, came with nothing and 0:02:56.520 --> 0:03:00.920 really had all of their murdered family members is hanging 0:03:00.919 --> 0:03:05.080 on the bedroom wall. So to visit with my grandparents 0:03:05.639 --> 0:03:08.840 and to see these numbers and to see these people 0:03:08.880 --> 0:03:11.120 who I had never known but should have been, you know, 0:03:11.160 --> 0:03:17.000 my great uncles and my great grandparents and cousins however removed. Um, 0:03:17.000 --> 0:03:18.960 it just left me with all of these questions. And 0:03:18.960 --> 0:03:21.160 so you know, when when a kid, I think, is 0:03:21.200 --> 0:03:25.360 denied stories and answers, it just makes them more curious. 0:03:25.360 --> 0:03:28.000 And I was always sort of like interested in in 0:03:28.040 --> 0:03:31.680 my family's history on those on those trips to Brighton Beach. 0:03:34.840 --> 0:03:37.040 How old do you remember being when you first actually 0:03:37.720 --> 0:03:42.120 noticed the numbers? You know, I think growing up the 0:03:42.240 --> 0:03:47.520 numbers always just seemed like they belong there, and I 0:03:47.800 --> 0:03:50.680 think it was like it was more striking to me 0:03:51.080 --> 0:03:54.600 when people didn't have the numbers on their arm when 0:03:54.600 --> 0:03:57.800 I was really young. That's how I remember it. And 0:03:57.800 --> 0:04:00.120 then obviously I got to a point where, you know, 0:04:00.160 --> 0:04:01.960 I realized though there there there are a lot of 0:04:01.960 --> 0:04:05.920 people of my grandparents generation who don't have these numbers, 0:04:06.040 --> 0:04:10.000 and it obviously means something very different and and it's 0:04:10.080 --> 0:04:15.640 very unique in a in a very terrible sort of way. UM. 0:04:15.720 --> 0:04:18.400 So I think I was always aware of the numbers, 0:04:18.440 --> 0:04:22.640 just the meaning of these digits on their arms changed 0:04:22.680 --> 0:04:29.800 for me. Describe your grandmother for me, Um, so she 0:04:30.080 --> 0:04:38.680 was this very stubborn, domineering and loving person. You know, 0:04:38.800 --> 0:04:43.320 she grew up in a time where she starved every day, 0:04:44.000 --> 0:04:48.560 and she made it her business, um to feed every 0:04:48.560 --> 0:04:51.839 single member of her family. Um. You know, there's even 0:04:51.839 --> 0:04:55.640 a story of her inviting a cab driver who dropped 0:04:55.640 --> 0:04:58.360 her off because the guy was hungry. So she felt 0:04:58.400 --> 0:05:00.920 it her duty to feed this this guy I And 0:05:01.480 --> 0:05:05.800 you know, she took feeding to the extremes. So she 0:05:05.920 --> 0:05:08.000 never sat down at the table to join us for 0:05:08.000 --> 0:05:12.560 a meal. Um, but she always stood over us and 0:05:12.880 --> 0:05:15.800 hounded us to eat, eat, eat, And these were the 0:05:15.800 --> 0:05:19.320 commands that she always gave. And you know, through food, 0:05:19.440 --> 0:05:22.520 she controlled us, and through food she showed us her love. 0:05:23.200 --> 0:05:27.120 And she was just this like sweet woman if she 0:05:27.200 --> 0:05:30.400 loved you, and she could be, you know, quite the 0:05:30.400 --> 0:05:33.719 opposite if she didn't. But for every single member in 0:05:34.000 --> 0:05:39.080 the small family that she and my grandfather created in America, 0:05:39.880 --> 0:05:41.960 you know, she loved us all and and she and 0:05:42.240 --> 0:05:46.320 we could do no wrong in her eyes. So um, yeah, 0:05:46.560 --> 0:05:49.960 that's that's that's sort of her in a nutshell. That's great. 0:05:50.040 --> 0:05:53.880 And and how about your grandfather? Describe your grandfather? My 0:05:53.960 --> 0:05:58.080 grandfather was also loving I called him Poppy um, and 0:05:58.320 --> 0:06:02.359 you know, he and I would just spend our days 0:06:02.880 --> 0:06:06.599 whenever I would come over to visit playing cards. Um. 0:06:06.800 --> 0:06:08.960 He'd always sort of let me win in the beginning 0:06:09.080 --> 0:06:11.960 and then you know, show me that that he still 0:06:12.360 --> 0:06:15.000 you know, controlled the game at the end. And then 0:06:15.120 --> 0:06:18.120 if we weren't playing cards, we were watching wrestling on television. 0:06:19.080 --> 0:06:22.600 And you know, he and my grandmother had this very 0:06:22.720 --> 0:06:26.880 um interesting relationship where they just you know, went at 0:06:26.880 --> 0:06:30.279 each other all the time. But you know, he always 0:06:30.279 --> 0:06:32.760 sort of let her win. But then he would look 0:06:32.800 --> 0:06:34.520 over at me, give me a little wink and a 0:06:34.640 --> 0:06:38.760 nod that, uh, let me know that he somehow, in 0:06:39.160 --> 0:06:41.920 his own way had had the upper hand at things. 0:06:42.000 --> 0:06:44.400 But he let her think that she was winning the fight. 0:06:44.720 --> 0:06:47.320 And I guess she probably also thought she was winning 0:06:47.360 --> 0:06:49.360 the fight. But you know, they I think they loved 0:06:49.360 --> 0:06:53.159 each other very much, but I never saw it expressed 0:06:54.000 --> 0:06:56.800 when when I was there. It was just them going 0:06:56.920 --> 0:06:59.520 at it all the time. But you know, towards the 0:06:59.560 --> 0:07:01.960 end of every fighting, guess today I shouldn't say and 0:07:02.080 --> 0:07:04.640 see expressed, because at the end of her sight she 0:07:04.839 --> 0:07:07.240 would always go over and say, you know, oh, my 0:07:07.360 --> 0:07:11.000 husband and give him a little loving pinch or a meal. 0:07:12.280 --> 0:07:15.120 In your book, pretty early in your book, you described 0:07:15.160 --> 0:07:19.000 as a kid knowing that your grandparents had kept their 0:07:19.080 --> 0:07:22.880 stories secret. I think that was the line, actually, you know, 0:07:23.040 --> 0:07:26.160 And am I correct? And remembering that you would, you know, 0:07:26.200 --> 0:07:28.840 sort of snoop around, kind of looking for what they 0:07:28.840 --> 0:07:32.440 didn't want to talk about. Yeah, So as a kid, 0:07:33.280 --> 0:07:38.240 they kept all the stories from me, um and and 0:07:38.280 --> 0:07:40.440 the main reason for that was what I would learn 0:07:40.520 --> 0:07:44.320 later on is basically they told their children. So my 0:07:44.440 --> 0:07:48.200 father and my aunts everything about what they had been through. 0:07:48.600 --> 0:07:51.680 And this traumatized my father and and and it traumatized 0:07:51.680 --> 0:07:56.200 my aunt. They have this like one shared nightmare um 0:07:56.280 --> 0:08:00.200 of hearing goose stepping, seeing this fog all around them, 0:08:00.280 --> 0:08:03.480 and feeling like they couldn't move. And when they told 0:08:03.480 --> 0:08:07.360 my grandmother about it, she realized that disconnected to the 0:08:07.400 --> 0:08:11.520 time where she was thrown from a barn uh loft 0:08:12.120 --> 0:08:16.280 and she couldn't move, and right after that, her mother 0:08:16.400 --> 0:08:29.119 was murdered while they were holding hands. Just think about 0:08:29.120 --> 0:08:33.400 a nightmare so vivid and powerful, so connected to traumatic 0:08:33.480 --> 0:08:37.040 family history that a brother and a sister actually dreamed 0:08:37.080 --> 0:08:42.160 the same recurring dream being the children of Holocaust survivors. 0:08:42.200 --> 0:08:46.200 The second generation informs so much of the inner world 0:08:46.520 --> 0:08:53.120 of Noah's father and aunt. My father actually slept with 0:08:53.160 --> 0:08:58.000 this suitcase pack beneath his bed because he sort of believed, 0:08:58.160 --> 0:09:00.959 not like, would the knockis come to Brooklyn, New York. 0:09:00.960 --> 0:09:04.640 He was pretty certain of that, But you know, will 0:09:04.679 --> 0:09:07.160 I be ready to run when they do arrive? Um? 0:09:07.320 --> 0:09:10.160 So you know, to have that sort of ingrained in 0:09:10.200 --> 0:09:13.920 your in your being when you live in a relatively 0:09:14.480 --> 0:09:19.200 safe place, UM, is pretty troubling. And my aunt, you know, 0:09:19.240 --> 0:09:23.640 I think partly because of the stories and maybe also 0:09:24.040 --> 0:09:29.080 to sort of challenge my grandmother's you know rain. Um. 0:09:29.240 --> 0:09:32.199 She she had all these eating disorders because it was 0:09:32.240 --> 0:09:34.160 sort of like the one thing that she could control, 0:09:34.280 --> 0:09:36.480 like not to eat her food that her mother forced 0:09:36.520 --> 0:09:39.200 onto her plate and and sort of monitored that that 0:09:39.320 --> 0:09:42.440 that this would go down her throat. As far as 0:09:42.520 --> 0:09:45.080 you know, who they were as adults and how these 0:09:45.120 --> 0:09:48.960 stories affected them, um, you know, my my aunt was 0:09:49.240 --> 0:09:54.480 always seemed much more fragile than my father, and my 0:09:54.600 --> 0:09:59.600 father had a very you know, he had a great 0:09:59.640 --> 0:10:02.120 sense of humor, and I think it was his way 0:10:02.120 --> 0:10:06.840 of sort of deflecting and when I started writing this book, 0:10:07.400 --> 0:10:10.360 and I would go to my aunt and father and 0:10:10.400 --> 0:10:15.240 ask all sorts of questions. Everything was buried, nothing was remembered. 0:10:17.080 --> 0:10:25.400 Let's take a quick break here. Noah grows up in 0:10:25.440 --> 0:10:28.560 suburban Great Neck, but always in the shadow of what 0:10:28.640 --> 0:10:32.840 had transpired two generations before him, haunted by the stories 0:10:32.920 --> 0:10:37.319 his grandparents carried and the impact of those stories, he 0:10:37.360 --> 0:10:41.400 begins to internalize it as some kind of responsibility. If 0:10:41.440 --> 0:10:43.800 anyone in the family is going to unpack the history 0:10:43.840 --> 0:10:46.640 of his grandparents and what they went through, it's going 0:10:46.720 --> 0:10:51.120 to be him. Then, when Noah's eighteen, his grandpa dies 0:10:51.840 --> 0:10:54.320 and he's afraid that all of his grandpa's stories will 0:10:54.360 --> 0:11:00.240 die with him. I'd always been the grandchild, I think, 0:11:00.280 --> 0:11:04.160 with the most questions when it came time to, uh, 0:11:04.360 --> 0:11:05.880 you know, to sit around at the meals. I was 0:11:05.880 --> 0:11:08.880 always trying to get nearest to my grandfather and and 0:11:08.960 --> 0:11:14.080 ask the questions. But it wasn't until I think my 0:11:14.160 --> 0:11:20.920 grandfather died and I'm standing in the cemetery burying him, um, 0:11:20.960 --> 0:11:23.800 and I'm and I'm sort of looking around, and I'm 0:11:23.840 --> 0:11:26.440 noticing that all of the all of the gravestones have 0:11:27.240 --> 0:11:31.199 the stars of David on the appropriately at the Jewish Cemetery, 0:11:31.440 --> 0:11:34.320 but inside those stars of David, a lot of the 0:11:35.240 --> 0:11:41.960 tombstones had Holocaust survivor Holocaust survivors written within the star. 0:11:42.640 --> 0:11:47.880 And I looked over at my grandfather's casket and then 0:11:48.160 --> 0:11:50.800 out at the cemetery. It really felt like we were 0:11:50.840 --> 0:11:53.720 burying all these stories, you know, all these things that 0:11:53.760 --> 0:11:58.000 I would never learned, or so I felt at the time. 0:11:59.559 --> 0:12:04.240 Then later on that that day and week um, when 0:12:04.240 --> 0:12:08.000 we had the Shiva, all of my grandparents friends started 0:12:08.040 --> 0:12:11.400 to come to the apartment, and you know, these Holocaust survivors, 0:12:11.400 --> 0:12:13.960 they would like shuffle in and sit at the table. 0:12:14.080 --> 0:12:17.080 And for all the years I had known them, they 0:12:17.160 --> 0:12:21.480 always sat there and spoke in this like coated Yiddish. 0:12:21.559 --> 0:12:24.800 And you know, it's probably comfortable for them to speak 0:12:24.800 --> 0:12:27.680 in Yiddish, but also it was convenient for them to 0:12:28.040 --> 0:12:31.480 not have to, you know, have this kid snooping in 0:12:31.559 --> 0:12:34.320 on their conversations and not have the burden of like 0:12:34.720 --> 0:12:38.319 damaging another another young kid in the family. So they 0:12:38.320 --> 0:12:41.280 spoke in Yidish. But at the shiva, and you know, 0:12:41.320 --> 0:12:43.920 at this point, I'm eighteen years old. I think for 0:12:44.080 --> 0:12:47.480 my benefit, they started speaking in English, and they started 0:12:47.520 --> 0:12:53.080 telling all these stories about my grandfather. Noah hears two 0:12:53.120 --> 0:12:56.360 incredible stories during the Shiva as the old Jews sit 0:12:56.440 --> 0:12:59.839 at the table nothing on bagels and lucks in the First, 0:13:00.600 --> 0:13:03.319 his grandfather, who's working on the ship that's taking him 0:13:03.320 --> 0:13:06.600 and Noah's grandma to America, is accosted by a sailor. 0:13:08.120 --> 0:13:09.839 My grandfather had a job on the ship, and this 0:13:09.960 --> 0:13:13.560 other sailor came up to him and he was an 0:13:13.559 --> 0:13:16.480 anti Semit and basically just said, it's a shame that 0:13:16.520 --> 0:13:18.760 you should see the end of this war. And then 0:13:18.760 --> 0:13:23.880 my grandfather knocks him out, and you know, to me, 0:13:24.000 --> 0:13:27.320 that was just such like a phenomenal moment because it's 0:13:27.360 --> 0:13:29.680 this little Jew who's standing up to this like six 0:13:29.720 --> 0:13:33.880 ft six anti Semite. And then you know when when 0:13:33.880 --> 0:13:37.120 he's taken to the ship's captain, the ship's captain just 0:13:37.160 --> 0:13:40.080 looks at the giant sailor and the little Jew and 0:13:40.120 --> 0:13:43.800 he laughs. But you know, in my mind, I'm realizing, Wow, 0:13:43.840 --> 0:13:47.120 this is like a really brave and tough man. And 0:13:47.120 --> 0:13:50.760 then that was confirmed for me even more when when 0:13:50.760 --> 0:13:53.600 I learned this story that took place in the Barn 0:13:54.320 --> 0:13:57.120 and the Barn story takes place during the Holocaust, when 0:13:57.120 --> 0:14:00.880 my grandfather is essentially high in this barn with a 0:14:00.920 --> 0:14:05.280 friend and um a Nazi walks in on him and 0:14:05.360 --> 0:14:10.360 he demands my grandfather's boots. My grandfather Poppy, he doesn't wanna, 0:14:10.520 --> 0:14:12.640 He doesn't want to turn over his boots, so instead 0:14:12.720 --> 0:14:15.640 he tells his friend to extinguish the light, and he 0:14:15.720 --> 0:14:18.320 runs this pitchfork through the Nazis throat and he leaves 0:14:18.400 --> 0:14:24.880 him dead there. These stories make Noah hungry for more. 0:14:25.560 --> 0:14:28.680 He worries that now many of them are gone forever. 0:14:29.360 --> 0:14:32.120 His grandma falls into a period of mourning that lasts 0:14:32.200 --> 0:14:36.280 five years. During this time, she cries and whales her 0:14:36.360 --> 0:14:41.600 husband's name repeatedly and essentially waits to die herself. When 0:14:41.600 --> 0:14:44.120 Noah tries to speak with her about the past, she 0:14:44.200 --> 0:14:48.960 responds by saying, boy, it's too much. So when it 0:14:48.960 --> 0:14:52.640 comes to his grandparents stories, he's now in a holding pattern. 0:14:53.120 --> 0:14:55.560 His father won't talk about it, his aunt won't talk 0:14:55.600 --> 0:14:59.040 about it, his grandma won't talk about it. After he 0:14:59.080 --> 0:15:03.200 graduates from cal Noah sets off to travel. He's a surfer, 0:15:03.680 --> 0:15:06.920 a detail I love about him, and he essentially follows 0:15:06.920 --> 0:15:12.600 the waves wherever they take him, this was purely a 0:15:12.640 --> 0:15:15.280 trip to catch waves around the world. You know, so 0:15:15.320 --> 0:15:20.560 I essentially just had a backpack and a surfboard, and 0:15:20.760 --> 0:15:24.600 I was working jobs, uh, saving up the money from 0:15:24.600 --> 0:15:30.120 those jobs, and just you know, buying flights to the 0:15:30.200 --> 0:15:32.560 cheapest place I could go, and you know, trying to 0:15:32.640 --> 0:15:35.480 live off like a few hundred bucks in a month, 0:15:36.560 --> 0:15:39.400 like Central America. And then I had buddies all over 0:15:39.480 --> 0:15:42.160 like New Zealand and Australia where I'd find work there, 0:15:42.840 --> 0:15:47.560 and you know, it was just the sort of break 0:15:47.600 --> 0:15:50.120 away from the life I had known. And one of 0:15:50.120 --> 0:15:52.760 the things that I had always known in life is 0:15:52.800 --> 0:15:56.360 to trust nobody, you know, because I grew up with 0:15:57.640 --> 0:16:02.520 not my grandparents stories, but the the warnings sort of 0:16:02.760 --> 0:16:09.640 implied by their experiences and their and their histories. This 0:16:09.720 --> 0:16:12.280 is this idea that you know, your own neighbors will 0:16:12.320 --> 0:16:16.000 turn on, this idea that you'll never be safe in 0:16:16.040 --> 0:16:20.080 your own home. And I guess that, you know, in 0:16:20.440 --> 0:16:24.240 some way which was never said to me, always kept 0:16:24.240 --> 0:16:29.080 from me, but somehow I understood that. Um, when I 0:16:29.160 --> 0:16:35.160 went off on this trip, I didn't trust people, and 0:16:35.200 --> 0:16:37.600 I think that was sort of like one thing that 0:16:37.960 --> 0:16:40.440 had to change, you know, and and and I think 0:16:40.800 --> 0:16:44.400 overall it mostly did. I don't think you could ever 0:16:45.320 --> 0:16:50.680 change that completely. But you know, I was sharing hospital 0:16:50.800 --> 0:16:55.920 rooms with other random strangers. I was, you know, hitchhiking 0:16:56.160 --> 0:17:02.720 through various Central American bill in cities and throughout Australia, 0:17:03.280 --> 0:17:05.280 and I guess, you know, at a certain point I 0:17:05.320 --> 0:17:10.760 had to put my entire belief system aside and try 0:17:10.800 --> 0:17:15.960 something different to get by it. After a year, Noah's girlfriend, 0:17:16.040 --> 0:17:18.240 who was a year behind him in college, meets up 0:17:18.240 --> 0:17:21.440 with him in Europe. Money's tight and they're getting by 0:17:21.640 --> 0:17:24.439 staying in hostels, cooking their own meals. But at some 0:17:24.520 --> 0:17:29.200 point his girlfriend checks her at M balance and it's zero. 0:17:29.920 --> 0:17:32.680 She probably had been hacked or something. You know. We 0:17:32.760 --> 0:17:35.560 realized that if we wanted to sustain any sort of 0:17:35.560 --> 0:17:39.479 global travel, we'd have to go farther east, because at 0:17:39.480 --> 0:17:42.119 the time two thousand four, most of these countries were 0:17:42.119 --> 0:17:45.159 not in the euro Things are really cheap in the 0:17:45.200 --> 0:17:50.840 East as compared to the West. Farther east, inching dangerously 0:17:50.960 --> 0:17:54.280 close to the one country. Noah was never ever going 0:17:54.320 --> 0:17:57.520 to set foot in the place where the atrocities happened 0:17:57.560 --> 0:18:03.440 to his family, Poland. He started in Hungary and Hungary. 0:18:04.000 --> 0:18:08.520 I saw the this new museum that was built and 0:18:08.600 --> 0:18:10.720 it was really the first time in a year I'd 0:18:10.720 --> 0:18:13.240 seen this word. But it appeared on the side of 0:18:13.240 --> 0:18:17.840 the building. It's at Holocaust Museum, huge letters. Well, I 0:18:17.840 --> 0:18:22.120 walked into the museum and we wound up sneaking into this, uh, 0:18:22.359 --> 0:18:26.160 this private tour for these Americans. You know, they invited 0:18:26.240 --> 0:18:29.720 us to join them throughout the museum. And then when 0:18:30.160 --> 0:18:34.040 my girlfriend and I got to the Czech Republic, we 0:18:34.200 --> 0:18:38.600 saw thee Joseph of which is the Jewish quarter in 0:18:38.680 --> 0:18:44.639 the Czech in Prague, and it was preserved because Hitler 0:18:44.720 --> 0:18:49.240 wanted to create this sort of museum to an exterminated people. 0:18:49.320 --> 0:18:52.720 So well, essentially all the synagogue are still there, and 0:18:52.880 --> 0:18:56.439 you know, obviously he failed in his plan to commit 0:18:57.240 --> 0:19:01.359 full extermination, but it saved this little community over this 0:19:01.440 --> 0:19:05.080 little town. And then when I went to a concentration 0:19:05.119 --> 0:19:07.679 camp for the first time, you know, I started to 0:19:08.440 --> 0:19:13.920 have all these questions and feelings and memories of my grandparents, 0:19:14.000 --> 0:19:19.120 sort of like flood back in. Noah doesn't know what 0:19:19.200 --> 0:19:22.040 to do with these feelings and memories, so he reaches 0:19:22.080 --> 0:19:24.120 out to the one person who he thinks will understand 0:19:24.119 --> 0:19:27.280 what he's going through. I sent this email to my father, 0:19:27.840 --> 0:19:30.640 but I also kind of half expected that he would 0:19:30.640 --> 0:19:32.400 just right back, like lea me alone, I don't want 0:19:32.400 --> 0:19:34.480 to talk about it, as he always had when I 0:19:34.520 --> 0:19:38.639 was growing up. But oddly enough, he sends me this 0:19:38.920 --> 0:19:44.159 email with my grandparents addresses in Poland and all the 0:19:44.200 --> 0:19:47.080 camps that they had been in, And I had never 0:19:47.280 --> 0:19:50.520 known this information existed, Like I didn't know he knew 0:19:50.720 --> 0:19:53.720 any of the camps besides Auschwitz and ma Donic because 0:19:53.720 --> 0:19:56.320 they were sort of like household names when I was 0:19:56.359 --> 0:19:59.320 growing up, you know, like when whenever anybody would ask 0:19:59.359 --> 0:20:02.040 my my father, like what his parents had gone through, 0:20:02.240 --> 0:20:04.000 you know, he'd say, house was in my Donic and 0:20:04.160 --> 0:20:06.959 now let's not talk about it anymore. Where had your 0:20:07.000 --> 0:20:10.080 father kept this list? So they kept a list in 0:20:10.160 --> 0:20:12.560 the liquor cabinet. So I think if I was a 0:20:12.640 --> 0:20:14.920 little bit more daring as a as a young man 0:20:15.040 --> 0:20:17.760 and you know, rebellious, I would have had access to 0:20:17.800 --> 0:20:20.760 this information reaching for the vodka and instead of finding 0:20:20.760 --> 0:20:24.040 the list of yeah, or maybe it would have turned 0:20:24.080 --> 0:20:28.400 me off to alcohol. But in any case, I had 0:20:28.440 --> 0:20:32.440 their addresses, and I was one country away from Poland, 0:20:32.840 --> 0:20:36.040 and I thought, wait a minute, like what could be there? 0:20:36.080 --> 0:20:38.480 You know, what could I find out? I can't shy 0:20:38.480 --> 0:20:40.679 away from this now, And so it was really the 0:20:40.720 --> 0:20:43.920 first time I had legitimate information, and so I kind 0:20:43.920 --> 0:20:47.000 of amended my one rule and I went into Poland. 0:20:47.160 --> 0:20:51.480 And that's sort of where all of this became possible. 0:20:52.400 --> 0:20:54.000 We're going to pause for a moment for a word 0:20:54.000 --> 0:21:09.320 from our sponsor. Increasingly, Noah's explorations make his inner world 0:21:09.720 --> 0:21:13.240 more and more populated by his lost relatives. He had 0:21:13.240 --> 0:21:15.920 always been haunted by a family photograph of his grandma's 0:21:16.400 --> 0:21:19.560 of an enormous clan gathered around the sader table that 0:21:19.640 --> 0:21:24.320 passover thirty of them. There were no memories of these 0:21:24.359 --> 0:21:27.520 people because they they just sort of like haunted us, 0:21:27.520 --> 0:21:30.200 like ghosts, you know, hanging there and this and this 0:21:30.280 --> 0:21:34.439 one family photograph, and you know, whenever I asked about 0:21:34.760 --> 0:21:38.240 who they were as a kid, my grandmother just summed 0:21:38.240 --> 0:21:40.720 it all up with the same word repeated three times 0:21:40.760 --> 0:21:43.520 every time, and it was just dead, dead, and dead, 0:21:43.560 --> 0:21:47.760 because that was everybody's story. Every single person in that 0:21:47.800 --> 0:21:50.879 photograph had been murdered except for my grandmother, and my 0:21:50.960 --> 0:21:54.680 grandfather had no photographs. And he also had no people 0:21:54.960 --> 0:21:58.040 left in his family either, because every single person had 0:21:58.080 --> 0:22:01.720 been murdered um when when his town was liquidated, you know, 0:22:02.720 --> 0:22:07.040 so I didn't even have names to attach to any 0:22:07.119 --> 0:22:12.080 of those people. And I think as I started to 0:22:12.160 --> 0:22:15.399 learn more, you know, and when I learned more, because 0:22:15.960 --> 0:22:21.880 I came back from Poland, my grandmother opened up. I 0:22:21.920 --> 0:22:26.200 went to her apartment in Brighton Beach and remember being 0:22:26.560 --> 0:22:29.679 a nice day. Everybody was sort of like down on 0:22:29.720 --> 0:22:34.879 the beach, enjoying, uh, enjoying the ocean, playing volleyball and 0:22:34.920 --> 0:22:38.200 walking the boardwalk. And then there I am with my grandmother. 0:22:38.800 --> 0:22:42.520 She's crying to the ceiling. Still she's she's got this. 0:22:42.720 --> 0:22:45.520 She had this necklace made of my grandfather where he's 0:22:45.600 --> 0:22:49.040 like laser printed into gold and she wears him around 0:22:49.240 --> 0:22:53.240 her neck like he's a he's a god. And you know, 0:22:53.320 --> 0:22:56.560 she would carry this photograph of him to every room 0:22:56.600 --> 0:22:58.679 in the house wherever she went. So it was it 0:22:58.760 --> 0:23:02.679 was both touching and and and and pathetic. Um. But 0:23:02.760 --> 0:23:05.919 this was like the life that she sort of subjected 0:23:05.920 --> 0:23:10.000 herself too, and it was just full of of self 0:23:10.000 --> 0:23:15.720 inflicted suffering. And you know, to watch that for thirty 0:23:15.720 --> 0:23:18.120 minutes when everybody is enjoying the day outside and these 0:23:18.160 --> 0:23:24.800 two scenes are juxtaposed together. Um, I couldn't take it anymore. 0:23:25.000 --> 0:23:28.080 At ten minutes would go by, and you know, twenty 0:23:28.080 --> 0:23:30.080 minutes would go by, and you'd just be watching the 0:23:30.200 --> 0:23:35.000 second hand on the clock, tick pass, tick pass. And 0:23:35.000 --> 0:23:36.840 then so finally, at the thirty minute mark, I just 0:23:36.840 --> 0:23:39.920 said to my grandmother, you know, I went to Poland. 0:23:42.040 --> 0:23:45.120 And I figured, you know, at first I shouldn't say 0:23:45.160 --> 0:23:47.760 anything like that, because who knew what it would trigger. 0:23:48.520 --> 0:23:52.679 Her eyes lit up, and she she leaned forward and 0:23:52.840 --> 0:23:55.480 she asked me if I went to the Muslim plots, 0:23:55.520 --> 0:23:58.160 and she also had this strange smile on her face. 0:23:58.359 --> 0:24:02.120 And I call it strange because Ompstion plots was the 0:24:02.200 --> 0:24:09.240 place that the Jews were transported from two basically their death. 0:24:09.480 --> 0:24:12.840 Pretty much everybody who went to the Omph Plots would 0:24:12.880 --> 0:24:15.679 die because they wound up in a concentration camp. This 0:24:15.880 --> 0:24:19.439 was not only just like this depot into the concentration camps, 0:24:19.440 --> 0:24:22.520 but it was really, you know, the depot into all 0:24:22.600 --> 0:24:26.560 of my grandparents Holocaust stories. And you know, from then on, 0:24:27.040 --> 0:24:30.000 we just sat at that table and she told me 0:24:30.040 --> 0:24:37.200 her stories what made her open up. And I think 0:24:37.240 --> 0:24:42.120 it's because maybe she realized her time was running out 0:24:42.840 --> 0:24:46.919 and she wanted to tell her stories. Maybe it was 0:24:47.040 --> 0:24:51.440 because she was tired of suffering the way she had 0:24:51.520 --> 0:24:54.800 forced herself to suffer over the death of my grandfather 0:24:55.840 --> 0:24:58.439 um or maybe it was you know, she felt like 0:24:58.520 --> 0:25:04.280 I did what was necessary two understand her as much 0:25:04.320 --> 0:25:07.440 as I possibly could in you know, the year two 0:25:07.440 --> 0:25:12.760 thousand and four. You know, because obviously I'm a Jew 0:25:12.920 --> 0:25:16.080 from New York who is known a pretty you know, 0:25:16.240 --> 0:25:19.920 easy life compared to what my grandparents had gone through, 0:25:20.000 --> 0:25:23.760 so there's no way to get any to get anywhere 0:25:23.800 --> 0:25:26.919 near what they had experienced. But maybe she felt like, 0:25:26.960 --> 0:25:29.480 all right, I saw their house, I saw their street, 0:25:29.560 --> 0:25:33.200 I spoke to the neighbors who probably turned on them. 0:25:33.960 --> 0:25:37.840 So you know, maybe I did what was necessary of 0:25:37.880 --> 0:25:42.679 a grandchild who just willing to take on the burden 0:25:42.720 --> 0:25:45.160 of the stories and and the importance of the memories. 0:25:46.480 --> 0:25:49.880 And how long after that did she pass away? We 0:25:50.040 --> 0:25:53.240 had about six years where where we sat at that table, 0:25:54.119 --> 0:25:58.159 you know, every week, two weeks, three weeks, how you know, 0:25:58.160 --> 0:26:02.000 however long between visits, and we'd sit there for a 0:26:02.040 --> 0:26:05.400 couple of hours or however long she could handle, and 0:26:05.800 --> 0:26:09.159 she would tell me her stories and UM, yeah, so 0:26:09.520 --> 0:26:12.679 six years of that. I mean, what a gift that 0:26:12.800 --> 0:26:15.359 you gave her. Um, you know that she also gave you. 0:26:15.440 --> 0:26:18.200