Pauline Steinhorn is the author of the new book Dreaming of the River: A Mother and Daughter's Fight for Survival During the Holocaust. The book focuses on her mother and grandmother. She is also a filmmaker, and she lives in Chevy Chase, Maryland.
Q: Why did you decide to write Dreaming of the River?
A: When I was a teenager, my mother, Hajuta (that’s her Polish name), became a Holocaust educator. She talked about her happy life before the war, and her years in slave labor and concentration camps, beginning when she was 13, through her liberation from Bergen-Belsen at 16.
She never forgot the words of a man who spoke to her in the Sick Barrack. Most of those there had high fevers and hallucinations, common symptoms of the Typhus epidemic raging through the camp.
Hajuta heard him chanting the Shema, the daily Jewish prayer praising one God. He was a member of Parliament and a frequent dinner guest in her home. He looked at her and said, “Hajuta, you’re young and healthy and will survive. You must tell the world what happened here.”
She didn’t believe she would survive, but she thought of him many years later, along with the many kind people who saved her life in the camps, most of whom did not survive. She didn’t want them to be forgotten.
In 1945, in the displaced persons camp, Hajuta was encouraged to write about her wartime experiences because “no one would ever believe it happened.” For years, she edited those journals, adding her research. Near the end of her life, she said her only regret was not completing her memoir. I promised to finish it for her.
Q: How was the book’s title chosen, and what does it signify for you?
A: My mother’s family, the Feldmans, lived in Skarzysko, Poland, along the River Kamienna. My mother and grandmother fondly remember playing, singing, and celebrating with family along the riverbank.
Two years after the German occupation, the family was forced into a Jewish ghetto, a cluster of apartment buildings far from the river. Hajuta dreamed of returning to her childhood home. The river became a symbol of her hope that one day she would return home and be reunited with her family.
There was another reason the river was important to Hajuta. My grandparents worked as slave laborers 12 to 14 hours a day, always returning home.
Hajuta longed to walk through the forest and see the river. She believed that working in the gardens of the nearby Nazi munitions factory, where her mother slaved away, would be worth it just to see the river. She regularly pleaded with her parents to let her go in her mother’s place. They always said no.
When Hajuta’s youngest sister, Eva, came home in tears, inconsolable, after hearing older boys say the Nazis planned to kill all children under 10, my mom, then 13, once again pleaded to go in her mother’s place. Her parents agreed. At the end of an exhausting day, Hajuta and the other women were shown to newly created barracks and told they weren’t going home.
A few months later, ghetto residents who couldn’t work and those under 16 were sent to the death camp Treblinka. At 13, Hajuta would have been in a cattle car bound for Treblinka. Dreaming of the river and being confined to the slave labor camp saved her life.
Q: How did you research the book, and did you learn anything that especially surprised you?
A: I conducted research at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and online through Yad Vashem, the Arolsen Archives, and other sources. I read books and watched video testimony from family members who lived in the ghetto and in the camps, as well as from others.
The Germans kept detailed records, including the dates and locations of prisoners' incarceration. I researched every date, place, and person mentioned in the book and added details not found in the journals.
It was a surprise to read about some people in the book. There was a doctor, Dr. Ada Bimko, whom my grandmother, Bronia, worked with. Dr. Bimko, aka Dr. Hadassah Bimko Rosensaft, saved over 140 children in Bergen-Belsen and was one of the founders of the Holocaust Museum.
Her son, Menachem, a human rights lawyer and a significant founder of the Children of Survivors movement, wrote the Introduction to Dreaming of the River.
My mother did enormous research. I filled 12 boxes with my mother’s papers. Since I had typed much of her memoir, I initially pulled out the latest version and started from there.
The biggest surprise came about two years after my mother died when I found my grandmother’s journals, translated from Yiddish. Bronia never spoke about the war, and she was no longer alive to ask questions.
Q: What do you hope readers take away from this book?
A: The Holocaust warns us of the dangers of hatred, prejudice, and apathy. It also reminds us how fragile democracy is and how easily government and society can turn against minority groups.
By sharing stories of Holocaust survivors, we become aware not only of the victims' struggle but also of the strength of the human spirit. I hope it inspires people to be kinder, speak up when they see hatred and prejudice, and fight against authoritarianism and fascism.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: I’m carrying on my mother’s legacy by becoming a Holocaust educator. I speak at schools, synagogues, and community centers, and, most recently, on radio shows, podcasts, and in book groups.
I’ve returned to writing essays. The Wall Street Journal published an op-ed that included a story from this book. I wrote an essay for Moment magazine about eating a cake in Florence that reminded me of my great-aunt’s orange cake.
To balance the sadness I felt in writing about my family, I started painting. I’m now exhibiting my paintings in group shows in the D.C. area.
Q: Anything else we should know?
A: Friendship played a crucial role in the camps. In the barracks, the women called each other shvesters, meaning sister. They cared for one another and did their best to keep their spirits up. They told stories about their families, shared recipes, recited poetry, and sang. When my mother was sick, they half-carried her to work and did her work for her. I was impressed by the courage, resilience, and compassion of these women.
Bronia developed alliances with German and Ukrainian guards who looked the other way when she lied about the seriousness of her patients’ illnesses.
Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl, author of Man’s Search for Meaning, wrote about the importance of preserving one’s humanity and finding purpose even in the worst circumstances, including Auschwitz.
Bronia found her calling as a nurse. She was determined to stay alive to save others and her oldest daughter. In the slave labor camps, she convinced a Polish supervisor and the town’s pharmacist to smuggle medical supplies into the camp.
At night, prisoners with sprained ankles or infections from handling munitions without safety gloves lined up outside her barrack for treatment. These inmates would have been killed if they couldn’t work. She would have been killed if she had been discovered. Bronia saved many lives. She’s the hero of this story.
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
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