When I hear in the hallway
that when I am gonna go out,
they're gonna give me a bullet in the head.
I am gonna fall over and I wouldn't even know who killed me.
She'd point she say there's stars of David on the wall there
and I can't get them down.
And she'd say these are not really nurses,
they're spitting on me and they wanna beat me.
They lay a hand on me. They're gonna go to jail so fast like nobody's business.
I am not a prisoner.
This is America.
I received a phone call at midnight.
The police found my mother running on the streets of Skokie and she
doesn't want to go back home because she says it isn't safe there.
And she said they're not taking me to a nursing home. They're taking me
to a farm in Wisconsin.
We of the few things she had told me about her past
that she had worked on farms
when she was hiding during World War Two farm. That's what did it.
And for the first time,
this woman who was so silent
about her past
is telling me what her past is because her past is back.
I'm a married woman.
I am not a prisoner
in effect. I just
unconsciously kind of slipped into the role of journalists.
I brought a memo pad,
I think I only have two mom
every time. Less and less. What's going down,
spill the beans. Come
on, spill, spill the beans
to my mother. It was my fault that she was in this situation.
Um
And
she did not understand the situation.
I did not understand the situation and
the doctors didn't understand the situation.
And I'm absolutely not crazy.
I was born in Europe.
The state brought me over.
I went to work and I went to night school.
I tried to do my darn as best I could.
And of course
we married and that one was born.
I spent years decades really finding the story in other people's lives.
Now my own mother was having a breakdown and I had to find her story
and the story you told me about your mother going out to
try to bring food to the people in the camp nearby.
And one of the guards told her the young girl around 10 years of age,
I'll put a bullet in your head.
Can you imagine
doing something generous and caring and loving?
Despite the horrible circumstances she was living in
for somebody whose circumstances were worse
and to be brought up short, that's a trauma.
You know, when you have everything, you have everything.
But when you come to a palace full of bags
or
needles that are thrown at me.
I can say
do not throw no needles
at me while I am in my room or I would say do
not throw any crawling box at me while I am in my room.
My mother
never trusted anyone.
She trusted my father also a survivor,
her pillar in life, her social connection, her savior in a way from her past
my mother only half trusts me.
There are 10. Here. I counted them out.
I trust you. Yeah,
here's all 10.
Even when I was a younger kid, I was sleeping, I would wake up to go to the bathroom.
She'd be sitting on the floor
of the living room, looking out the window all night, looking out the window.
She was on guard duty.
She was guarding you
and you even said you had no idea that this was unusual or abnormal. And
my mom always slept with one of those meat axes under her pillow
every single night.
I don't know, maybe it was another, you know, thing of her not wanting to be, you know,
protecting, you know,
um,
because she was always checking the locks of the front
doors right after he left for work 100 times,
staring out the window 100 times. So you do look back and you see.
Wow, some of this was weird.
Did you get a good night's sleep last night?
I call it a sheep with one eye.
I don't sleep in that bed.
Why not?
Because I don't like it.
Did you try it?
I don't even wanna try it.
Isn't it uncomfortable to sleep in the chair?
Who knows
one of the great tragedies? Is that a person like this may get locked up?
It may be in a very benign place like a nursing home,
but it's still being locked up
and the same thing is starting all over again.
The holocaust has begun again. And that's when I realized a year later,
this is what my mother has. My mother is not the only one who has this.
It's not this vague amorphous delusional disorder.
My mother is reliving her past
and there's this incredible phrase
when he said your mother has late onset ptsd with bells and whistles. It's like
this is the case. This is it
late onset post traumatic stress disorder.
Getting that diagnosis was the first step in finding out what happened to my mother.
Then a letter came,
Sonia. What's happening with you? Are you OK?
It's from my aunt Irene whom I haven't seen since my bar mitzvah.
So I call Irene and she starts telling me about growing up with my mother in Dubna,
this little town in what was then Poland and how the war started and the Nazis came.
It's all I can do to bring this out of her. She's so reluctant to tell me
and then we were in the ghetto. And then
I escaped and your mother escaped.
And for a year and a half or two years, she's running and hiding.
And then the relative found her and she's got had lice on
her head and she was filthy and then I took her.
This is like overwhelming to me.
I have not heard one sentence of this story in my life.
Is it my father,
my sister who died
long parents,
his mother and his father,
my brother,
a me
and of those people
who survived
my sister
and myself.
Irene tells me she has a picture of my mother from before the war.
I had never seen my mother as a child.
She was like a doll, the beautiful,
beautiful small
child, the dressed nicely
and polite.
My father,
she was
his eye.
He loved this child.
Irene's father was my mother's grandfather
and my mother grew up in his house in Dubna
and then everything
changed.
The Russian came, the
Truss came
and now she's this hunted child turns up lice
bad clothes, no shoes. Now my mother got frostbite
on her hands and on her feet and I imagine might be from
hiding,
hiding.
These are things which are not describable.
The chain of events are not describable.
Irene is the oldest member of the family to have survived
and she could tell us what happened to the family, what happened
to the children's faces, what happened to them
and she won't
I moved down to New York City to try to find Shirley Faden,
the cousin who met my mother at the boat when she came to America.
Maybe my mother told her how she survived.
Um,
well,
no, I'm not, but I'm looking for my cousin.
She lives across the street but she's not there. Now. She's an appointment with me.
But they said she might come to the senior center.
Yeah, you
can.
Do, you know someone named Shirley?
Is she,
does she play the piano?
She does play the piano? I think she left.
Where did she go? Um, Shirley who plays the
piano?
She just left out. He
physically just walked out. Really?
You're a student?
She's studying my song today.
See, from The Godfather.
All right.
She, she plays for me first and I can follow up on play.
It's usually an E minor, you know, it's unusual.
Um, what, what is your name? Jackson?
Jackson.
Thank you, Jackson. I really appreciate it. Thank you.
Thank you.
Hi, I remember you.
How are you? Nice to see
you. You see, I'm not a big one, like the rest of
us. Yeah, I'm so glad to see you.
Last
time I
saw
you. You
really? Yeah, I, I
was
small
but, uh,
so was, so, was music always an important part of your life?
Music?
No, it's not important. It is.
Music is my life.
Did she come in October? Ok.
That's what I thought because I had a couple of checks
that my brother and sister sent me for my birthday.
So I used those to go, you know, to, to outfit her. So we went to 14th Street to Klein's
and you know what your mother said
that
f
that
F
Meni in
German,
everything we tried to get to put,
you
know,
she,
she was a pill, I'm telling you she was awful, a very stubborn little girl
and that's why she survived
and that's why you're here.
She had her little body and everything else. So she did survive
but something was so did not survive.
One of the most painful aspects of my mother today are these sexual references.
She says they're trying to turn this place into a whorehouse. I am not a whore.
She says it over and over
when adolescence is not permitted to occur.
And there are armed people around you
who can tell you
take your clothes off, do what I want.
They call me here a prostitute
after all. Come on.
I am married only to one man.
I am not a prostitute and I have very good kids. And this is what I thank God for.
We know she'd been through some terrible experiences. She never talked about it.
No.
Did you ask her at all or?
No, you couldn't, you can't ask somebody that.
Tell me how, how did you get through hell?
You know, I mean, what, what are you gonna do? You
can't do that.
I tried to be as soft of this kind of this understanding as I could, but it was not easy.
She was a very, very unapproachable
child and she had every reason to be. So
I'm heading back to New Jersey because Irene's husband Zigo,
also a Survivor from Dubna said he knew something.
There was a Russian man, a forester,
you
leave it alone. This is not of interest.
The,
you know what? Maybe you will talk for me
because when you will all the time interrupt me,
you know,
it was it on a farm where my mother found,
I can't imagine. Was it the farm?
Yes.
Was the farm all? No. This guy who
took care of these Jewish girls, they had five or
stamp
with a guy. It's not,
it's
only the version of it.
You don't want the, the, the the story to be on the open.
Why
everybody wants the story to be open.
You know, in each family, it's something in the basement.
Irene like many survivors does not want to talk
about the most horrible part of her life.
I just don't blame that.
It's like trying to put away a bad dream that keeps coming back at you anyway.
And really, Irene was indulging me.
She would just keep saying, ask Leon, ask Leon,
I never heard of Leon who's Leon?
He's the little boy in the picture.
My mother's cousin like her,
he was running and hiding after his parents were killed,
I sent him an email and it turns out
for years he's been asking Irene the same questions
he says, yes, I'm glad to hear from you. Come to Warsaw.
Oh, yeah. It's a show. It's great to see you. Great to see you.
I
better
so happy
to
be here.
Peter
Sonia has some. Imagine that you are here. She says, don't tell me about pollen.
Don't tell me about the past
your mother mother.
It was done
in Dubna
in 1912.
Did you think that uh she's similar to Z
that she
Yeah, same face.
These are photos from
Ya Zira.
I
began to sketch out for me how he and his sister, Fana
had been saved by a Czech farm family.
The most important men for us,
Leon wanted to find the Lukka
farm in Ozo
and I wanted to learn more about my mother.
We were going to Dubna
together.
It was short, good period in Dau
and even shorter but much more tragic.
Second period
land was on a mission.
He was taking me along but he was really telling his story to his son, Peter.
This might be as close as I'll ever get to. What happened to my mother.
Our first stop was the family home where Lane
and my mother lived and played together as Children.
That's an old dog. I don't think you can hurt anybody.
I found the old s house the year before when I was doing the article for the paper
last year
looks nice.
No,
no,
no, no.
Let's say
um
we
did
beautiful,
beautiful.
This is where my mother spent her whole childhood in this house until the ghetto.
The last good years of her childhood were in this house.
You
go.
Yes.
Who
is that
synagogue?
And Irene said this is the one that Shlomo
sis went to.
As we approached the old synagogue. Leon
thought he remembered where his family lived in
the ghetto before they fled for their lives.
A
mi
g
you know,
this year.
So you think my mother was still here in the ghetto
that she was already out? They were on the site where people who don't work, not
work
so that
they have to leave
and
escape.
And this is where that story of my mother's flight begins.
My mother was sent out of the ghetto by her
mother hoping that this 10 year old girl might survive.
It was through a window like one of these,
she stepped out and would spend the next several years running and hiding
and she never saw her mother again.
You have to use your imagination to understand a child's perception of that.
Her mother told her she had to go
out there where people had mysteriously disappeared.
You could easily make a horror story of this
here. How you can take that
this is for you,
the window to the world
see, right?
You can see.
No.
Of course,
you,
I never knew about any of this stuff.
She didn't tell me
what happened to her parents.
Nothing
exchange.
But were, were you raised Jewish at all?
I've had some suspects.
You know, I saw some documents.
Well, see my parents sent me to Hebrew school and I never really liked it.
And I think part of the reason was because of this experience of holocaust.
I think I had difficulty with religion because
if this
happen
growing up with a family that's
100% Holocaust survivors is an intense experience.
They are understandably mad about everything all the time.
They're railing about Nasser, the president of Egypt. They're railing about
Han the head of the UN. Everything is a conspiracy to kill Jews.
My
reaction was to tune it out, just turn down the dial, go away from it.
And I was able to do that
without realizing I was doing it
at age 16 when I finally discovered music
and all I do
in the living room of our house was age 16 and is practice that piano hours a day.
And I now realize looking back on it,
I am literally drowning out the sound of my family because when I,
you cannot do that,
they wanted him to go into something, you know, maybe like
business or, you know, some solid foundation where again,
he could be successful and for them, the arts is not successful,
you're gonna struggle your whole life, you know,
but he proved them wrong.
So that was pretty cool.
Almost anywhere you step
in Dubna.
You are standing in a place where Jews were killed,
people tried and mostly failed to escape.
12,000 Jews were killed.
Somehow my mother managed to survive.
The war crime report says during the occupation of the town of Dubna
by German invaders,
the latter were conducting mass killings and
these pits lie mainly women and Children
with their heads wrapped with rags.
We've counted up to 5000 people who had been shot and killed or smothered to death.
It was
not
production
of
and here was with machine guns.
So this is this is where it happened where one of the big executions.
Mhm.
Ukrainian woman is taking us to where she
witnessed one of these massacres as a little girl
when they were taken
that
I was
not
to
take
their,
they just
cried,
the cry was terrible.
Cry was terrible
and then it was silence.
No. So
that was black.
Luckily,
were you afraid that
the Germans might see you,
Ukraine?
There
is
no
Mera
Mera. Mera.
I should do things through
a lot of ram
night
with
let's
see, Cruella
de
come under the umbrella. So you don't get all wet.
See those towers,
the
Ukrainian,
the
poli
the next day we accepted the invitation to have lunch at the old family house,
right?
No,
no, no.
What I'm realizing is that
land is not afraid to look at his past.
My mother can't go there, she can't get near it.
She is fighting that past and he is accepting it
and in fact, he draws some warmth and good feelings about that past.
I never visited
this tomorrow. We
go,
we
go,
the old castle had an exhibit on the Jews of Gupta
and we wanted to see if the town was confronting its past.
This is a yer
book in which you put down the names of those who died from Dubna
during Holocaust. And that's what Leon is doing right now.
Yeah,
we
have
people missing.
Yeah, I
see
what you mean.
Every witness we've talked to
says that both sides of the street were lined with throngs of locals.
Do you think because of the exhibition
and this marker that something is beginning to happen with acknowledging
Jewish life in Dubna?
60 years later?
I don't think so. No.
And this is a new monument. It was not here last year when we came.
It says we remember
and we respect
from the citizens of Dubna.
A
few days later,
Lane was ready to tell us what happened to his family after they escaped the ghetto
to
search
and
drug in Morocco.
Tavia
GTA
Sour
Kaya
Stodola,
Ein
Dombroski.
No.
To
Tacky
Chunk.
Photography.
Stick
Stric
to
film
A
T
Kotake or the
or
gel Neville
Yaki
sho
you have to show
OK,
that
and come off
TV.
Vesco
Pierre.
K
Ku
Arua
Yi
moment.
Imam
shush
Neo
Mum.
The
water.
Not in
that.
I should know. No, no.
A
Rosnani
Stago
Colon
Ocu
in a
moment.
Probably a grim darling.
Yeah.
A
Nemo to
LA
when
you
start
in,
bro.
Uh,
well, it is it strange you see all the world
was originated by Nazis
but when I am coming,
my closest family,
mother was burned by Hungarians.
Father was, was killed by, by Ukrainians.
Other Ukraine helped us to escape from Gata
Czechs helped
us. Paul helped us.
You have to look on the man
and
look at the eyes and you know, if you have somebody who is honest or, or somebody who
is not.
Finally, we were on our way to try to find Ojo
the village where Leon
and his sister were saved by the Czech farm family.
Do they
know where it is
generally in this direction? There is there
is
some.
So this is the kind of village that my mother
was hiding in too. Maybe
no.
Na
Ka K
Rosa's nanny Pasar
Kros,
Ma ma
Rabina.
She
not
pour
Vladimir Nootka,
the most important man for us, for me and f
you see, because it was for his life.
If Germans or or Ukrainians found us,
it will be.
Yeah.
So that, that's why I
I'm very obliged to him.
Brodney Zheni
Chera
Shani,
Mi
Land showed us a copy of a report card. He and his sister Fka
brought home to the Lukka.
He'd been in touch with the Czech family over
the years and he was anxious to let Luka's
widow know that he'd finally returned and found their farm.
Oy
bar
of the
che
to
me.
I
actually had a childhood.
My mother had years in flight and terror. That was her childhood.
She never had an opportunity to learn how to trust and
Leon did,
he was really proud of me
And even more, he wanted to be my father.
It was Joe away from daddy.
The salt is
in there,
right? Some
before I left for home, Ln
wanted me to visit his sister
fca's grave.
Like my mother fo
was terribly scarred by the war,
not
a
fiesta
Nash
group,
Moore
I
Na
Jawa
Luis
Song,
Pola
Lhasa.
A year after the war, Irene learned that land and fel
were still alive.
It took her months to find them
and even longer to adopt the Children and bring them to Warsaw where she raised them.
The moment when I did bring her
and she was crying at night
and hearing
that the people, the neighbors asked me what happened
and fatal
this how she is.
Ronnie came out, ok?
And she came out sick.
She came out sick.
It was very, very hard experience. A lot of us. But for girls, it was much more
difficult
TPSD were unknown at that time.
But when anyway, she suffered of, of, of this. So she was often in the hospitals.
Maybe what,
what
richie
as we were leaving, Leon said there was one more thing we had to do.
He wanted to see my mother.
He thought it would help her to see him.
Zor was nah,
we had to stop to see Irene.
She had done so much for L and his sister FCA
but
I want to turn the volume up.
I brought a video so Irene could see my mother.
They want me at a whorehouse
and they're calling me a whore
like hell am I gonna take that shit from them?
You you're gonna see strange.
Maybe I am strange. Who knows?
Don't you want to use a spoon or something? Mom? Do you have a spoon?
It's more fun like that.
It's funny.
Well,
unbelievable.
And why is she putting this bread?
I bring a loaf of Pumpernickel bread.
She makes 10 packages of it. Two slices, two slices, two slices
five for her. She puts in the purse for later
five for me
because I may not have food too.
It means that she will stay in this
situation as long as she is alive.
There seems no way out.
I wanted land to see the house. I grew up in the house. My mother ran out of,
she came out of the store, walked down the sidewalk,
she had two brown shopping bags with her, with her clothes, packed up her clothes
and started walking down the street.
It
was mine. It was dark, it was after 10 o'clock. She said nobody would let her in.
Why is she knocked? Because someone was trying to kill her.
She heard that someone was going to put a bullet in her head.
So I don't know if this was the real birth date or from the false papers or
what
you ask how
to get Leon into the picture.
And I can tell you with great difficulty,
he has to know that he might be rejected.
So this is
ok.
So I'll, I'll go in for a few minutes,
start talking to my mother and then in a little while I'll come out and get Leon
and
when they
undressed me till the hair
and they started call me k
in a
war,
a prostitute. I am not,
I am a plain
married woman.
I am married to one man
and that's how it is.
And nobody has a right to keep my, uh, my mouth
zipped.
That's it.
Can I tell you something for a second? Uh, someone's come here to see you.
No,
no.
Do you know who this is? No.
Yes. N
yet.
No,
no.
You know, I don't try to impress you or I don't try to impress. Could you step out?
I have company and if somebody comes to me,
I do not like when somebody is biting in,
um, this is, this is Lana
Leon.
Excuse me.
Step out.
Well, remember he, uh, his sister is FCA
and they grew up with you in Dubna.
You know,
not everybody likes Coke
and I use diet Coke.
Do you remember this picture? Mom?
This is him
and this is you, you remember this picture? This is your grandfather
and this is him.
You knew him back then. But he was lave, I think. Yes. Yeah.
At
Bluma.
No.
Step out please.
I was talking to that gentleman now,
you know how we,
you should learn to do whatever you want to do. Not what somebody tells you to do.
Could you put the paper towel down? Mom? I can't see you.
You're
hiding
it
out
a
kilometer.
So anyhow
what I try to say,
you cannot figure out
a person
by looking at first time.
For instance,
you can take
a like to some people
and uh
uh dislike but I tell you something. Usually
I was right.
So
with
cheese
co
No
thrashing
at your dinner, will
you,
you know,
it's a funny thing
today. If you want to know whose baby is this,
you can take a blood test.
It
is,
it's not their name anyhow,
they, they can be cool. They
will, they
do. They got knows what if I don't want to answer.
This is my business. Ok. Well, mom, I brought you some sweet rolls but you know,
maybe we should do
and I'll stay here for a few
minutes.
I can say step out if they don't wanna step out this is none of my business
but,
well, let them sit here.
Ok.
I am crushed.
Well, it was very depressing.
You
see,
it is something which
may be expected.
Right.
I, I think that, uh,
this
touches the, the core of her illness. Right?
Nothing
which
connects them to, to, to the past. Nothing
that,
yeah, nothing to do.
I know
a Dixieland
style
chic. Chicago,
Chicago.
That
about.
Leon
knew my mother back before all this happened
and she just did not want to deal with the past.
She did not want to talk to him, did not look at him. So it was very rough on him.
And but anyway, we got past that.
So I wanna show them what I do and take my favorite jazz club and
but
land taught me what it means to survive
and my mother is still doing what she needs to do to survive.
Probably
when I finally got back to work,
I went to New Orleans for a story and what Katrina did to jazz culture
and I found an entire city in the grip of PTSD,
especially the Children.
We thought one good thing to show would be what is being
done to help kids today that was not done for my mother.
One of the very important things related to dealing with trauma
is to be able to tell your story.
If the levees broke at seven, I'd have been in the house by myself.
No one else would have been there.
I'm only 4 ft 11.
I had 7.5 ft of water in my home.
I evacuated from Alabama, from Alabama to Atlanta, from Atlanta to Texas.
And
I didn't hear from my best friend till November.
And when we heard each other voice, it was just like
nothing else matter. We, we didn't even talk to each other. We just
knew that our presence was there
during the hurricane. A lot of people on my block stayed
and so they're calling me Jy. Are you Jy? Are you?
I said I was in Texas but I heard that
Abramson
was a safe school. So I told a lot of people to go to Abe
and I found out on that Thursday that
the roof caved in at Ave and that
almost everybody died.
And
I feel like
it was kind of my fault for sending them there because
I thought it was safe and they wouldn't have been there.
They might have stayed on their roof and got rescued
and
like I, I have a suitcase ready every day.
And
I feel like for the rest of my life I'm gonna have a suitcase on the side of my bed
so that whenever something happens, whether it be a flood or tornado or fire,
I, I, it doesn't matter if I live in a place where a hurricane can't happen,
I might have a suitcase.
Did you notice
that? She told her story with very little affect with very little emotion.
And I was thinking we we very much need to follow up with her.
That is exactly what my mom does to this day.
She's got her big bag packed with toothpaste soap clothes,
everything ready to go 60 years later.
So would these kind of things have helped someone like my mother?
She could have been helped.
But you are telling her story
and you're telling her story
to say,
let's never ever let this happen
to Children,
you know, and families and there are things we can do.
And I think that's a very, very, very important story that you,
it was fun.
You see
your grandma,
my sister and her family are in from California.
My mother's condition is the same but the
grandchildren usually bring out the best in her.
I
can
baby dumb.
Won't my
muy pee to have me.
Ouch. It's done. Me.
Give me
a second.
Hey mom, I wrote a book
about you.
First of all, I don't believe that you wrote a book. This is the book that
the book.
I don't believe that you wrote a book. Do you recognize that picture on the front?
No,
that is not me at all. There is nothing interesting about me.
Maybe you recognize the pictures on the inside here.
Yeah, this is my husband, you know, and who is this,
this fat little kid?
And who's that?
This is
Leon who came to visit a couple of months ago. Remember when he came here,
this is only
a copy,
but I wouldn't give permission to write a
real book because there's nothing to write.
Uh, you know who this is
a monkey. No, I'm afraid not.
No, that's not me.
That could not be.
So, would you like to have the book to read?
No.
Are you sure?
Yes. Ok.
She doesn't want my book.
I don't want the book. I have you and I have you
and I have here, right?
Hey mom,
the kids want to go for a walk with you. Let's go. Let's go grandma.
Despite all that she's been through, my mother was still a grandmother,
still a mother
and in her own way, still in charge
handicapped.
I am handicapped
because I am a limping.
But
well,
do you want me to bring a paper towel next time?
Yes.
And don't
forget the toilet
brush, right? Ok. Bye mom. Nice to meet her.
Love you mom.
I love
you.
Ok. Bye bye
Lady
Cynthia. Bye bye. Thank you. Bye
bye bye.