Hiding Places

Diane Wyshogrod

Description

Finalist for the 2013 Montaigne Medal presented by Hopewell Publications

What's it like to spend sixteen months in hiding, crouching in a tiny cellar, during the dark years of World War II? To know that many of your friends and relatives have either been shot or sent to concentration camps? To have your life depend on the humanity of an elderly Christian couple who lets you hide under their floor? What if you knew it had been your mother crouching under that floor? Wouldn't you wonder how she stood it? How it felt? What it did to her? And how it all affected you? In Hiding Places, Diane Wyshogrod traces the process of discovery and self-discovery as she researched the experiences of her mother, Helen Rosenberg, who as a teenager hid in just such a cellar, in Zółkiew, Poland. The narrative, which moves between New York, pre-war and wartime Poland, and Jerusalem, is based on many hours of recorded interviews and covers Helen's life before, during, and after World War II.

Although Wyshogrod's original intention was simply to record her mother's experiences, piecing the narrative together proved difficult: there were numerous gaps, things her mother could (or would) no longer remember, and other things her daughter just couldn't comprehend. To fill in these gaps, Wyshogrod draws from all the facets of her identity—writer, clinical psychologist, daughter, mother—in an attempt not only to understand her mother's experiences, but to find out why it is so important for her (and for us) to make that attempt in the first place.

Sujets

• The Holocaust
• Memoir

Informations

• Publié par: State University of New York Press
• Date de parution: 23 février 2012
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781438442457
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Hiding Places
A Mother, a Daughter, an Uncovered Life
DIANE WYSHOGROD

Cover art paper sculpture by Morris Wyszogrod.
Published by State University of New York Press, Albany
© 2012 State University of New York
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY www.sunypress.edu
Excelsior Editions is an imprint of State University of New York Press
Production by Ryan Morris Marketing by Fran Keneston
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Wyshogrod, Diane.
Hiding Places : a mother, a daughter, an uncovered life / Diane Wyshogrod.
p. cm.
“Excelsior Editions”
ISBN 978-1-4384-4243-3 (hardcover : alk. paper)
1. Wyshogrod, Diane. 2. Jews, American—Israel—Biography. 3. Clinical psychologist—Biography. 4. Holocaust survivors—United States—Biography. 5. Mothers and daughters—Biography. I. Title.
DS113.8.A4W97 2012
940.53'18092—dc23
[B]
2011028315
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

To Chaim and Yonatan, David, and Yehoshua The loves of my life
and
With everlasting gratitude to Emil and Maria Łoziński
Prologue
“I don't want you to write this book.”
My mother is emphatic.
“I mean, writing it is okay, as long as it's for the family,” she continues. “But you never said anything about publishing this. Oh, no.”
She's shaking her head now. Each shake has its punctuation:
“No.”
“No.”
Each “no” raps like a judge's gavel. Sentencing complete.
“I don't want strangers to read about my life. And all those stories about my childhood? You and your brother, the kids, okay. But others? Oh, no.”
“I don't see why not.” My mind is racing. I force myself to talk slowly, to keep my voice level. “There's nothing there that could embarrass you. You didn't do anything wrong—”
“Of course not,” she interrupts, indignant. She doesn't yield. “But I'm a very private person. Besides, I never liked to talk about it. Unlike your father. I mean, I never hid it either. You knew what happened to me, but it's finished and I don't like to think about it.”
Our voices are braiding in and out of each other.
“I know that.” I'm not giving in either. I'm not her daughter for nothing. “But your story's important. It should be recorded. People should know. Besides, it's not just about you. It's about us, you and me.”
“Well, then, keep it in the family. For the family, okay?”
Here it was, the reaction I had dreaded for years. But I thought I'd worked all that out, that she and I had an understanding. That she knew what I was doing and approved of it. I'd hoped to be spared exactly this.
I was wrong.
It may sound like just another one of those mother-daughter differences of opinion, a clash of wills neither likes losing. But it's more than that. Otherwise, my guts wouldn't be whirling like a food processor while I struggle to keep my cool. What we are really talking about is something that goes so deep, that's been so buried, I'm not sure I've fully excavated it yet. I'm being challenged to mount my defense, and I can barely utter a word. Not to her. Especially not to her.
This is a story I have spent fifteen years of my life writing. And all the years of my life living.
I wasn't looking for this story. In fact, for most of my life, I was perfectly happy to leave it where it was, curled up quietly in the background, not hidden, but not being paraded about either. Like my mother. She didn't hide what had happened to her, she just didn't dwell on it. She'd shrug.
“Nothing happened to me.”
Her “nothing” consisted of being hidden, together with her parents, in the cellar of a Polish Christian couple during World War II. They were in hiding for sixteen months. Maybe it seems like “nothing” to her, compared with what my father went through. He survived the Warsaw Ghetto and ten concentration camps. His entire family was wiped out by the Germans. Now that's a story, my mother says. What's her story, anyone's story, compared with his?
This is my mother's way, to treat her experiences matter-of-factly, to put it all behind her and move on. And, I must admit, I was more than happy to move on with her. My father's frequent references to Those Days more than made up for her reticence. Against the roar of my father's pain and rage, hers was but a still small voice, barely a murmur.
For a long time.
For the longest time.
Until something changed.
I didn't see it coming. I didn't plan on it. I wasn't out hunting war stories, certainly not this one. I was catapulted against my will into this one. This story came and got me . It grabbed me by the neck and wouldn't let go. It dared me to take it on, or shake it off—if I could. I couldn't. It's been years now, the story clawing me, me clutching back, trying to tame it. Years of writing and self-analysis and talking it over with friends, and tears, lots of tears, trying to live with this thing living inside me. Years of struggling to attain some more or less equal footing, so that this story wouldn't wring me out like a shmatte , a used-up rag.
Keep it in the family? I wish I could. It would certainly make my life easier. But keeping it private, in the family, is not doing it justice. Because if I do that, I'm pushing my mother back down into that cellar. I won't be an accomplice to her staying in hiding. I want to rescue her. To take her out of there. I want this—and her—out in the light, even if that light is bright and glaring and hurts the eyes.
I want to be my mother's champion, riding into the jousts, her token on my sleeve, fighting for her. I can't do anything else, now, sixty-five years too late. I can't save her anymore from Then, from what happened, much as I would like to turn back the clock and do so. Give me this chance, Mom, to tell the world what you mean to me. To say, out loud, for everyone to hear, that you were there, that you survived, that you overcame. That they couldn't put you into a silent hole in the ground and keep you there. That it did not become your grave. It became your womb, and ultimately, it birthed me.
That's why I have to write this book. And publish it. To celebrate that life. Yours. Mine. Ours.
That's what I would like to say to my mother. As is most typical for me, who learned this style from her, I don't. I keep my mouth shut and all this inside. I'll bring it up again, another time. Maybe. Maybe time will work its magic, and this will work itself out. In the meantime, this project and I stagger forward, dance backward, lumber onward, clutched in an embrace of life and death.
Chapter One
It's almost eleven o'clock on a weekday morning in November 1994. Back in New York, I would already be shivering in the bone-chill of late autumn, winter already breathing frostily down my neck. But on this day in Jerusalem, where I now live, the weather is still summer-like. A beam of yellow sunlight slants like a leaning tower through the tall windows of my kitchen, bouncing off motes of dust dancing in the air. I am grateful for the cool cocoon created by the two-foot-thick stone walls of the house we are renting in Jerusalem's Greek Colony.
I love this time of day. Chaim's at work, the boys are at school. The atmosphere around me is tranquil, the frantic eddies of the early morning rush having subsided. I'm relatively rested and focused. I have deliberately not scheduled any patients today, a luxury born of the flexibility of running my own private psychotherapy practice. Today, I have a date with my mother, due to knock at my door any moment.
She and my father are back for another visit to their beloved, traitorous daughter who left the Upper West Side of Manhattan—and them—three years earlier to pursue a lifelong dream of living in Israel. The move wasn't unexpected. That didn't make breaking the news any easier.
“ What? You're doing what ?”
“Moving to Israel. This summer.”
“ This is how you tell me? Don't you think you should have sat down and discussed it with me, with Daddy, before you made a decision like this?”
“Discussed it? Are you kidding? We've been talking about this forever. You knew we've wanted to do this for years. Ever since Chaim and I met. That's almost—what—eighteen years ago ! This isn't a surprise.”
“That's true, you've been talking about it for years. That's why I thought you weren't going to do it. But now, with the kids, and the situation? Do you realize how dangerous it is there?”
“No, I hadn't thought about that at all.”
“Don't take that tone with me. That's not fair.”
“Sorry. I know this is hard—”
“Of course it is. I know