Q&A with Aron Hirt-Manheimer and Marty Yura

 

Aron Hirt-Manheimer, photo by Rose Eichenbaum

 

 

Aron Hirt-Manheimer and Marty Yura are the authors of the new book Sons of Survivors: Making Peace with Inherited Trauma. They first met as high school students in Los Angeles, and both are children of Holocaust survivors.

 

Q: Why did the two of you write this book together?

 

Marty: The idea of writing this book came up a few months after I returned from a Zen Peacemaker’s immersion retreat to Auschwitz-Birkenau in the fall of 2017. I shared some of my impressions with Aron, a friend and fellow son of survivors who I’ve known for 60 years. Aron invited me to write a blog post about my trip for ReformJudaism.com.

 

Sometime later I mentioned to Aron that I was considering writing a book about what it was like growing up as a son of survivors and how it has impacted my life. He responded, “Let’s do it together?” I knew instantly this was the way to go. What better partner for this project? Aron had been a professional writer and editor for 50 years.

Marty Yura

 

Aron: The idea appealed to me as a transitional project in advance of my impending retirement from the Union for Reform Judaism. Initially we conceived of the book as a freewheeling dialogue. Marty came to Connecticut from Atlanta to begin recording a series of conversations. It quickly became evident that we knew very little about our own families’ Holocaust histories.

 

We learned for the first time that both our fathers had been Auschwitz prisoners, that our mothers had toiled in the same slave labor camp system, and that we were both conceived in the same displaced persons camp in Germany. As we got into writing this book together, uncovering painful truths, we were immensely grateful to have each other to lean on.

 

Q:  The writer Bruce Feiler said of the book, “At a moment when the Holocaust stakes a fresh claim on contemporary life, Sons of Survivors offers fresh insight on the story that continues to shape our lives.” What do you think of that assessment?

 

Aron:  Some are using the Holocaust for their own political purposes in an effort to play down Jewish victimization. Anyone who reads our book will see on a very human level that such views are false and hurtful. The Holocaust can only shape our lives if people are willing to learn about it and its ramifications earnestly and honestly.

 

Marty and I follow in the footsteps of the She’erit ha-Pleita, the surviving remnant -- the term liberated Jews in the DP camps adopted to define themselves. They believed that once the world became aware of the inhumane horrors perpetrated by the Nazis, that antisemitism and hatred against other groups would never happen again.

 

The survivors soon learned that the public, including Jews, had no interest in their stories and appeals for a more humane world. Dr. Yael Danieli, who wrote our book’s Foreword, termed the rejection of this testimony a “conspiracy of silence.” 

 

With the number of Holocaust survivors rapidly declining – only about 30,000 remain in the U.S., including my 105-year-old mother –we feel it is our duty as sons of survivors to carry the torch of remembrance, keeping alive their memories, bearing witness.

 

Marty: I am in awe of my parents and of other survivors who expressed no desire for revenge against Germans or others complicit in the colossal crimes perpetrated against them and their families. We and our children are heirs to their legacy of love over hate. Our parents’ memories have certainly impacted our lives, empowering us to take action toward creating a more just world. 

 

Q: The book's subtitle is “Making Peace with Inherited Trauma”--do you feel you were able to do that? What impact did writing the book have on you?

 

Aron: Writing this book taught us that you can’t outrun trauma. But you can make peace with it. In some cases, inherited trauma can be debilitating and lead to dysfunction.  In our case it has been empowering.

 

Though we inherited our parents’ pain, we are also heirs to the healing power of their love, kindness, and compassion. I think that is what has made the difference.

 

Marty: Writing this book with Aron helped me accept myself as a “mushy” man. I no longer consider my tendency to cry easily as a cause for shame or embarrassment.

 

I’ve learned not to resist intense emotions and instead allow my cathartic bursts to pass within seconds -- a key indicator of how I’ve learned to make peace with the trauma I inherited and that I experienced on the battlefield during the Yom Kippur War. 

 

Q: Especially given the current rise in antisemitism, what do you hope readers will take away from the book?

 

Aron: In addition to giving readers two intimate portraits of what it was like growing up in the homes of Holocaust survivors, we have put our stories in a larger historical context.

 

We point out that the trauma Marty and I inherited did not start with the Holocaust; it is rooted in antisemitism, which goes back to the time our ancestors first stepped onto the stage of history.

 

When Abraham, the archetypal Jew, left the land of his birth, he became a sojourner. Wherever he pitched his tent, he remained an outsider. Jews would not exist today had we not followed in Abraham’s footsteps, refusing to assimilate into the majority culture.

 

This insistence on otherness has been met in every age with a furious backlash by those who want everyone to be like them, to affirm the correctness of their culture and beliefs. It is the price we pay to preserve our Jewishness.

 

In more tolerant times and places, when Jews were given the opportunity to take the exit door, only the most ardent clung to the traditions of their ancestors.

 

Marty and I are among the determined minority who cannot be anything but Jewish. We own our otherness.

 

Marty: While studying the Spanish Inquisition in high school, I asked my father what he would have chosen: to denounce Judaism and become a Christian or to refuse and be tortured and burned alive? He said simply, “They should just kill me.”

 

This was a seminal moment for me. I realized that being Jewish defined my father. He could not be anything but a Jew, despite the fact that he was not religious. And neither can I.

 

Q: When you were growing up, did your parents talk much about the Holocaust?

 

Marty: My parents and other family members conspired to keep me in the dark. They wanted to spare me from knowing about a great calamity I was too young to grasp. Despite their efforts to shield me, I was always aware of the suffering Hitler had inflicted on my family. It was as real as the unspoken number tattooed on my father’s arm.

 

The only thing my father ever said to me about the Holocaust was: “No matter how terrible, how unbelievable the things you may hear about what Nazis did to Jews, believe it.”

 

Aron: My parents believed that it was best not to draw a curtain around the subject, to let my sister and me know from a tender age about the terrible suffering and losses they had endured.

 

Only when we embarked on this memoir did it hit me how little I knew about what happened to my parents and their families. I realized for the first time that my father and I never had a conversation about the subject.

 

It takes a lot of work to unearth stories that had been buried for the sake of sparing us the trauma. In the six years Marty and I worked on our book, we only scratched the surface. But it was enough to help us make peace with our inherited trauma.

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb