On November 8, the Ethnic & Gender Studies Institute of Siena Heights University (a Catholic University founded Dominican nuns) invited us to present stories from our book to their students and faculty. This program was co-sponsored by the Office of Diversity and Inclusion and as well, the Department of English. Simone Yehuda, now a Professor Emerita, had taught at the university for over 40 years, so this was a homecoming of sorts for her. Along with Simone, authors and co-editors Rita Benn and Julie Ellis read excerpts of their book chapters to an audience of close to 50, all of whom were deeply engaged. We were each very impressed by the many thoughtful questions posed, particularly those by the students. For instance, they wondered how our Holocaust family history affected our response to the war between Israel and Gaza, and how they as non-Jewish persons can get involved in combatting antisemitism and spreading knowledge of survivor and 2G stories. We feel very grateful for the warm welcome of the Siena Heights community and for this opportunity to share and educate the attendees.
On her way to see her father in Tucson, Arizona, Ruth Finkel Wade made a stop in Scottsdale. She met with the Descendant’s Forum of the Phoenix Holocaust Association to talk with 2Gs about our book. The conversation and connections were lively. In talking about growing up in Chicago, one of the participants, Nanci Heiman, realized that she knew Ruth’s brother and Ruth as well. They both went to Temple Emanuel and OSRUI summer camp. Ruth read excerpts from her chapter as well as Myra Fox’s poem “Is It Essential?” This was followed by resounding agreement in the audience that “yes, it is essential.” Unfortunately, even more so now with the uptick in antisemitism we are seeing in the world today.
On October 8, the Universalist Unitarian Church of Farmington Hills, Michigan invited two of our authors to offer a book presentation as an integral part of their Sunday service. Natalie Iglewicz and Joy Wolfe Ensor spoke to a raptly attentive and responsive congregation. The service was thoughtfully curated, with three musical piano interludes from a Holocaust Remembrance Suite by Stephan Beneking.
In their presentations, the authors shared not only moving excerpts from their chapters but also mementos from their parents' wartime years and early aftermath. Natalie shared a story of how, during her mother’s internment in a slave labor camp, a kindly woman had smuggled makeshift knitting needles to her — needles her mother used to knit stockings to protect herself and her sisters from the winter cold, and which she kept for the rest of her life. Natalie brought the actual knitting needles to show. Joy showed the small leather-bound journal that her mother had kept when her older brother was born, in which she promised her newborn son that she would “create a legend to secure [the] immortality” of the beloved family members who had been lost. The attendees responded to the readings and artifacts with murmurs and gasps of appreciation. Following the service, there was a lively Q&A session. One gentleman spoke to the universality of war’s intergenerational legacy by saying, "I’m 75 years old and my father fought in WW II. He liberated a prison camp in the Pacific theater, and he didn’t talk about it. In my family, WW II never ended.” It is moments like this that give our book talks special resonance and reverence. Three of our co-editors and authors, Rita Benn, Joy Wolfe Ensor and Ruth Wade, were delighted to give a Zoom book presentation on October 4 at the Holocaust and Human Rights Education Center (HHREC) in Westchester County, NY. For Joy it was a homecoming of sorts, because her late father, Leon Wolfe, was a founding board member of the organization (then known as the Westchester Holocaust Commission), and her late stepmother, the artist Rita Rapaport, sculpted the Gates of Remembrance (a replica is shown in this photo with Joy's father's prisoner number inscribed) that are a centerpiece of the organization’s Garden of Remembrance in White Plains, NY.
The attendees on ZOOM were engaged and receptive, and asked many questions about our origin story, the writing process, and how to engage in exploring our Holocaust legacy when there is still so much information left to learn. Two participants asked for further contact with Ruth because their parents came from Piotrków Trybulanski in Poland, the same hometown as her father. Another remarked that Rita’s chapter, “Shades of Chanel No. 5,” evoked a flood of memories about her own mother, who favored that scent. The authors feel that the associations and connections that emerge as a result of sharing our stories are a gift that keeps on giving both to the authors and the attendees alike. On Sunday, October 1, 2023 Ruth Finkel Wade had the honor of speaking to the adult Sunday School class at Anona Methodist Church in Largo, Florida. Members of the class had already done their homework, calling up a video interview of Ruth’s father Sidney Finkel, before she presented. The audience of fifty listened attentively as Ruth read excerpts from our book and engaged the audience in a conversation about learning to heal from the trauma she experienced growing up. The University of Illinois Alumni Magazine published in their News & Noteworthy: Ruth (Finkel) Wade, ’82 MEDIA, edited and contributed to The Ones Who Remember: Second-Generation Voices of the Holocaust (City Point Press, 2022), an anthology written by 16 children of Holocaust survivors. Wade and her fellow contributors began compiling their parents’ stories and decided to include their own related personal experiences. The book has received a 2022 Foreward Indies Gold Award and a 2023 Silver Award for Heroic Journeys from Nautilus Books. The Jewish Press of Tampa Bay published an article about our book on September 12. It features an interview with Ruth Finkel Wade about her experience coming to terms with her relationship with father and new found understanding of the impact that the holocaust had on him and herself. The article also shares examples of several other of our 2G authors' reflections: Julie Goldstein Ellis, Nancy Szabo, Fran Lewy Berg and Ruth Taubman. You can read the article here. We felt privileged to be part of the 34th conference of the World Federation of Holocaust Survivors and their Descendants (WFJHS&D) in Washington DC. Over the 3-day weekend, we listened to stories of survivors, shared our own experiences as 2Gs, re-connected with friends from other states that we met in last year's conference in St. Louis and made new connections not only with 2Gs, but 3Gs and 4Gs. It was such as delight to see and talk with the future generation of young people motivated to carry the message of their ancestry forward - to never again be a bystander, and to combat social injustice. Over 300 persons attended this event, with a large representation from Michigan. In addition to our three authors, Rita Benn, Eszter Gombosi and Ruth Wade, were 16 individuals that belonged to the Detroit CHAIM chapter, and many others with a Michigan connection, either as alumni or whose children attended University of Michigan. Rita and Ruth had been invited to facilitate a writing memoir workshop at this conference. There was so much interest in their session, that they had to turn away over 10 to 15 people due to space constraints. During the workshop, participants were very engaged, eagerly responding to the writing prompts that were offered, and in sharing their short narratives with one another. Many remarked that this was the best break-out session of the conference. Rita and Ruth plan to offer this workshop again next year when the conference will be held in Toronto. Contact us if you would like them to offer a writing memoir session to a 2G or 3G group from your organization. Esther Allweiss Ingber wrote a wonderful article about our book in the Detroit Jewish News, after interviewing two of our editors, reading our stories and attending one of our panel presentations. You can read it about it here.
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