Speaker 1: You're listening to Alive Again, a production of Psycopia Pictures
Speaker 1: and iHeart Podcasts.
Speaker 2: If you give in to a bully, you become a victim.
Speaker 2: I'm not a victim. I'm a survivor and I'm going
Speaker 2: to fight for this until I stop talking, because I
Speaker 2: don't believe that we have to give up to evil.
Speaker 2: The only way we can fight it is to resist it.
Speaker 2: Ten percent of people are really nice and ten percent
Speaker 2: are pretty shitty and nasty. Unfortunately, eighty percent are sheep.
Speaker 2: It's a sheep who scare me. The sheep will allow
Speaker 2: a dictator to rise. The sheep will stand by and
Speaker 2: let Hitler do what he did, whereas a good person
Speaker 2: might have to actually stand up and do something.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Alive Again a podcast that showcases miraculous accounts
Speaker 1: of human fragility and resilience from people his lives were
Speaker 1: forever altered after having almost died. These are first hand
Speaker 1: accounts of near death experiences and more broadly, brushes with death.
Speaker 1: Our mission is simple, find, explore, and share these stories
Speaker 1: to remind us all of our shared human condition. Please
Speaker 1: keep in mind these stories are true and maybe triggering
Speaker 1: for some listener and discretion is advised.
Speaker 2: Well, you know, basically, I come from Transylvania, which is
Speaker 2: that little enclave between Hungary and Romania that keep changing ownership.
Speaker 2: You know, I come from an unusual family because my
Speaker 2: mother was a Catholic and my father was a jew.
Speaker 2: My father had a very large Jewish family and my
Speaker 2: mother was a staunch Catholic family. So you can imagine
Speaker 2: how happy they were. But my parents didn't care. It
Speaker 2: was a love match and you know, for the or
Speaker 2: time they had together, they were very happy. For those days,
Speaker 2: they were very well off. My mother was a dressmaker.
Speaker 2: People used to you know, people used to buy dresses
Speaker 2: not in her shop. They would buy a piece of
Speaker 2: cloth and go and have it manufactured by a dressmaker.
Speaker 2: My mother had forty girls working for her, so it
Speaker 2: was a big business. And you know, we had everything
Speaker 2: that you know, you could buy in those days. We
Speaker 2: didn't have a car, but everything else. We had a telephone,
Speaker 2: which most people didn't, and a beautiful apartment. My father
Speaker 2: had a wholesale fish business. There was a river that
Speaker 2: went through town and he had great, big crates of
Speaker 2: live carp in the river which he would wholesale. And
Speaker 2: I remember as a little girl. There was always a
Speaker 2: carp swimming in our bath. My daddy was my hero.
Speaker 2: He was tall, dark and handsome and always had a
Speaker 2: white silk scarf, and he was very flamboyant, and I
Speaker 2: mean think, I think today I would consider him over
Speaker 2: the top. But he would burst into the room singing
Speaker 2: opera at the top of his voice, and he would
Speaker 2: pick me up and dance around with me and throw
Speaker 2: me around. And my mother was a disciplinarian. She was
Speaker 2: a hard working one that kept telling him off, Now,
Speaker 2: behave yourself. That's no way to bring up a child,
Speaker 2: you know, that sort of thing. But daddy and I
Speaker 2: were very, very close. I adored him. My mother converted
Speaker 2: to Judaism to please my father's family, but we never
Speaker 2: did anything very much in terms of religion at home.
Speaker 2: I remember my mother would light Campbell's on a Friday night.
Speaker 2: She had a scarf and she would mutter things in
Speaker 2: a foreign tongue, and I thought she was doing magic.
Speaker 2: I wasn't quite sure what she was doing. I was
Speaker 2: waiting for something to happen, you know. And that's about
Speaker 2: the only Jewish religion I remember in the house. But
Speaker 2: they always let me have a Christmas tree because I
Speaker 2: love Christmas and they didn't want to deprive me. So
Speaker 2: we had these tall, tall Christmas trees. We had very
Speaker 2: tall ceilings, and you know, they used to have little
Speaker 2: clips with real candles, and then there was candy on
Speaker 2: the tree instead of decorations. There was lots of candy
Speaker 2: and lots of tinsel and candles, and every Christmas we
Speaker 2: had a fire. I still have a tree every Christmas,
Speaker 2: but no more candles. Now it's now it's lights boring.
Speaker 2: But there you go. In those days, in their sort
Speaker 2: of naive I wouldn't call it snobbery, but their ambition
Speaker 2: to bring up a lady. They decided that we had
Speaker 2: to do what the very rich people did, and they
Speaker 2: got me a governess from Austria who spoke beautiful German.
Speaker 2: And she arrived, tall lady with a bun, and I
Speaker 2: don't think she had any lips, because I don't remember
Speaker 2: her smiling, as she had a sort of slash for
Speaker 2: a mouth. And she was so strict. I had to
Speaker 2: have heart boiled eggs under my armpits so I wouldn't
Speaker 2: wave my arms the table. Never any elbows on the table.
Speaker 2: And if you think you had to wash your hands
Speaker 2: a lot during COVID, nothing compared to what this woman
Speaker 2: made me do. She was one of these maniacs about
Speaker 2: cleanliness next to godliness. You know, God forbid anybody should
Speaker 2: should not wash every five minutes. Every five minutes, I
Speaker 2: had to wash my hands, wash my face, and walking
Speaker 2: in all weather because it's healthy, you know, healthy body,
Speaker 2: healthy mind. Snow, sleet, rain, it doesn't matter. She would
Speaker 2: drag me out and walk me. But you know, that
Speaker 2: was her and there was nothing I could do about it.
Speaker 2: She also wouldn't let me play with the children in
Speaker 2: the street anymore. In those days, you used to run
Speaker 2: outside and play until it got dark and then come in.
Speaker 2: And she wouldn't let me do that because those kids
Speaker 2: were not the right kids. They were not rich, you know.
Speaker 2: I was only allowed to play with one little boy
Speaker 2: who lived down the road. It was very cute. He
Speaker 2: had curly blonde hair and big blue eyes. His name
Speaker 2: was Ishtvan Stefan Ishtranko. It's his sort of nickname. You know.
Speaker 2: We chase each other and catch each other, and every
Speaker 2: time I caught him, I kissed him and he hated it,
Speaker 2: and I loved it, and I learned to run really
Speaker 2: fast because I loved that little boy and I tormented
Speaker 2: him a lot. Then my parents decided to send me
Speaker 2: to a Jewish kindergarten two mornings a week to let
Speaker 2: me know something about my heritage. I don't remember much
Speaker 2: about it. They told me that I was Jewish, and
Speaker 2: I remember looking at my skin and looking at other
Speaker 2: people in the street, and I couldn't see any difference.
Speaker 2: I didn't really understand what it meant to be Jewish
Speaker 2: because I looked the same, you know, I looked the
Speaker 2: same as before, and I looked like other people. The
Speaker 2: little boy was there too, Ishtuan was there, but unfortunately
Speaker 2: he didn't make it. He never came home. Frequently I'm
Speaker 2: asked by kids, how come Jews agreed to go to camps. Well,
Speaker 2: it wasn't like that. It wasn't a sudden thing. It
Speaker 2: was a slow erosion of our freedoms. They started taking
Speaker 2: our rights away. First. Jews couldn't couldn't go to college anymore,
Speaker 2: couldn't teach in a college, couldn't go to high school anymore,
Speaker 2: couldn't even go to elementary school US it was a
Speaker 2: Jewish school. Jewish doctors could no longer treat non Jews.
Speaker 2: My first inkling of antisemitism was the fact that I
Speaker 2: could no longer sit on my favorite park bench because
Speaker 2: that wasn't a Jew bench. Jews had a separate bench
Speaker 2: with a yellow stripe on it that said Jew, and
Speaker 2: we were allowed to sit on that bench, but no
Speaker 2: other benches. And I used to go to the park
Speaker 2: with the nanny, and I used to go to the
Speaker 2: swimming pool with my daddy, and none of that was
Speaker 2: allowed anymore. No movie houses, no restaurants, no theaters. Jews
Speaker 2: couldn't go anywhere. You know, we were complete lean ostracized.
Speaker 2: Then the mood started changing, you know, there was all
Speaker 2: this talk in the background, and kids pick up on things.
Speaker 2: People started talking and started saying things like should maybe
Speaker 2: we should leave what's happening. So and so isn't allowed
Speaker 2: to go to college anymore, and so and so who's
Speaker 2: a lawyer is no longer allowed to practice. And people
Speaker 2: started to worry, and but we weren't that worried. The
Speaker 2: Hungarian Jews were very assimilated. We were very faithful, patriotic Hungarians.
Speaker 2: We loved the culture, we loved the language, loved the food.
Speaker 2: We were Hungarians. We've been there for hundreds of years,
Speaker 2: and nobody imagined that anything would happen to us. We
Speaker 2: started hearing about concentration camps. We couldn't believe that something
Speaker 2: like that could happen. Germany, the most cultured country in
Speaker 2: the world, would not allow something like that to happen.
Speaker 2: And anyway, we're Hungarians. I mean, come on, Hungarians, what
Speaker 2: are they They're going to kill her own people who
Speaker 2: are Hungarians. Then a new law came that no women
Speaker 2: under the age of forty five could work in a
Speaker 2: Jewish home, so a lot of the girls who worked
Speaker 2: for my mother were gone. And then my mother said
Speaker 2: to me, you know, I have a present for you.
Speaker 2: And she brought out this beautiful yellow star made of
Speaker 2: gold material and she sewed it onto my coat. I
Speaker 2: remember it was a little blue coat. And she says,
Speaker 2: let's go get some pastries. And she's holding my hand
Speaker 2: and we're going down the street and I'm sort of
Speaker 2: hopping alongside her, and a man comes opposite and he
Speaker 2: looks at me, and I look up at him, sort
Speaker 2: of expecting a nice compliment about my new star, and
Speaker 2: he spits in my face and the spit runs down
Speaker 2: my cheek onto my star, and I say to my mother,
Speaker 2: he hates stars, never thinking it's me. And my mother
Speaker 2: would normally be very feisty, would take me by the
Speaker 2: hand and yell at the man. Doesn't do anything. She
Speaker 2: grabs me and she starts dragging me home. She says,
Speaker 2: we're going home. We're going home. I'll tell you when
Speaker 2: we get there. And I say, but but but the man.
Speaker 2: She says, no, no, no, no, you don't understand. When
Speaker 2: we get home, I'll explain. And we got home and
Speaker 2: she says, no, darling, it's not it's not the star.
Speaker 2: It's you. He hates. And I said, but why what
Speaker 2: have I done? She says, you're a Jew? And I said, well,
Speaker 2: if I didn't have this, would he know I'm a Jew?
Speaker 2: And she says probably not. I said, so let's take
Speaker 2: it off. She says, no, it's the law. You have
Speaker 2: to have it. I had to wear the star if
Speaker 2: I went outside. It was the law. I was not
Speaker 2: allowed not to have it. Now you see, the Hungarians
Speaker 2: didn't consider my mother Jewish because she wasn't Jewish by blood.
Speaker 2: You were only Jewish by blood, not by not by religion.
Speaker 2: So because my mother was although she was a convert.
Speaker 2: She was not considered the Jew I was, so I
Speaker 2: was supposed to wear the yellow star. She didn't have to.
Speaker 2: And at this point, the Hungarian authorities were very sneaky,
Speaker 2: and they had everybody go to the local police station
Speaker 2: and register. They wanted to know where everybody lived so
Speaker 2: they could protect us, you know, that's what they said.
Speaker 2: And like good citizens, everybody went to the police station
Speaker 2: and registered with them, telling them where we all lived
Speaker 2: so they could find us easily, no problem. And they
Speaker 2: started to build a ghetto. Now our town had one
Speaker 2: hundred thousand people, thirty thousand were Jews, a third of
Speaker 2: the town, which was a big, big amount, and they
Speaker 2: decided to squeeze thirty thousand people into like three blocks,
Speaker 2: you know, And there were like fifteen twenty people to
Speaker 2: a room, and they were all in there waiting to
Speaker 2: be taken somewhere, waiting for something to happen, and it
Speaker 2: was getting very tight. And my mother wouldn't let me
Speaker 2: go to the ghetto because she thought they wouldn't notice
Speaker 2: one little girl missing. But my father had to go,
Speaker 2: and I remember them saying goodbye. My mother and my
Speaker 2: father were holding each other sobbing, and you know, I
Speaker 2: kind of wormed my way between them because I wanted
Speaker 2: to be part of everything. And I cried too, but
Speaker 2: I wasn't that sad because I thought that it would
Speaker 2: go on a business trip and bring presents like he
Speaker 2: always did. And then he left. He had a coat
Speaker 2: and a hat and a little bag and he went.
Speaker 2: And my mother was inconsolable. She was sobbing and crying
Speaker 2: and yelling, and oh, she was in a terrible state.
Speaker 2: And then suddenly there was a lot of noise and
Speaker 2: I ran to the window because our apartment was up
Speaker 2: one floor, and I looked down at the street, and
Speaker 2: the street was covered in vehicles and trot and there
Speaker 2: were soldiers everywhere in green uniforms to back feathers in
Speaker 2: their hats, and they were dragging people out of their houses.
Speaker 2: They knew where every Jew lived, of course, they had
Speaker 2: a list, and they all went from house to house
Speaker 2: systematically dragging people out and shoving them onto these vehicles,
Speaker 2: and it was very brutal. People were stumbling and falling
Speaker 2: and getting kicked and getting whipped and getting prodded, and
Speaker 2: suddenly everybody was taken away and they were all gone.
Speaker 2: And then there was silence and then my mother came
Speaker 2: and she says, you're not allowed to be seen downstairs.
Speaker 2: You have to hide, and so she drags me upstairs,
Speaker 2: and she says, you're not allowed to run in the
Speaker 2: apartment because the neighbors downstairs can hear your footsteps, and
Speaker 2: you can't play with your ball, and you have to
Speaker 2: hide under the bed if anybody comes, and you can't
Speaker 2: go near the window. And I hated it. It was like,
Speaker 2: you know, it was like being a prisoner. When people
Speaker 2: bought food in those days that weren't supermarkets, we used
Speaker 2: to go to the market once a week there was
Speaker 2: a big market, and the rest of the time the
Speaker 2: farmers would come into town with a horse and carriage
Speaker 2: and bring their produce and ring a bell and yell
Speaker 2: out what they had. And a young woman used to
Speaker 2: bring our milk. She had a horse and the carriage
Speaker 2: and she had big vats of milk at the back
Speaker 2: of the carriage, and we would come downstairs and she'd
Speaker 2: measure out the milk. She had been an orphan, and
Speaker 2: my mother heard that she was an orphan and she
Speaker 2: was poor. She made her a wedding dress. And it's
Speaker 2: this dress that saved my life. I was really saved
Speaker 2: by a wedding dress, because the girl never forgot and
Speaker 2: she heard the rounding up the Jews, and knowing my
Speaker 2: mother married a Jew, which was quite a scandal, she
Speaker 2: came and she said, I would like to help you.
Speaker 2: You've been so good to me. Where is your little girl?
Speaker 2: And my mother says, I'm hiding her. She said, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 2: no'll give her to me. I'll take her to my farm.
Speaker 2: She'll be much safer there. And my mother came to
Speaker 2: me and she says, do you want to go to
Speaker 2: the farm. Her name was Elizabeth the girl, And I said, oh, yes,
Speaker 2: I wanted to go to the farm. I thought there'll
Speaker 2: be puppies and kittens and children to play with them.
Speaker 2: I hopped up on her carriage and there was a
Speaker 2: sort of a wooden bench. She will let me hold
Speaker 2: the reins part of the way, and off I went.
Speaker 2: I was close to five years old by this time,
Speaker 2: and I was so proud of myself. I was having
Speaker 2: an adventure. Here. To this day, I can't understand how
Speaker 2: my mother had the courage to hand over her only
Speaker 2: spoiled child to this woman she hardly knew, and say,
Speaker 2: save my daughter. I don't think I could do it,
Speaker 2: and she just let me go. She let me go.
Speaker 2: What courage it took. I don't know whether it was
Speaker 2: despair or courage or the combination thereof, but I really
Speaker 2: thank god she did that, or I wouldn't be here.
Speaker 2: It was getting dark, and we got to her farm
Speaker 2: side of a hill. Her house was halfway up the hill.
Speaker 2: She had a vineyard there as well, and then she
Speaker 2: had cows and pigs and things, and then her through
Speaker 2: the gate. There was like a big gate made of
Speaker 2: bricks and wood, and through the gate to the left
Speaker 2: was a small barn with two stalls, one for the
Speaker 2: horse and one for the cow, and with sort of
Speaker 2: a rickety staircase going up. And she takes me out
Speaker 2: of the cart and she says, you're staying here. I said,
Speaker 2: what do you mean I'm staying here? I want to
Speaker 2: go to your house. She says, no, no, no, you
Speaker 2: don't understand there. You can't go to my house because
Speaker 2: people want to kill you. I looked at her, and
Speaker 2: you know, this idea of death is very alien. I mean,
Speaker 2: I know I'm going to die and my mom eighty five,
Speaker 2: but I never think of death. You know, other people die.
Speaker 2: I don't have time for that sort of thing. Well
Speaker 2: the death, Well, who's going to kill me? Why would
Speaker 2: they kill me? And I was arguing with her and
Speaker 2: having a tantruman, you know, tossing my head and banging around, saying,
Speaker 2: I don't want to stay in this smelly barn. I
Speaker 2: hated here. I want to go home to my mommy
Speaker 2: and my daddy. I hated it smell as I hated.
Speaker 2: And she says, no, my dear, you have to stay here.
Speaker 2: And she took me upstairs into this little dingy barn.
Speaker 2: It was full of hay. People used to throw hay
Speaker 2: up with a fork, not with the with the there
Speaker 2: were no hay bales. And she takes me and she
Speaker 2: makes me a bed with some blankets, and she says,
Speaker 2: you have to stay here and I'll be back in
Speaker 2: the morning. She goes and she leaves me, and it's
Speaker 2: getting dark and there's rustling in the hay, and there's
Speaker 2: big black spiders everywhere, big furry spiders, and I'm terrified,
Speaker 2: and it's getting darker and darker, and there's no electricity,
Speaker 2: and I remember crying myself to sleep. You can get
Speaker 2: used to things after a while. I stopped crying, and
Speaker 2: I even managed to amuse myself somehow. I was in
Speaker 2: this barn for three months, totally alone. Imagine your daughter
Speaker 2: being alone in a barn. And I raised four sons.
Speaker 2: I don't think I've kept them quiet more than five minutes.
Speaker 2: I was quiet for three months in this barn, and
Speaker 2: I even got used to living alone. I mean, I
Speaker 2: had no toys because she was afraid of having toys
Speaker 2: in the in the barn in case somebody found it.
Speaker 2: But I made dolls out of the hay and the straw.
Speaker 2: And I even made friends with the spiders. I mean
Speaker 2: they were not bad spiders, they were just big and ugly.
Speaker 2: But I caught one and I tied a string to
Speaker 2: his leg, and now I had a bat. I called
Speaker 2: him Max, and I was very happy with Max, Max
Speaker 2: the spider. Then the leg came off, and then he
Speaker 2: scuttled off somewhere, and I felt so guilty. I thought
Speaker 2: I maimed Max. You know, I'm still looking for Max
Speaker 2: this day. Very early one morning, I hear a commotion
Speaker 2: and I look through the cracks of the barn and
Speaker 2: there are three soldiers again in those green uniforms with
Speaker 2: the black feathers and they're slapping this poor Elizabeth around.
Speaker 2: They have big guns and bayonets and they're they're hitting her.
Speaker 2: They said, where's the jew. We have information you're hiding
Speaker 2: a jew here. We want the jew. Where's the jew?
Speaker 2: And she says, there's no jew. She's crying. They said,
Speaker 2: no jew. Go out to my house and have a look.
Speaker 2: There's no jew here. So they run up to her
Speaker 2: house and they ransack it because they're angry that there's
Speaker 2: nobody there, and they're breaking things and they throw furniture
Speaker 2: through the window and they break all her dishes, and
Speaker 2: they're furious because they can't find the jew. And they
Speaker 2: start running past the barn to get into their vehicle
Speaker 2: until one of them says, wait a minute, ah, let's
Speaker 2: look in the barn. Maybe there's a jew in the barn.
Speaker 2: And they start coming up these stairs. And I scooched
Speaker 2: under the hay and I made my so really really
Speaker 2: very small, and I sort of curled up and I
Speaker 2: held my breath, but my heart was beating so loud.
Speaker 2: I was afraid they could hear it. It sounded like
Speaker 2: a drum, you know. And I tried to quiet my heart,
Speaker 2: and it was very difficult, and I had my eyes
Speaker 2: shut tight, because when you're scared, you think if you
Speaker 2: don't look at them, they don't see you. And they
Speaker 2: kept coming closer and closer, and they were using the
Speaker 2: bayonets to rifle through the hay and stab the hay,
Speaker 2: and they got closer and closer, and then I hear
Speaker 2: a thumb. Then I open an eye and there's a
Speaker 2: big black boot next to my face and the bayonet
Speaker 2: comes down one inch from this cheek and he stabs
Speaker 2: it really hard in the wood and then he pulls
Speaker 2: it out. I still remember the noise it made as
Speaker 2: it came out of the wood, and I think that's
Speaker 2: when I realized what it means to die. And I think,
Speaker 2: really my childhood ended that day, because my golden childhood
Speaker 2: was gone. I remember Elizabeth came and she says, it's okay,
Speaker 2: they're gone. They didn't find you. You're fine. I couldn't
Speaker 2: stand up, I couldn't eat, I couldn't do anything for
Speaker 2: a whole day. My feet wouldn't hold me up. I
Speaker 2: was so terrified. And then my poor mother was arrested
Speaker 2: because they found out that I was on the list.
Speaker 2: But I wasn't in the ghetto. Somebody told them and
Speaker 2: she was imprisoned for two days at the local gendarmerie,
Speaker 2: you know, and they tortured her. And she never told
Speaker 2: me what they did to her because she said it
Speaker 2: was far too humiliating. It must have been gang rape
Speaker 2: or something. She was a pretty young woman. She managed
Speaker 2: to bribe one of the soldiers to take her home.
Speaker 2: She said she had some gold coins and she would
Speaker 2: let him have the gold coins if he let her go.
Speaker 2: And she even managed to smuggle my father out of
Speaker 2: the ghetto, and he was going to walk across the
Speaker 2: room other border was close by and escape, and he
Speaker 2: told my mother that before he went to Romania, he
Speaker 2: had to come and see me. He said, I'm not
Speaker 2: leaving without saying goodbye to the child because she depends
Speaker 2: on me and we're so close. I want her to
Speaker 2: know that I'm coming back as a father. You know
Speaker 2: what he meant, you know, he wanted to say goodbye.
Speaker 2: He wanted to explain to me, and my mother kept
Speaker 2: asking him not to, but he wouldn't listen. And he
Speaker 2: came walking to the farm late at night, and he
Speaker 2: got to the farm at midnight and there was someone
Speaker 2: behind the gate waiting for him, and they arrested him
Speaker 2: and he was on the first transport out of town
Speaker 2: to Auschwitz. And then one day my mother came and
Speaker 2: she was so happy. She says, the war started. Can
Speaker 2: you imagine being happy about the war starting. And she says,
Speaker 2: we're going home. You can come home to our apartment.
Speaker 2: And she says, the Russians are going to come and
Speaker 2: they'll be fine, and Daddy will come home. And we all, well,
Speaker 2: we can go home now. And we said goodbye to
Speaker 2: Elizabeth and she was waving a handkerchief at the end
Speaker 2: of her driveway, and she and my mother were crying,
Speaker 2: but I wasn't crying. I was so happy to be
Speaker 2: going home. And we went home to our apartment. But
Speaker 2: there were bombs every hour. There was an air raid.
Speaker 2: You know, these horrible noises, that horrible we sound, you know,
Speaker 2: it's a horrible sound. And the air raids were almost
Speaker 2: every hour, and eventually we even stopped going into the
Speaker 2: cellar because there was no point. I mean that you
Speaker 2: couldn't really escape even if you if you were in
Speaker 2: the cellar, if you had a hit, the house would fall.
Speaker 2: And there was the house three buildings of where a
Speaker 2: house was hit, and it must have been a gambling casino,
Speaker 2: because I remember it was raining playing cards. The whole
Speaker 2: street was covered in playing cards. I never forget that
Speaker 2: it was raining playing cards. We were so hungry. There
Speaker 2: was no fuel, there was no food, there was no
Speaker 2: ill tricity in it was cold, and we were very,
Speaker 2: very miserable, and we were very hungry. And I remember
Speaker 2: looking out the window and seeing a horse in the
Speaker 2: carriage go past the house. And suddenly the horse stumbled
Speaker 2: and fell right in front of our front door, and
Speaker 2: the guy got out of the cart and starts kicking
Speaker 2: the animal, but it's definitely dead, so he unhitches the
Speaker 2: cart and pulls it away and leaves the carcass there.
Speaker 2: And within minutes windows and doors open. People run out
Speaker 2: with dishes and knives and start dismembering this dead horse.
Speaker 2: And it was cold, and I remember they pulled the
Speaker 2: hide off. There was steam coming out, and within an
Speaker 2: hour there was nothing left of this horse except the hide,
Speaker 2: a few hoofs, and a few guts. Everything was taken
Speaker 2: away to be eaten, even the bones. We made soup
Speaker 2: and we ate this horse. And you know, the whole
Speaker 2: block of apartments that's how it survived that whole time
Speaker 2: we ate this one poor dead horse. Hunger is not like, well,
Speaker 2: you know, I haven't had anything to eat for a
Speaker 2: few days. Hunger becomes an obsession. All you can think
Speaker 2: about is food. You look in rawers to see if
Speaker 2: somebody forgot a cookie or a piece of bread, and
Speaker 2: all you can think about is food, foods, And your
Speaker 2: head hurts, and your light headed, and your breast smells,
Speaker 2: and your stomach hurts, and you can hardly stand up,
Speaker 2: and all you can all you can think is food, food, food.
Speaker 2: I no longer look at food as food. I think
Speaker 2: of it as something much much bigger than that. You know,
Speaker 2: it's it's life. You respect it, and you don't throw
Speaker 2: it away. You cherish it. And the same goes for water,
Speaker 2: because we didn't have water either. I remember they stopped bombing,
Speaker 2: and then the Russians started coming across the frozen river,
Speaker 2: which we could see from our window. They were coming
Speaker 2: down the frozen embankment, linking arms, singing across the frozen river,
Speaker 2: up on this embankment and being machine gunned, and they
Speaker 2: were coming in waves and waves and waves and dying
Speaker 2: in waves. They must have been drunk. Nobody's that brave,
Speaker 2: and they were singing and coming, and there were so
Speaker 2: many of them, hundreds of them being mowed down. And
Speaker 2: eventually there were so many corpses in front of our
Speaker 2: house you couldn't see the river anymore. And suddenly we
Speaker 2: were on the Russian occupation. Well, they were not warm
Speaker 2: and fuzzy, like my mother said, not at all. They
Speaker 2: were raping and robbing, and they were very brutal. And
Speaker 2: my mother and some of the women were hiding in
Speaker 2: a false room that she built, and they were terrified,
Speaker 2: you know, they were terrified. They couldn't go out because
Speaker 2: they were being molested and raped and killed. And so
Speaker 2: my mother at this point decided to take matters in
Speaker 2: her hand, because you know, somebody had to do something,
Speaker 2: and she decided to go and visit the local commander.
Speaker 2: But she couldn't go out looking the way she did
Speaker 2: because she was young and pretty. So she made herself
Speaker 2: look old. She put on an old gray dress and
Speaker 2: put a pillow under the dress on her back to
Speaker 2: make herself look like she had a hunchback, and she
Speaker 2: put on an old scarf, and she blackened her teeth,
Speaker 2: and she drew lines on her face. She put on
Speaker 2: an old scarf and an old cane and pretended to
Speaker 2: be a very old woman, and she walked very carefully
Speaker 2: to the local commander. To her surprise, the local commander
Speaker 2: was a young woman. By this time, the Russians lost
Speaker 2: so many people in the war that they were promoting
Speaker 2: young women and young men to high positions. And to
Speaker 2: my mother's surprise, this woman was a young pretty woman.
Speaker 2: And through the interpreter, she said to her, and come
Speaker 2: to my house. I'm a dressmaker. I'll make your lovely dress.
Speaker 2: This uniform doesn't do it for you. It's not pretty,
Speaker 2: but I can make you look very nice. And the
Speaker 2: woman came, and my mother unhooked a drape from one
Speaker 2: of the windows and put it on her. And suddenly,
Speaker 2: oh my god, this woman was delighted. And she brought
Speaker 2: some other soldier girls Russian once and suddenly we had food.
Speaker 2: We had lots of food. We had a chicken and
Speaker 2: bread and butter, even some chocolate. And we all got
Speaker 2: very ill, because when you've been starving, you're not supposed
Speaker 2: to eat. We almost died just eating. We couldn't stop eating,
Speaker 2: because when you haven't eaten for a long time, all
Speaker 2: you want to do is eat everything you can see,
Speaker 2: and we got very sick. But eventually it all calmed
Speaker 2: down and we started to eat normally, but we still
Speaker 2: couldn't go out. So my mother said to the Russians, listen,
Speaker 2: can you possibly give us a guard? So they gave
Speaker 2: us two guards. Two people came. One of them was
Speaker 2: called Evan. He was a tall kid, can't have been
Speaker 2: more than seventeen tall, skinny, blonde kid. He was a
Speaker 2: captain by this time, and his psychic was an elderly
Speaker 2: gentleman who played the accordion them. And these two were
Speaker 2: constantly drunk, constantly drunk. They drank anything they could lay
Speaker 2: their hands. And they arrived with big bottles of vodka,
Speaker 2: and then they proceeded to drink my mother's cologne and
Speaker 2: some methylated spirits they found in the kitchen. They drank that.
Speaker 2: But they were they were happy drunks. You know, there's
Speaker 2: two kinds of drunks. These guys were happy drunks, and
Speaker 2: I loved them. They were great fun for me because
Speaker 2: all they did was they was They were very unruly.
Speaker 2: They were taking potshots at the moldings on the wall.
Speaker 2: They burnt our antique furniture for heat. My mother disapproved,
Speaker 2: but I was very happy with them. They they were
Speaker 2: very nice to me. Anyway, One day I got sick
Speaker 2: and then Ivan brought me a gift, and I remember
Speaker 2: lying there in bed. I had a sore throat or something,
Speaker 2: had a high fever, and he gave me the sparcel
Speaker 2: in white paper and I opened it up and it
Speaker 2: was like the rising sun. It was an orange. I
Speaker 2: had never seen an orange before because people didn't import food,
Speaker 2: and I read about them in books. I knew about oranges,
Speaker 2: but I hadn't seen one. And that wonderful smell it
Speaker 2: had it was magical. And then my mother opened it
Speaker 2: up and gave me some and she candied the rest.
Speaker 2: And I could only eat it when I was sick,
Speaker 2: and I wanted to be sick all the time so
Speaker 2: I could eat the orange. And to this day there's
Speaker 2: always an orange in my house. It's my security blanket.
Speaker 2: You have no idea what an orange meant to a
Speaker 2: child who had been starving. It was magical. And then
Speaker 2: for some reason, the Russians left the town. The garrison
Speaker 2: was moved out, and life started returning to normal, but
Speaker 2: it wasn't very nice. It was kind of sad, and
Speaker 2: my mother had very little business. We were waiting for
Speaker 2: something to happen, and we heard all about concentration camps,
Speaker 2: but we didn't believe it. We thought it was Communist
Speaker 2: proper guns, because we couldn't believe the German, in the
Speaker 2: most cultured country in the world, would allow hitler. You know, Nah,
Speaker 2: we didn't believe it. She thought the Jews were just
Speaker 2: taken to a work camp. And then she comes and
Speaker 2: she says, listen, there's three trains coming back from those
Speaker 2: work camps, and daddy's going to come home. And she
Speaker 2: got me all dressed up, and she washed my hair
Speaker 2: and she did her her hair up, and we went
Speaker 2: all dressed up. We went to the railway station. We're
Speaker 2: standing on the platform holding up a picture of my father,
Speaker 2: like this, have you seen this man? Have you seen
Speaker 2: this man? Have you seen this man? We're standing there
Speaker 2: holding the picture, and the train empties and there's no daddy.
Speaker 2: So we go home crying, and my mom says, well,
Speaker 2: he'll be on the next train. He's coming back. Don't worry,
Speaker 2: he'll be back. So we went back the next day
Speaker 2: holding up the picture, waiting for daddy, and people start
Speaker 2: coming off the train, and they scare me because they
Speaker 2: don't look human. They are dressed in rags and they
Speaker 2: have no hair, and they have swords all over, and
Speaker 2: they smell bad, and they don't walk. They shuffle. And
Speaker 2: my mother starts gathering these people and bringing them to
Speaker 2: our house and washing them and giving them clothes, her
Speaker 2: clothes to the women. And my father's close to the men.
Speaker 2: And these people are sitting around in our house telling
Speaker 2: us horrible stories. And I didn't know what to think.
Speaker 2: And then we went back on the third day, the
Speaker 2: third train, and we're holding up the picture and waiting
Speaker 2: for Daddy. Then the man comes up to my mother
Speaker 2: and says, don't wait for him. He's dead. She says,
Speaker 2: what do you mean he's dead? Well, I saw his body,
Speaker 2: She says, well, what happened? Was he sick? I don't know.
Speaker 2: I saw his body. I can tell you he's dead.
Speaker 2: Don't wait for him. She doesn't want to believe it,
Speaker 2: but she takes this poor man home and she says
Speaker 2: to him, how do you know who I am? Who
Speaker 2: are you? And he says, don't you recognize me? He
Speaker 2: was a very close friend of my parents, but he
Speaker 2: was in such bad shape. He was beaten so hard
Speaker 2: that my mother didn't recognize him. He used to own
Speaker 2: a coffeehouse with a hotel attached where my parents used
Speaker 2: to play cards every Sunday night. And he was also
Speaker 2: a violinist, and they broke all his fingers, so he
Speaker 2: had hands like claws. Really scared me, and eventually, when
Speaker 2: I was about nine, he told me how my father died.
Speaker 2: My father and another man stole a piece of bread
Speaker 2: in the camp they were starving, and they were found out.
Speaker 2: So the commander decided to make an example of these
Speaker 2: two men and took them to the front of the
Speaker 2: big field where the prisoners used to have to line
Speaker 2: up every morning to be counted, and they it was cold.
Speaker 2: They stripped these two men and they beat them with
Speaker 2: iron bars, breaking most of their bones, and put each
Speaker 2: of them in a dog kennel in this field and
Speaker 2: left them there to die in front of these people
Speaker 2: as an example. And it took my father's two days
Speaker 2: and the night to die in agony. When I heard this,
Speaker 2: I became completely obsessed with violence and hatred. All I
Speaker 2: wanted to do was kill someone. I was a kid,
Speaker 2: but I was reading books about how to stab, how
Speaker 2: to poison, how to suffocate. I just wanted to kill, kill, kill,
Speaker 2: And it took me fifty years to stop hating. I
Speaker 2: managed to empty my heart of hatred, because when you're
Speaker 2: full of hatred, there's no room for anything else. And
Speaker 2: I don't hate anymore. I don't hate at a People
Speaker 2: say to me, well, have you forgiven? That's another problem
Speaker 2: I have. I can forgive anything that happens to me.
Speaker 2: Whatever you do to me, I can forgive you. But
Speaker 2: I don't have the right to forgive for my father's death.
Speaker 2: He's the only one who can forgive. For his death.
Speaker 2: I cannot forgive. And I always tell my boys, if
Speaker 2: anybody kills me and you forgive them, I'll haunt you
Speaker 2: because you don't forgive on my behalf. But I don't hate.
Speaker 2: And you know, people say to me, well, what's your religion?
Speaker 2: I said, I suppose it's love. I'm a Christmas Jew.
Speaker 2: I always have a tree. But I truly believe that
Speaker 2: the only thing we can do is go ahead and
Speaker 2: try and not repeat it. And I'm a very happy person,
Speaker 2: believe it or not. You know, I have four sons,
Speaker 2: and every time I gave birth to one of them.
Speaker 2: It was giving the finger to Hitler. I have four
Speaker 2: granddaughters and they range in ethnicity half Chinese, half Mexican,
Speaker 2: half African American. I even have one who's half German.
Speaker 2: When my eldest son got married to a very nice
Speaker 2: Canadian actress, he came and told me about her. I
Speaker 2: was overjoyed. He says, it's a slight problem. I said,
Speaker 2: what can there be? He says, well, her father was
Speaker 2: a German army sergeant. I said, I swallowed, and I
Speaker 2: swallowed again, and then I thought, no, we don't visit
Speaker 2: the sense of the father and the children. We don't.
Speaker 2: And she became my daughter in law. And I remember
Speaker 2: holding their little daughter in my arms when she was born, beautiful,
Speaker 2: beautiful baby, and the tears were just pouring, and I
Speaker 2: was thinking, here's the grandchild of a perpetrator and the victim,
Speaker 2: and she's perfect. And this is how life has to
Speaker 2: go forward. This is what we need to do. We
Speaker 2: don't go back. We go forward. We love these children
Speaker 2: and we try and change the world, but we don't
Speaker 2: go back. We stop the hatred to stop it right here.
Speaker 2: I survived, and that's an incredible, incredible success to be alive.
Speaker 2: And when you think of like Elizabeth, not only did
Speaker 2: she save me, but she saved the whole generation, my
Speaker 2: sons and my grandchildren. And my son David just has
Speaker 2: a little boy recently. He is two years old and
Speaker 2: they're expecting a little girl in September. So in fact,
Speaker 2: it's ten fingers to hit or just four. If you
Speaker 2: give in to a bully, you become a victim. I'm
Speaker 2: not a victim. I'm a survivor, and I'm going to
Speaker 2: fight for this until I stop talking, because I don't
Speaker 2: believe that we have to give up to evil. The
Speaker 2: only way we can fight it is to resist it
Speaker 2: and to try and do good. And you know, ten
Speaker 2: percent of people are really nice and ten percent are
Speaker 2: pretty shitty and nasty. Unfortunately, sheep, it's a sheep who
Speaker 2: scare me. The sheep will allow a dictator to rise.
Speaker 2: A sheep will stand by and let Hitler do what
Speaker 2: he did. A sheep will stand by and do nothing,
Speaker 2: whereas a good person might have to actually stand up
Speaker 2: and do something. There was a wonderful man that I
Speaker 2: was listening to some lectures. His name was Ben Ferens.
Speaker 2: He was one of the prosecutors in Nuremberg when they
Speaker 2: put the Nazis on trial. He was the youngest prosecutor ever.
Speaker 2: He was a young immigrant. He was telling on one
Speaker 2: of his lectures. He was talking about his father who
Speaker 2: came to this country and he was a simple man,
Speaker 2: a shoemaker or something, and he would sit his two
Speaker 2: children down at the dinner table, young children, and he
Speaker 2: would say to them, what have you done for humanity today?
Speaker 2: They had to do something good every day for humanity.
Speaker 2: They had to open a door for somebody, pick up
Speaker 2: some trash, feed the dog, help an old lady across
Speaker 2: the street. I tell children in school, please do something
Speaker 2: good every day too. You don't have to save everybody's
Speaker 2: life like Elizabeth saved mind. But you can go and
Speaker 2: sit with that kid that nobody wants to talk to.
Speaker 2: Look at that sad child. He might have a very
Speaker 2: heavy baggage. We all have baggages on our backs. We
Speaker 2: all have some tragedy we're carrying around. And if we
Speaker 2: could only be a little bit kinder to each other,
Speaker 2: this whole world could change. And it's up to this
Speaker 2: generation to change the world, because is so much better
Speaker 2: than the one before. These kids get it they get it,
Speaker 2: and they know that if they don't stop banning books,
Speaker 2: and if they don't stop banning rights of people and
Speaker 2: banning women's rights and banning voting rights, if they don't
Speaker 2: try and stop that, their world will go to hell.
Speaker 2: And it's up to them to create a better world.
Speaker 2: And I think they will do it because nobody else
Speaker 2: is going to do it for them. As far as
Speaker 2: I'm concerned, as long as I have breath, I will
Speaker 2: go and keep talking. It's hard, because you know, it's
Speaker 2: a long way to school and then I speak for
Speaker 2: an hour an hour and a half. I take questions,
Speaker 2: but I do it almost every day. Everybody says I
Speaker 2: suffer from terminal optimism. I do. But I think it's
Speaker 2: going to be okay, and my little grandchildren will have
Speaker 2: a good life because these young people today will fight
Speaker 2: for it.
Speaker 1: Welcome back, This is Alive again, joining me for a
Speaker 1: conversation about today's story or my other Alive against story.
Speaker 1: Producers Kate Sweeney, Nicholas Takowski, and Brent Day, and I'm
Speaker 1: your host, Dan bush Nick.
Speaker 3: How did you come across Kathy Preston.
Speaker 4: I went up and worked for her theater company in
Speaker 4: Center Barnstead, New Hampshire, when I was twenty four years old.
Speaker 3: Oh really, yeah.
Speaker 4: She and her husband Gordon, who is a delightful sort
Speaker 4: of prickly, very funny British man, they had they started
Speaker 4: a theater company and they did educational theater tours and
Speaker 4: I was in one of their touring companies. Kathy, for
Speaker 4: some reason took a particular interest in me. I would
Speaker 4: literally be down in the kitchen with the other actors
Speaker 4: in this giant farmhouse that we were all staying in
Speaker 4: in New Hampshire in the dead of winter, and we
Speaker 4: would hear through the events upstairs Kathy from the office, Hello, Hello,
Speaker 4: can you hear me? And we would all get quiet
Speaker 4: and we go yeah, and you go, is Nick down there?
Speaker 4: I go, yes, he goes Nick Darling. Could you come
Speaker 4: and bring me a coffee?
Speaker 2: Yes, ma'am.
Speaker 4: And I would go and poor coffee and walk it
Speaker 4: up to her, and it was just like it became
Speaker 4: kind of a joke in the company. But I had
Speaker 4: a health scare while I was up there. I won't
Speaker 4: go into it too much, but she ended up driving
Speaker 4: me to the hospital in Conquered which was like an
Speaker 4: hour away, and while we were driving she told me
Speaker 4: this story, and I think, just through this, through just
Speaker 4: the drive and through like you know, running her coffee
Speaker 4: or you know, doing her bidding for her. I felt
Speaker 4: very close to her. At one point she even said, like,
Speaker 4: you know, Nick, I think that in a different life,
Speaker 4: I was probably a mother or something.
Speaker 2: She has the.
Speaker 4: Most immense, kind, but very like pointed presence. She has
Speaker 4: no bullshit. She is who she says she is. She
Speaker 4: shows you that she's very patient with people, but at
Speaker 4: the same time she does not suffer fools or bullshit.
Speaker 4: To sort of, in that brief time, be like an
Speaker 4: object of her affection. Feels like one of the great
Speaker 4: gifts of my life that this incredible force of nature
Speaker 4: could love me. And it was weird because I was
Speaker 4: in a time in my life where I did not
Speaker 4: feel very lovable.
Speaker 5: And it's so interesting, Like I asked you that question,
Speaker 5: like how did you meet her, not necessarily expecting you
Speaker 5: not in fact, not at all, and expecting you to
Speaker 5: have a personal connection. And when you said, oh, yeah,
Speaker 5: she was running she and her husband were running this
Speaker 5: theater company in New Hampshire, I kind of gasped, like
Speaker 5: and then I thought, Okay, why am I surprised, And
Speaker 5: I think it's because of I think we have a
Speaker 5: tendency sometimes to put history under glass and be like,
Speaker 5: that was that time, and this person who was a
Speaker 5: Holocaust survivor, this was their thing and this is what
Speaker 5: they did. And so it always feels especially poignant and
Speaker 5: incredible for somebody who led that life to then have
Speaker 5: an experience and impact and do something completely different with
Speaker 5: their life and impact somebody that I know and that
Speaker 5: I walk around with.
Speaker 1: Oh amazing.
Speaker 2: And when she.
Speaker 4: We should definitely plug her her books here, especially Hidden,
Speaker 4: which was a which is a It's her story told
Speaker 4: in a graphic novel. It's gorgeous, an excellent way to
Speaker 4: tell the story of a child going through this with her.
Speaker 1: The most hopeful POV that we've heard yet in the show.
Speaker 1: The most hopeful is coming from the perspective of somebody
Speaker 1: who watched the world pretty much almost end right. Nobody
Speaker 1: has had that we've talked to has seen as much.
Speaker 1: She watched complete and destruction of society and civilization and
Speaker 1: everyone she knew that.
Speaker 3: Moment she was like, oh no, the Germans would never
Speaker 3: do that, right.
Speaker 1: And so the person, the person who watched the most,
Speaker 1: who witnessed the most destruction at the earliest point in
Speaker 1: their life. It has the most optimistic and hopeful POVM. Hmm,
Speaker 1: isn't that crazy?
Speaker 4: Oh, it's it's absolutely insane.
Speaker 1: Well, maybe that's exactly the way it should. Maybe that's
Speaker 1: you know, having dealt with that and survived that, what
Speaker 1: else do you What else are you going to do
Speaker 1: with the rest of your life except see the beauty
Speaker 1: and hope and things. I don't know, what do you think.
Speaker 4: She processed all this stuff when she was a child?
Speaker 4: And these, I mean, these same things are happening h
Speaker 4: elsewhere in the world, children facing down horror and watching
Speaker 4: as their entire families and communities are completely wiped from
Speaker 4: the face of the earth. Hearing a child's perspective in
Speaker 4: this moment in history is absolutely necessary, because we're being
Speaker 4: asked every day to deny our humanity and to deny
Speaker 4: the humanity of the people that this is currently happening to.
Speaker 4: I think it's important that we hear. This doesn't just
Speaker 4: happen to adults. This doesn't just happen to This doesn't
Speaker 4: just happen to bad people. This happens to people who
Speaker 4: have no comprehension of why because they're four years old.
Speaker 4: They're five years old. They don't know why the world
Speaker 4: hates them. They've done nothing. They didn't ask to be here,
Speaker 4: they didn't ask for suffering, they didn't cast aspersions on
Speaker 4: you or anybody. I think hearing a child's perspective of this,
Speaker 4: and hearing about how she couldn't even comprehend why this
Speaker 4: man would hate her, that's happening hundreds of thousands of
Speaker 4: times over across the planet as we speak, and we
Speaker 4: allow it because we don't understand the human consequences, the
Speaker 4: consequences to the most innocence. We're for some reason as
Speaker 4: a society, maybe because we seem incapable of seeing humanity.
Speaker 4: And I think sometimes it takes a child's story. It shouldn't,
Speaker 4: it shouldn't have to take a child's story, But it
Speaker 4: takes a child's story to make us really gasp and
Speaker 4: to make us feel sick to our stomachs. And we
Speaker 4: should feel sick to our stomachs. We should, because that's
Speaker 4: when change happens. Is when we are repulsed, When everybody
Speaker 4: is repulsed by what happens, that's when real change happens.
Speaker 4: And hearing this horrifying story from a child and hearing
Speaker 4: that she's able to come out of it, pushing harder
Speaker 4: for humanity. Despite the fact that it was humanity that
Speaker 4: killed her father, that took the people she loved, that
Speaker 4: took the little boy she used to run around with
Speaker 4: away from her, she still has faith in that, especially
Speaker 4: for the children that are coming up. Now there's hope
Speaker 4: for the children.
Speaker 1: She gives us a tool in her words, she says
Speaker 1: to do good. She equates doing good with resistance. So
Speaker 1: even if you are looking at the world, in the
Speaker 1: horrors of the world, and you think what can I do?
Speaker 1: What can I do? What can I do?
Speaker 2: Well?
Speaker 1: She gives it to you right here. She says, you know,
Speaker 1: don't look at yourself as as a victim, look at
Speaker 1: you know, look at yourself as a reva. Beyond that,
Speaker 1: she says, what are you doing for humanity every day?
Speaker 1: What have you done good for humanity today? And that's
Speaker 1: and she gives us this wonderful gift of like doing good,
Speaker 1: just simply helping, helping you know, the kid who is
Speaker 1: otherwise lonely and feeling abandoned. Doing good is resistance. That
Speaker 1: is the resistant thing.
Speaker 4: Absolutely, But I think that also, so though those acts
Speaker 4: may add up and make the world better, I think
Speaker 4: that the kind of resistance she's also talking about is
Speaker 4: pushing back against bullies, is pushing back against the big powers,
Speaker 4: and that we can't have a good world if we
Speaker 4: let the bullies win. We can't live in a good
Speaker 4: world and let the bullies win. And I think that
Speaker 4: right now, as we are living in an era where
Speaker 4: it's going to be asked of us more and more
Speaker 4: to we're gonna have a choice to either protect ourselves
Speaker 4: and sit back quietly and let things happen around us
Speaker 4: like many Germans did, like eighty percent, I mean, or
Speaker 4: we can fucking stand up and push back and put
Speaker 4: ourselves at hazard to a certain extent to do good
Speaker 4: in the service of good. And that's something that's alien
Speaker 4: to a lot of people, I think, And so it's
Speaker 4: very seldom been asked of us to stand up in
Speaker 4: the last twenty thirty years. And I think we're reaching
Speaker 4: a point now where there's just going to be in
Speaker 4: there's just going to be a point where we have
Speaker 4: to make a choice. Do we put ourselves at hazard
Speaker 4: and stand or do we allow history to wash over us?
Speaker 4: And in thirty years look back and go like, well,
Speaker 4: there was nothing I could.
Speaker 6: Do, and it encroaches slowly. I mean, I think people
Speaker 6: assumed that the Holocaust was something that the a light
Speaker 6: switch went on, and this happened, but the rights were
Speaker 6: gradually taken away. The course language to different groups of
Speaker 6: people was normalized. We see it happening here absolutely, And
Speaker 6: when we went to Berlin, I mean I knew that
Speaker 6: the history already, but we went through the Topography of Terror,
Speaker 6: which is the Museum of the Holocaust, of how it happened,
Speaker 6: from discrediting the press to saying it's singling out this
Speaker 6: group of people is causing the problem.
Speaker 1: And it is so hidden too. She didn't even believe it,
Speaker 1: so I did, but she nobody believed. And you know,
Speaker 1: they were like, no, these concentration camps couldn't have happened, right,
Speaker 1: But like you were saying, you know, and they couldn't
Speaker 1: imagine it. It's the civilized, the most civilized nation in
Speaker 1: your German Germany. How could happen there? I don't believe it.
Speaker 1: But then so it happens without you knowing it, and
Speaker 1: it happens and they don't just show up one day
Speaker 1: and take you to the gas chambers that did happen.
Speaker 1: But before that they have stars, yellow stars, and before.
Speaker 6: That they can't they can't have a law.
Speaker 1: You can't tee and you can't be a teacher, and
Speaker 1: you can't be a lawyer, and you can't.
Speaker 6: And it's perfectly justifiable for some our camp cans and property.
Speaker 6: And three years later, now this right is taken away
Speaker 6: and then suddenly you're in a camp animal form.
Speaker 5: I found myself thinking, as you all were talking about
Speaker 5: sort of this, these great arcs we see of like
Speaker 5: rises and falls of fascism and more certainly in a
Speaker 5: period of rising. Now, is you know, where do we
Speaker 5: stand individually as humans and what can.
Speaker 3: Help us to resist that?
Speaker 5: Because sure, we can point fingers all day and say,
Speaker 5: well we should be standing up against this, sure, but
Speaker 5: what tools do we.
Speaker 3: Need internally to be able to do that?
Speaker 5: And you know, I think about back to these other
Speaker 5: stories and how a lot of us are sort of
Speaker 5: walking around and feeling like isolated individuals. And so we are,
Speaker 5: you know, walking around and carrying our individual weights of
Speaker 5: guilt or whatever it is, and just sort of feeling
Speaker 5: like nothing's right. So what helps us to get away
Speaker 5: from that it's this sense of in part of feeling
Speaker 5: like we are connected to other people, which are some
Speaker 5: of the themes we've heard in these other stories.
Speaker 3: Not getting bogged down in the sort of specifics of
Speaker 3: who we.
Speaker 5: Are and our egos and our individualized details right about
Speaker 5: who we are and.
Speaker 1: Our our separateness.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, our identities. Thank you.
Speaker 5: That was the term I was looking for. And yeah,
Speaker 5: I'm thinking about some of the other storytellers who at
Speaker 5: this present moment in their storytelling are still feeling very
Speaker 5: much bogged down by guilt or depression or post traumatic stress.
Speaker 3: And what she's been through.
Speaker 5: And her ability to say it comes unbidden and there's
Speaker 5: nothing you can do about it.
Speaker 3: These are things that sort of pass in and out
Speaker 3: of us.
Speaker 5: But you know, it's sort of her ability to sit
Speaker 5: there and see that these feelings. You know, I am
Speaker 5: not the storm, right, but the storm kind of passes
Speaker 5: through me.
Speaker 3: And I was really struck by her ability to do that.
Speaker 4: I think that the most important basic building block of
Speaker 4: fighting bullies is being able to see the humanity in
Speaker 4: other people around you, particularly people that are not like you.
Speaker 4: I think you have to have that, and I think
Speaker 4: you have to fight for that in order to feel
Speaker 4: the fire underneath your ass to actually help to make change.
Speaker 4: And you do that by listening. You do that by
Speaker 4: going out and meeting the community where you're at, You're
Speaker 4: not History is not happening to you. You are in
Speaker 4: the stream with everything else, and you are a part
Speaker 4: of it, and you are a thread in what can
Speaker 4: become a rope, and that rope can pull people forward
Speaker 4: or it can hang us.
Speaker 1: Next time on a Live Again, we meet singer songwriter
Speaker 1: Blair Kremenz, whose life, identity, and music completely transformed after
Speaker 1: a near fatal head injury.
Speaker 7: The way that the accident went down is just a
Speaker 7: tremendous metaphor. As this dog was pulling me on a skateboard,
Speaker 7: that's just me letting the world take me where where
Speaker 7: it wants me to go. There was something else pulling me,
Speaker 7: you know, in a different direction, and I was more
Speaker 7: than a little lost. I hit the pavement so hard
Speaker 7: it fractured the base of my skull into my ear canal,
Speaker 7: and blood started pouring out of my ear.
Speaker 1: Our story producers are Dan Bush, Kate Sweeney, Brent die
Speaker 1: Nicholas Dakowski, and Lauren Vogelbaum. Music by Ben Lovett. Additional
Speaker 1: music by Alexander Rodriguez. Our executive producers are Matthew Frederick
Speaker 1: and Trevor Young. Special thanks to Alexander Williams for additional
Speaker 1: production support. Our studio engineers are Rima El Kali and
Speaker 1: Nomes Griffin. Our editors are Dan Bush, Gerhartzlovitchka, Brent Dye,
Speaker 1: and Alexander Rodriguez. Mixing by Ben Lovett and Alexander Rodriguez.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Dan Bush. Thank you to Kathy Preston.
Speaker 1: As she has said, there are less and less people
Speaker 1: alive from the period I am from, and the more
Speaker 1: people die, the less availability there is to connect.
Speaker 2: With the past.
Speaker 1: I speak for the people who cannot speak for themselves.
Speaker 1: With that in mind, we hope you share her story
Speaker 1: as well. For more information about Kathy and her work
Speaker 1: and books, you can go to Katti Press dot com.
Speaker 1: That's k A T I p R E. S d
Speaker 1: O N dot com. Alive Again is a production of
Speaker 1: iHeart Radio and Psychopia Pictures. If you have a transformative
Speaker 1: near death experience to share, we'd love to hear your story.
Speaker 1: Please email us at Alive Again Project at gmail dot com.
Speaker 1: That's a l i V e A g A I
Speaker 1: N p R O j e c T at gmail
Speaker 1: dot com.