Deborah Vadas Levison is the author of the new book The Crate: A Story of War, a Murder, and Justice. She has worked in public relations and as a freelance writer. She grew up in Ontario and lives in Connecticut.
Q: Why did you decide to
write this book, and how long did it take you to finish it?
A: This wasn’t so much a
matter of me deciding to write a book, but more a matter of a book clamoring to
be written. Never in a million years would I have guessed The Crate would be my
first book.
Back in 2010, when I first
received a surreal phone call from my brother telling me there had been a
murder – whaaaat? – my world flipped upside down.
My brother had discovered a
wooden crate, nailed tightly shut and almost hidden from view in the dark
underbelly of our lakeside cottage north of Toronto. We weren’t prepared for
the horrific contents of the crate… contents that revealed an act of extreme
violence.
The discovery sent our family
reeling. My brother became a murder suspect. My husband and I were totally
freaked out. We had three young children to shield. My elderly parents were
traumatized. Our property became a crime scene and media headlines blasted the
news across the country. We felt shocked, terrified, violated.
But once police released the
details of the grisly crime, I began to think less about our own circumstances
and more about the victim, someone whose family would be left devastated and
grieving. Someone who had suffered the worst possible fate.
The #MeToo movement and other
global platforms give people who have suffered a chance to share their
experiences. But what about those who can no longer tell their own stories?
Eventually I realized I had an opportunity to give a voice to one victim, to
tell her story so that she wouldn’t be a forgotten statistic.
At the same time I began to
think I could tell my parents’ stories, too. You see, they’d both survived the
Holocaust and part of their horror at the discovery stemmed from the fact they
thought they were safe in their little sanctuary in the woods; they’d never
expected to encounter such evil again in their lifetimes.
All of these were stories
that needed to be told. The “crate” became both literal and metaphorical, in
terms of its contents. How could I not write this book? Once I started, it took
about a year and a half to complete.
Q: How much did you know
about your family history growing up?
A: Very, very little. Even
though my parents never talked about the past, I always sensed there was some sort
of a shadow over our lives, something that separated us from other “normal” families.
Living in our house was this
weird combination of both walking on eggshells and being mired in guilt. My
brother and I felt this suffocating pressure to be happy and successful in
place of relatives who’d died, relatives whose names we didn’t know.
Only as a young teen did I
finally start finding out about the shadow. I was 13, the same age as my mom
during the Nazi invasion, when I caught glimpses of a TV miniseries about the
Holocaust.
All the snippets of
information I’d absorbed throughout my childhood, the comments and wisps of memories,
began to coalesce into a portrait of what I imagined might have happened to my
parents.
Much later in life, my
parents recorded videotapes as part of Steven Spielberg’s Holocaust Foundation,
in which some 52.000 survivors and witnesses, from over 60 countries in over 40
languages, gave testimony to what they’d experienced and saw. Spielberg
archived all the footage to preserve it and use as an educational tool. In 1997
I watched my father’s video and learned for the first time exactly what he’d
been through.
Q: The book includes many
difficult topics. How hard was it to write, and how do you think writing the
book affected you?
A: There’s a great deal of
vulnerability in any sort of memoir, and this one is no exception. But the
themes of the book – hatred and intolerance, domestic violence, anti-Semitism,
xenophobia – are ones that our society is grappling with right now, so I’m glad
to be able to shine a light on them.
I feel a tremendous sense of
responsibility in writing about the Holocaust: as there are fewer and fewer
survivors left to tell their own stories, I think it is incumbent on the second
generation to help preserve them for the world to remember what happened.
The voices of Holocaust
denial are loud, especially on the Internet. We have to counter with education
and remembrance.
And, like any other true
crime writer, I hope I adequately expressed the sadness and pain of the events surrounding
the murder. I tried to be sensitive to the people affected by the ordeal.
But I also think I could have
edited it forever, finding better words and images to capture the fragility of
life.
Q: What do your family
members think of the book?
A: Of course, my kids
complained: “You gave her more dialogue,” and so on. But I think later in life
they’ll be happy to pass down the history of their ancestors and of our cottage
to their own children.
Most importantly, I think my
mother is gratified to know that her life story, and the story of her loved
ones, has been honored. And I hope that the victim’s mother feels the same way.
Q: What are you working on
now?
A: I wrote a romance back in
the ‘90s but somehow, between having three kids, moving from Canada to
Connecticut, and building a career in journalism and public relations, it got
“shelved.” I plan to update it, make it a little less cheesy, and see if it
goes anywhere.
After that, I’d like to go
back to the thriller genre. I have a budding idea for a fiction based on true
events from the ‘70s and ‘80s that I want to start writing later this summer.
Stay tuned.
Q: Anything else we should
know?
A: I’m especially excited
that The Crate has been released in audio. The narrator, Cassandra Campbell,
has been called the “Meryl Streep of the audio world” – she’s won every award
possible and recently was inducted into the Audio Hall of Fame for her work on
projects like Orange is the New Black, The Help, James and the Giant Peach,
etc.
She does a great job with the
Hungarian accents and phrases in the book, and animating the characters with
nuances of her voice.
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
No comments:
Post a Comment