Q&A with Todd Diamond

 

 

 

Todd Diamond is the author of the new book Pass the Trauma, Please: My Father's Not-So-Depressing Holocaust Memoir about Love, Loss, Laughter, and Legacy.  

 

Q: What inspired you to write Pass the Trauma, Please?

 

A: That relentless second-generation duty to family, Judaism, and the future: to preserve my father’s story in a relatable way, to push back against rising antisemitism and anti-Zionism, and to keep Holocaust awareness alive—which, polls show, is slipping.

 

Also, Jewish guilt is persuasive. There are only so many times you can hear your father say, “Putz, when are you going to write my story? I’m not getting any younger over here.”

 

My father is 94, one of the last living Holocaust survivors. His story, like so many others, is shocking and heartbreaking, but it needed to be told. Too many people are trying to deny, diminish, or erase this history. We can’t let that happen. Genocides are still happening around the world.

 

Maybe it sounds naïve, but sharing one more personal account, told in an unconventional way, might help refocus people’s attention on the worst examples of cruelty and inhumanity; past and present.

 

The other inspiration? Covid lockdown.

 

I was living in Massachusetts, my father lives in Northern California. Although he had survived unimaginable cruelty, I feared I might never see him in person again.

 

The fear of not fulfilling his request while he is still alive, combined with the general anxiety of the time, propelled me towards Microsoft Word, multi-colored index cards, various online thesauruses (or is it thesauri), and way too many articles on book writing and publishing.

 

I began writing the book as a gift for my father’s 90th birthday. He received the first draft when he turned 92 (and a half). As an advertising copywriter, I was used to writing quickly and under tight deadlines, but telling his story placed me in unfamiliar territory. I was terrified of getting the facts wrong or not finishing before his time ran out. The tick tock of your parent’s mortality clock is another powerful motivator.

 

Q: The director Jay Rosenblatt said of the book, “This is not your typical Holocaust story in any way, shape, or form, and therein lies its strength.” What do you think of that description?

 

A: First, I’m a fan of Jay’s films, especially those exploring family, memory, and grief. Phantom Limb, How Do You Measure a Year, and When We Were Bullies stand out to me.

 

I appreciated Jay’s reaction. He understood that for second-generation Holocaust stories to break through, they often need to break from convention.

 

I was deep into the first draft when my professional background tapped me on the shoulder and said, “Hey, remember, you run an ad agency. You know better than to ignore the basic rules of branding.”

 

The truth was that my manuscript sounded like many other Holocaust memoirs. And while those are among the most important books ever written, I felt I could do more to help it stand apart from other books in the genre. Pushing boundaries is my job, after all.

 

And frankly, it wasn’t reflecting my father’s personality, or my voice. My father has a sharp, irreverent sense of humor. He’s colorful, inappropriate, and funny—even when describing the darkest parts of his past. But the draft had no real laughs, no F-bombs, nothing that felt truly him. In branding, authenticity is essential.

 

So, I changed course. I wanted to address the “not-another-Holocaust book” resistance by writing the memoir in a way that could reach modern readers on their terms, without diminishing the burden of our history. In other words, make it “user-friendly.”

 

Regarding Jay’s comment about the book’s form and structure, many of my father’s most shocking stories came out during a dinner at a Chinese restaurant; just him, my brother, and me around a Lazy Susan.

 

Maybe it was the combination of MSG, scotch, and sweet-and-sour sauce, but my father started revealing some of his most closely held secrets, with the kind of biting humor only he can deliver.

 

The conversation turned into a series of rapid-fire jabs and revelations, so I decided to capture these moments as a stage play running throughout the book, breaking them up with traditional narrative and reportage between each course of the meal. (Fredric Price, the publisher, was observing from the editorial guard tower, making sure I didn’t escape from this central structural element.)

 

In addition, at several key moments, I break the fourth wall to connect the past to the present, and to let readers see my anxieties and neuroses up close. I also include doctor’s notes from Mount Sinai researchers on inherited trauma, using them as “permission slips” for my questionable life choices and dissociative tendencies.

 

In the end, I hopefully honored my father’s request: “Do me a favor, son. Don’t drown the book in darkness. Everyone knows the horrors already. Elie Wiesel, Primo Levi, Anne Frank, the guy with the comic book about the mouse—they’ve covered it. Slip in a few jokes. What do you call it? Poster-punk?” (He meant post-punk.) “And besides, you’re no Elie Wiesel.”

 

Q: How was the book's title chosen, and what does it signify for you?

 

A: While researching, I found a Mount Sinai study showing that trauma can actually be passed down from Holocaust survivors to their children. That was the aha moment. It became clear that this form of inherited trauma was at the heart of my story, and it inspired the title Pass the Trauma, Please.

 

But the title also captures the book’s humor and irreverence. It nods to the unlikely setting where many of my father’s long-buried truths finally surfaced: a Chinese restaurant.

 

Humor was one of my father’s survival tools, and I inherited that reflex. I believe humor, used carefully in the context of atrocity, can break down the defenses that keep people from engaging with painful history.

 

It can disarm readers just long enough for the reality of genocide to sink in and remind us that those who lived through it weren’t just people frozen in black-and-white photos, but ordinary people who went through extraordinary circumstances.

 

If a title like Pass the Trauma, Please can get a few more people to pick up the book and grapple with the darkest parts of our history, then it’s doing its job. As we say in advertising: if you can make people laugh, you can get them to pay attention.

 

Q: What impact did it have on you to write the book, and what do you hope readers take away from it?

A: I grew up knowing my father was a Holocaust survivor and that he fought in Israel’s War of Independence. But I didn’t know any of the details. He made the decision early on to hold back those parts of his life, especially from his sons.

 

But eventually, I started uncovering the things he did to survive in the Warsaw Ghetto and how he endured the brutal ordeal as a slave laborer in Germany. On occasion, he’d leak information about extreme actions taken to build a Jewish homeland; things he never wanted to speak about.

 

The more I learned, the more it forced me to see him, and myself, differently. My dad, the easy-going, self-made man who owned a pharmacy in Manhattan, took me to Mets and Knicks games, and loved to tell dirty jokes, was also carrying around unimaginable pain.

 

It made me realize that I had inherited not only his humor and ability to lighten up the dark, but also his proficiency in pushing internal conflict, anger, and anxiety deep into an emotional vault.

 

However, unlike my father’s vault, mine is porous, it does not feature reinforced concrete walls and robust locking mechanisms. Stuff gets out, and when it does, it affects others around me, people who deserve better. I’ve got it under control now, it took time.

 

That said, I really should get in touch with the Inherited Holocaust Trauma research team at Mount Sinai; I could use a few more doctor’s note excuses.

 

Here's another thing I learned about my identity through my father’s story: I am not an Orthodox, Conservative, or Reform Jew. Or a High Holy Days Jew. I am a Holocaust Jew: the proud child of a survivor, shaped by the trauma of systematic genocide, carrying the constant presence of death, mistrust, vulnerability, and a sense of duty to Never Forget by keeping the memory of those we lost alive through storytelling. 

 

What should readers take away from the book? Whether you’re Jewish, non-Jewish, or just inherited-trauma curious, I want readers to believe the Holocaust isn’t a tragedy-fest remembered once a year on Yom HaShoah.

 

I’d feel good if readers felt a little bad all year round, a general heaviness, and a reminder that today sure feels a lot like Germany in the 1930s, or Argentina in the 1970s and 1980s.  Historic acid tends to back up into the esophagus of contemporary times.

 

I also want readers to see that humor in the context of crimes against humanity isn’t disrespect; it’s a survival strategy and a Jewish coping mechanism. Our storytelling skill humanizes us, it defangs the tropes, stereotypes, and antisemitic disinformation. It has provided us with immunization against extermination. That, and a mighty Israel contributes to our longevity.

 

Oh, and if you can reach out to your parents, try to get them talking over dinner, loosen them up with cocktails and cannabis. I bet there’s still a few things about them you didn’t know. Plus, you’ll learn more about yourself in the process.

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: The first project is an extension of Pass the Trauma, Please. After hearing, “This would make a great play!” one too many times, I decided sure, why not? So now, I’m adapting it for the stage. A friend of mine, an actor, is planning to workshop scenes next year.

 

The second project is a novel pulled from the wreckage of my ad agency’s near-death experience during the dotcom bust. When the crash hit, instead of folding, we converted a vacant 3,000-square-foot office into free artist studios. We called it Red Ink Studios—born from the red ink dominating our balance sheets.

 

It grew from Palo Alto to San Jose, San Francisco, and even Flint, Michigan. Four cities. Sixty artists. Many of them fueled by drugs, sex, and grand illusions, loosely managed by an ad agency trying to remember who it was before the crash. What could possibly go wrong?

 

Q: Anything else we should know?

 

A: I’d like to dispel some of the misconceptions people have about second-generation Holocaust survivors. Based on numerous discussions with the “civilian population,” they believe we’re either completely disengaged from our family’s tragedies and just want to move on, or we are all dispirited, neurotic trauma vessels.

 

The fact is, we each process inheritance of family history in our own way. For some it’s a burden, for others it’s a badge of honor and pride. And some of us are like vegans or protein proselytizers who just can’t shut up about it.

 

No doubt we carry our parents’ and grandparents’ pain, you can’t avoid it, but we also carry their resilience, humor, and ability to survive through life’s toughest challenges. This book demonstrates you can laugh and weep about the Holocaust’s aftershocks, sometimes in the same sentence.

 

Another misconception? That our parents’ stories were passed down in neat little essays. They weren’t. They came in fragments, in overheard Yiddish-ish whispers, in spontaneous confessions after watching movies and TV shows about the Holocaust.

 

Part of belonging to the Society of the Second Generation is piecing together, in the most unfiltered way, what really happened, understanding the impact on our parents, the effects on us, all while trying to build a life that is not solely defined by their experiences and trauma.

One last point: I’m happy to report that Genetically Inherited Holocaust Trauma did not skip a generation. My children are doing well. It’s all been passed down and bundled up inside of me.

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb