EPISODE 2: IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF SURVIVAL
[1] Here is a photograph of Shane and Simon at Shane’s winging ceremony when he became a Navy pilot.
[2] Want to learn more from Rabbi Tirzah Firestone? Check out her book, “Wounds into Wisdom: Healing intergenerational Jewish trauma.” or listen to her recent interview on Judaism Unbound here.
[3] The audio from Simon in this episode is from a recording made by Jennifer Melrose as part of her research for her masters in psychology. She interviewed Simon as part of her project. When we interviewed her, this was the first time we’d heard about the recording!
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SHANE: “You maintain memory and connection to the departed through any means possible, right? Like, I mean, anything you can connect, to loved ones that you miss and, and have lost…”
MIRIAM: Welcome to Door to Door: A multi-generational story of memory, trauma, and identity. I am Miriam Terlinchamp. In this five-episode series we follow how my family, over four generations, metabolized a history of survival, trauma and hope, and reclaimed a story nearly erased.
This is Episode 2: In the footsteps of survival
I’m here, talking with my cousin Shane, who is a retired Air Force pilot, and now flies for United Airlines. While researching for this story, Shane happened to fly to Frankfurt, the closest airport to our Grandfather’s house in Wachenbuchen. So, we called each other.
SHANE: First off, coming into Frankfurt or flying in, I was flying. it was a beautiful day, like sunshine, no wind, just the kind of day you kind of dream of as a pilot.
the way they routed us, they rooted us right over wachenbuchen and I made the right turn and I looked down and I saw his village and I was like, oh my God. Mega chills right there. had to shake it off quickly 'cause I had to land about three minutes later. But it was pretty special to get to see it from the air and think about, how proud that, grandpa Simon would've felt,his grandson was flying over his old village, in a 777, which was pretty special.
I mean, like how far we come as generations, right? first and second, and then third generation. it would've been very difficult to conceive in his childhood, his grandkids would be who we are and, and doing what we do and, and still connecting to his life. So, that's pretty special.
it's impossible for me to project forward and think about what my, my grandkids thinking about my life and the way we think about him, which probably reflects more on him than anything else,I got my round one of sleep. I slept from like, I don't know, we'll say 10 at night to about two 30 in the morning. Woke up, couldn't get back to sleep. And I'm like, all right, this is just gonna happen. I'm just gonna run out there. So I mapped it. it was about 10 and a half miles out there. And I'm like, okay, this would be a really fun run. and what a cool like thing to connect to, to grandpa who obviously was a fitness fanatic before that was really a thing. got my running stuff on left, like once the sun came up. mapped it all on my phone. I'm too cheap to pay for like an international plan right now.So I hit the go button on my map, kind of crossing my fingers that I would get some guidance along the way. And of course, I get like a mile in, looked down, it's all dropped out, like the whole thing's died. I'm like, okay. But I studied the map enough that I was like, I, I'm pretty sure I could find my way out there.
Like I, I'll get it. and if I make a few wrong turns, it'll be okay. So just started cruising out that direction and I did, I made like two wrong turns, but they didn't cost me more than like a half mile or so. ended up getting into the outskirts of the town. And it, it's beautiful.Like it's really where the farmland starts, like real rural.two or three kilometers of like rolling farm fields and, it's like mustard fields and strawberry fields …so it was super pretty running up through these, these farmer fields going out to his village and got into town and, and like I said, I'd kind of done enough, reconnaissance that I had a really good idea of where it was. so I ran almost right to it and got there and kind of had my moment with, with grandpa and, and with Uncle Lou.yeah, it was, it was powerful. Um, I wasn't fully prepared for kind of the emotional impact when I got to the house and saw the plaque and, just kind of went through that, that, that mental exercise that I've done before, which is, gosh, what would've life been like here 80 years ago, 90 years ago?and that kind of hit me. And then I think the most, like, most emotional, and I really lost it at this point, was I just thought about how much I miss grandpa, like just being around him and his stories. I. And, um, oh, it's choking me up right now. it's, uh, it's just miss miss being around him and, uh, and being at his house is kind of that, you know, getting to replay some of that in my mind and, um, and just reflect positively on, on what great experiences I had with him and the great relationship I was lucky enough to have with him, well into adulthood.So it was a mixture of grief and gratefulness that, uh, I felt when I was standing in front of his house.
“grief and gratefulness”
MIRIAM: What is it about that threshold, that space that unlocks our story? Here’s my cousin Mark…
MARK: I got out of the Frankfurt train station. I took a bus to Wachenbuchen…and this is remember no phone, no Google maps, none of that. I think I had an address and I got there early in the day and I went to the address and there it was. It was like seeing a picture you've seen forever, right? But what's interesting about Papa's situation is, that's the only thing we have, is that house, and that town, and those stories…I mean, I just always heard about it. my aunts and uncles went, You know, it's, I mean, some of it's a responsibility. nobody had been for a while, but I don't know when Gavin Popper went, between the late 70s and when I went, I don't know if anybody had been in a while. I've kind of never thought about that. It never entered my mind not to go. It's just. That's where you go. You just,
MIRIAM: Here’s my mother Nadine…
NADINE: It's actually pretty common, I think, for children of Holocaust survivors and I, I guess I delivered that same sense of mission to my own children, that that's what you do. You go back, you see, you bear witness to what transpired. You talk with people and say, where were you? What did you do? And as my father always said, that was not everybody was a Nazi. and that resonates with me today too. The people who are compliant, what does that really mean? Some people have no choice or they perish as well, and I think that is what we did. That's way you honor what happened, and we actually believed in those days never again. That if you make sure that memory stays active and that people, live up to that memory, in other words acknowledge it happened much like the German government did, then it can't happen again. We know now that's not true, but that's how we grew up.
MIRIAM: Here’s Ralph’s wife, Mindy…
MINDY: I think for me, we were looking at the past, but to me, I think the present and the future were the significant things because it really brought up how important family, how important Jewish history is, and how important the relationship among all of the family members that were there, and then seeing how it's getting transmitted. It's getting transmitted to our kids. It's getting transmitted to future generations and my daughter-in-law and son were not married at that point. They were engaged and it was just so nice seeing that this is such a good way for them to start their family again. Everything is getting transmitted. And then when we came back, we talked about it. We've talked about it to so many different people. By doing so, we're honoring those who have come before us. We're honoring the memory of the Holocaust and we're preparing for future 'cause God knows what it's gonna be like in the future.
MIRIAM: Here’s Lou’s son Ralph…
RALPH: That's one of the reasons I think I applied for German citizenship. We have a grandchild now, and I want him to know his Jewish identity and his roots.
MIRIAM: Back to my cousin Shane…
SHANE: Or another way to look at it would be that, that I never should have left this spot. Like you and me. We should be Germans. Like we should be living here. This should be our life. Because had had the, the trajectory of, the non evil, the non terrible trajectory of, world War II and the Holocaust not happen, obviously we would be different variants of ourselves, but like we would be here because this is really our home, or at least one fourth of our home,
MIRIAM: Each of us were called to that space through unspoken stories, through haunting photos, and through the energy of a man who had survived the indescribable and still found a way to lead a life oriented in love.
MARK: everybody loves him, I can't think of anybody, who had problems with them or complained about them or this or that. I mean, everybody loved him. I've never met a person in my life who have so many people, uh, they claim to be his best friend.
SHANE: For someone who experienced what he experienced and the traumas that he went through, he came out the other side like a wonderful person and so it, it's just hard. He's a hard man not to love. He was a really beautiful person.
SIMON: I love my children very, very much, and they love me, and my grandchildren love me.
MIRIAM: Each generation seeks, and each one, in turn finds the same thing. Not answers,but a sense of connecting with something larger than ourselves. Shane again…
SHANE: I'm definitely a grave person. My mom's a grave person. Like, there's no belief that I have that I'm actually speaking with them or having a conversation, but I'm going to their last human spot and communing with them in a way that facilitates memory.
MIRIAM: This is my sister Julia…
JULIA: being in the graveyard of my grandfather's ancestors and it wasn't bombed. And seeing generations of Strauss people buried, knowing what happened to the whole Jewish community and seeing. That memory still stood. And, seeing names that have been passed down on our family to be in that graveyard. and just like there was my mom's cousin David was very kind of like more scientific and talking very literally about the history. And then other of us like just starting delving into like, what does this mean that generations and generations of our family were buried here? And for that to have survived, that was really powerful. Like it was, not eerie, but like goosebumps kind of experience for me. What does that mean for so many Jews to have been murdered? For, our history to still be able to continue to some degree, in this little tiny graveyard in this random city outside of Frankfurt. That was really amazing… But I never thought that my family would ever have any kind of marker like that to showcase my family's history. And as someone who feels deeply connected to, physical, symbolism. Of our history and what our people have experienced. And I think that's the closest we're ever gonna get is a tombstone and given what a tombstone or what a grave means in Jewish to the Jewish people and that many of the people who, what is it, 27 people in my family who were murdered by the Nazis will not ever have that. To know that, that we still have some components, some, some part of our family still has that in our family. I thought it was never there and so I, I honestly never knew that we'd have any family with Any physical presence that they were there and, and what that means. and I mean, this goes back like generations, like it was super cool.
MIRIAM: Back to Shane…
SHANE: going to grandpa's house and feeling that spiritual connection, that communing with the deceased, just felt super strong. in my memory and, and playing very vivid memories of, of grandpa and his laugh and his way mannerisms and smells and conversations. So, so yeah you maintain memory and connection to the departed through any means possible, right? anything you can connect, to loved ones that you miss and, and have lost. so yeah, that would definitely classify as spiritual to me.
MIRIAM: Perhaps, this is the legacy of all families, trying our best to understand ourselves within the context of our lineages, each one inheriting the next link in the chain. But, if our identity is directly linked to our ancestors, and their stories are obfuscated, or erased before their time, it complicates our own understanding of identity. Here is Rabbi Tirzah Firestone on understanding generational trauma within Jewish families:
RABBI TIRZAH FIRESTONE: The truth is that Jews all over the world have had their own brand of discrimination for the last, probably roughly 2000 years. So, it doesn't have to even be Holocaust. But what is collective trauma for any ethnicity, for any group who has suffered an event or a series of events that shatters their experience of safety, a shared experience that alters the narrative. Alters the psyche of our community… so central to our liturgy and to our whole ideology as Jews, uh, listeners may know this, the words L’Dor V’dor, it's so, it's such part of our infrastructure that from generation to generation, Naja, we will sing your praises. God, we know your presence in our lives. So intergenerational legacies are very, it's inherent to Judaism, and we wanna say, before we launch into all the crazy neuroses that we have, we also wanna say that there are very positive wisdom intergenerational legacies too. I mean, we wouldn't be here honestly if our ancestors hadn't been pretty darn savvy, street smart, resilient because they were living under the gun or always ready to be displaced or converted or whatever. Tortured. So we have this resilience that's also an intergenerational legacy. There are precious legacies and there are also neurotic legacies and part of the whole intergenerational healing,is that we want to widen the lens on ourselves and see that we are that who we think we are, uh, despite what our culture tells us. We're not solo acts here. We are part of a much bigger ancestral web work and the unmetabolized trauma histories that were lived by our ancestors, whether or not we knew their names or knew anything about them, can filter down to us in many cases. And why we're even talking about this is because there is actual data that's coming out of the labs studies that show us that there are these residues that come to us, that make us more prone to PTSD that make us more prone to anxiety, to scarcity, to fear, given a little bit more stress in your present tense life situation. If your ancestors, if your grandparents lived through something that was in a and they couldn't have metabolized everything, processed, everything, you may have a more of a propensity for PTSD
MIRIAM: In our family, we knew snippets of what had happened, sometimes in my grandfather’s own words.
SIMON: I never forget leaving Frankfurt the chief railroad, uh, station there. And even there, the Nazis entered the trains and whenever they got hold of somebody, they beat them up as they farewell from Germany. So I hit as much as I can, being a nervous wreck until I hit across the border into Belgium. Had an uncle there who came who was in Brussels in a, brought near a cup of coffee. And that was a new world. But then for, it took me years to forget about it because you never know it would be sent back to the concentration camp
MIRIAM: Sometimes, in the lore we cobbled together and told to one another: Here’s Mindy…
MINDY: They said, you have to go back and get your visa, but you have to get that through. So that's when he went back to Wachenbuchen and it was like a Friday, late afternoon. He and Simon had taken him to the Gestapo office and. They knocked on the door and the guy opened the door and said, we're closed for the weekend. And Simon put his foot in the door and said, wait a second. You wanna get rid of all of these dirty Jews?
, then do this, sign his papers and you'll get rid of this sturdy Jew. And so the guy working in the office said, wow, I probably can get a couple of good brownie points for this. Open the door, sign the visa. And with without your grandfather's intervention, literally foot through the door, Lou would not have been saved.
MIRIAM: And as we wove the stories together, we sought to make meaning from them, trying our best to make sense of the loss in relationship to the present moment. Back to Nadine…
NADINE: Because the center of my father's house, what he lost was not in the concentration camp. That's where he suffered and many people perished. His life that he lost, his school, and his beloved aunts. His school, the synagogue, they burned the school. They closed the grocery stores. They weren't allowed to shop in the bus stop where they had to use for just Jews as they were yellow stars. The camera that he retrieved from the Nazi archives was there that says where this is the symbolism of loss. I believe that's it. The concentration camp is visiting a cemetery or torture chamber depending on which one, but the life that was taken, the rich, rich life, not financially, my father was. Very modest means the the rich cultural life that the Nazis and their followers, burned down
MIRIAM: With each telling of the story, each conversation about Simon, there would be new information, and yet, with an almost pavlovian repetition, our stories end with the same perfect bow: Resilience. Gratitude. Positivity. Here’s my cousin Jennifer…
JENNIFER: I think the overall feeling for me, was always resilience. I absolutely know what you mean by intergenerational trauma. A hundred percent. But I think I always experienced it as, wow, isn't it amazing how he emerged from this? And, what amazing coping strategies. And I think my father and I always used to talk about, isn't it amazing everything he went through, the things that he saw and, that he still has, has come out with such a positive outlook on life. isn't it interesting how one person could go through that experience and really ruin them psychologically. And here was Papa, who I did not experience him that way at all. I found him to be very positive every day. Very resilient. very active, into his old, into his older years. Always had a sense of humor. So it's funny because I don't ever, I don't think of it as like, oh, that was traumatic…I just think just the optimism and the hope and just the resilience, it just overshadowed. any kind of negativity we could have gotten from it. And the message I took from it was to practice Judaism is the least we can do, and we have a duty to do that because it's a privilege. It was something that he survived to be able to pass on to us.
MIRIAM: Ralph again…
RALPH: one of the inspirational figures from my childhood was my Uncle Simon, who is my father's brother who did spend time in a concentration camp. and just was a very dynamic personality that everybody who met him immediately adored him. he just has an incredible inspirational, positive story to share that I think influenced many of our family members.
He did not dwell on his time in the concentration camp. Yeah, it was awful. But he, he was talking about, the stories that he told about getting out, going to England, going to Houston, just amazing stories of resilience.I think that the tendency for people is to be resilient, but you wonder what makes people just so positive. Simon was a very positive person.
MIRIAM: Nadine again…
NADINE: Perhaps it's aspirational, but that there are many, many good people in the world because he believed that wholeheartedly. It's a sense that people have better angels. They just need to be tapped and sourced. I believe that things will get better. It's not something I always remember, but he always felt that things can get better. I think I inherited, not his optimism, but a sense that there is Some kind of axis on the earth that turns it in a direction that will at some point tap people's better instincts. It's difficult right now and it's aspirational, but he firmly believed that. There were many good people and that there are very many good people and he was not a person that held grudges. And I think I held, I, I asked Aspire to that
MIRIAM: This is my cousin Marika…
MARIKA: He was really an example of what resilience and grace and moral clarity looked like. I think that's a big part of it. 'cause on paper had every reason to be bitter, but he really, most of the time chose love and decency… That, with resilience and love and the choice of kindness and how we treat people like that is kind of the gift of his story in, in the way I live my life and the way I hope to, like instill in my own families
MIRIAM: Here’s Julia…
JULIA: the fact that he has so many people who were dedicated to him. I think because of his outlook on life and what he survived and he wasn't angry. He was so grateful for life. and he decided to also continue to hold onto his faith because of what he survived, which I know a lot of people did not. Right. Like,they felt angry that they were, imprisoned and killed Right. Because of, of their identity. And my grandpa wasn't that way. He was so positive in his outlook. like I'm so proud of him, obviously.
MIRIAM: This is Lou’s Grandson Neal…
NEAL: I remember Grandpa Lou doing this with me when in middle school I asked him first about his experience as a Holocaust survivor and, and leaving Germany. Like, what was that like? And he started with the positive. He started with the neighbor he's reconnected with after the war. and at the time at least, like was catching up with like, uh, I think it was once a month he talked about how beautiful his town was and how wonderful the people were. And I had to remind myself as a middle schooler in that moment to say, wait a second. I thought we were talking about something really dark and depressing. And so I was not good at asking questions at that time. I'll blame it on me being young. but Luckily, he eventually got to the part of like, here was the hardships. but even then as a middle schooler, he was telling me a story that that sounded lighter. and it was only as I got older and I think he felt that he could share more with me and share more of that burden and that heaviness with me, um, that he opened up more and, and said more of like the true hardships of what he had to do and what he had to really rebuild and continually rebuild throughout his life. and I think that's so much of just what's ingrained in my, Dad in me, my siblings, and I, I even see it in our cousins too, where we like to just be, uh, we like to focus on the positive. Um, we don't like to focus on the negative too much.
MIRIAM: Mindy, again…
MINDY: I think it's perspective. If you have a positive perspective, you're more likely to be living a positive life. And I don't think that's just because I think it's how you process things. And if you process things through a very in negative way, everything's gonna look negative. Glass half hefty, glass half full. So if you want this to be your best year, it can be your best year. You know, I think that also a lot of horrible things happen to all of us. And I've had some of my best moments during horrible times. I remember one time when Ralph was really ill and I was sitting right where I am on the floor, and he was sitting on this couch and I held his hands and I said how wonderful the moment was. And later that day, David came over with Linda and they were like, oh, this is so horrible that you've got whatever and everything is bad. And I was just thinking, no, this is just the best moment. You know? It's how you handle it and appreciate what you have because you never know what's good. The next moment's gonna be like,
MIRIAM: It was Simon’s coping mechanism to ascribe meaning to his survival. A part of the legacy he passed to us is that the truth of his pain always came with a caveat about love.
SIMON:: I'm a, a person who doesn't like negative things. I like positive things and I tried to find the best of it when I wasn't in a bad circumstance. And I tried to find the, the positive side on it. I don't hate, I don't hate to be very frank. I know people will hate never forgiven, something like that. I know my own, personally, when I went through hell, I also found a lot of good people. I found a lot of good people when I needed a passport for my brother, my youngest brother go to Israel, to this friend of mine whom I knew all my life, came over and wanted to know what he could help.
MIRIAM: What a gift.And, what a burden.To always have to follow tragedy or pain with, “...it could have been worse.” or “..others have it worse.”
NEAL: And we are always like, oh, there's someone who has it worse than us. There was someone who was in a concentration camp. There was someone who, you know, lost more family members than me, and therefore, like, my story's not as important as their story is.
“You guys have it a lot worse…”
“There were people that had it worse…”
“Everybody else had it worse than me. It wasn’t so bad.”
SIMON: But the Jews there were treated a whole lot worse there
JENNIFER: I mean, he said that wanted her to know, because it's a, it's a story of resilience. Look what this guy went through and, look how he came out the other side. It's amazing, you know, and all these schlepper now, you know, get like a hangnail and like, get upset. I'm sorry. My friends and I say champagne problems. I mean, seriously.
I mean, look what this, look what this guy went through and, and look, look how he came out the other side. It's amazing, and look what he accomplished afterward and had how,optimistic his outlook was. It's just, it's just really incredible.
MIRIAM: The pilgrimage to the house is part of a family legacy of honoring the blessing of life, about the miracle of our heritage, and also, perhaps, a way to be able to grieve without the caveat of having to be so damn grateful all the time.
Professor Sarah Crane talks about this need of survivors and their descendents to make meaning of their suffering, and how that impulse to synthesize a singular message, ends up diminishing the diversity of lived experiences and flattens the story we are so desperate to understand.
SARAH CRANE: I hope initially that they'll allow themselves to access the uncomfortable parts of it…to like sit with the very tough historical realities that it does force us to confront. But that this, this should not be totalizing because that's not when the story ends. The story was relayed to different members of Miriam's family. Again, it was kind of relayed in different ways. It affected people differently, and so if we're going to acknowledge that the story doesn't just end in 1945 or after, I don't think we should necessarily take hope and resilience from it, but We should take the fact that it can mean multiple different things, has meant multiple different things, and that there is a rebuilding that happened there…What I'm trying to emphasize is that the story is different parts and there are different things to be taken away from each part, some of it is darkness and destruction, and some of it is sitting with darkness and destruction and living life anyway. And again, I think if we immediately say hope or resilience, people think that the darkness matters because it emphasizes the kind of happy end of the story. And that's not true. Like it doesn't just exist in contrast, it exists in dialogue. And how do we communicate that to people? it encourages them, I think, to ask what do we want to take away from the story and what do we kind of lose when we decide that it's going to be that one thing?
MIRIAM: Perhaps, this is the way the chain of tradition establishes it’s next link. The story is handed to you, and you learn to tell it in the third person. Shane again…
SHANE: Grandpa Simon was always the protagonist of the story, but he doesn't get to escape Buchenwald without his mother selling their house.
MIRIAM: Back to Marika…
MARIKA: But I remember hearing… it felt like the first time I was hearing that story, his story, the story of the Holocaust, all of it. And I, I do remember being like, whoa, like, I can't believe like my grandpa, my dad's dad. Had to suffer such tragedy that, that he lost his most, his family, like, and, and that, and that. He escaped outta this with his brothers. Like, it really hit me. I I must have been like 15. Like, whoa, how is this possible? I, so I do kind of remember that moment and, and standing there in the museum and being in that space and, and, and the photos and like the whole sensory experience of it, like hearing and seeing and it was like, whoa. Yeah, it hit me hard. I think that was kind of my first real kind of resonance with it, like being able to just begin to unravel that. I was like, of that lineage.
MIRIAM: And then, slowly it begins to shift, it’s not just about your father or your grandfather, it’s also about you and your relationship with the story and how it connects you to others. Here’s my cousin Aaron…
AARON : I fashion myself as a descendant of Holocaust survivors. It's funny how we kind of affix that to our identity. You know, it's like we're not just Jews. We're also Jews that are our, our grandparents. Were in the Holocaust. there's like a certain specialness that comes with that. You know, even my wife, a big part of their family story is that, her grandfather and her grandmother survived the Holocaust. So when I came along and I effectively had the same story, it was like, whoa. It's like, oh, my grandfather survived the Holocaust too. So it's kinda like, , it becomes part of your identity, I think.
MIRIAM: Julia again…
JULIA: I love telling my grandpa story. I have mementos of him all over my house. I'm so proud of, of, of being from a family of survivors.
MIRIAM: And as our grandparents pass, and our parents age, we realize, I’m not just part of a line of survivors, I am the next in line.
PIERRE: I am the patriarch.
MIRIAM: The matriarch.
DAVID: The carrier of the family story.
MIRIAM: I have children to teach this story to. And grandchildren. And great grandchildren. And as I hold it, I know it’s a gift -To survive, to have a story, and also a heavy burden, to keep that story alive and also not force a pathos of coping mechanisms, appropriate at the time, but now potentially harmful when applied unilaterally in all situations that involve pain.
So, inevitably, when we move to the front of the line, becoming aware that soon we, too, will be ancestors, the story cannot just be about them and what happened once upon a time.
The story must also include me, how I was shaped by the narratives, the coping mechanisms, the emotional runoff of trauma… and how else to make it mine, than to see it for myself?
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Ohio Humanities made this episode of Door to Door possible. Door to Door is a production of the Institute for the Next Jewish Future and part of the family of podcasts of Judaism Unbound. Created by Miriam Terlinchamp, directed by Joey Taylor, produced at Monastery Studios, original music by Ric Hordinski, and art by Katie Kaestner.
Check the show notes for bonus material and resources.
We'd love to hear from you, so you can email us at miriam@judaismunbound.com or find us at: wwwjudaismunbound.com/doortodoor.
Stay tuned for our next episode, where Simon comes face to face with the impact of his own story. Thanks for listening.
