“THE PAST IS THE {PAST}!”: Exploring Holocaust Family Trauma
In a book that I’m writing entitled In Pieces, explores the different sides to Holocaust Trauma. The Holocaust, which affected six million families, everyone who I’ve talked to, has a different way of handling it when it came to their deceased loved ones. In my book, the Holocaust hits the Wolfova family or the Wolf Family- four girls and parents. The parents and three of the sisters survived. One was gone. How did it affect their family? I wanted to write a story based on the lives of Felicitas Wolf(ova) Garda (1920- 2006) and Otto Wolf (1927–1945). I had tried to interview Felicitas’s family, and I noticed that she was one of those people who tried to shove her brother’s memory down and didn’t want to discuss it. I understand why, because the way that Otto died was horrendous. Otto was shot and then burned. In the novel I’m writing, the sister that dies, is also shot, but not burned, for I wanted her to have a proper burial, which is buried on a family’s farm.
But when I am digging into different Holocaust survivors, some who I know personally, they all have different ways of dealing with their pain.
I remembered what my friend Michael Gelbart, whose parents are both survivors, said that Holocaust trauma passes down from one generation to the next. I thought of this, and I remembered what I have read from Felicitas’s daughters, both who are very quiet about their uncle Otto who was murdered. But the thing about Felicitas, is that not only did she lose her brother Otto, but she also lost her brother, Kurt as well. Kurt, the way that he died was a little different than Otto’s. Though he was wounded in battle (he was in the Czech Army), and he shot himself, because he didn’t want to die in the hands of the Nazis. He was only 28 when he died.
With In Pieces, two of the older sisters, Myla and Chava ( sometimes called Mylka and Chavka) are the ones that want to remember their younger sister, who’s name Felicitas “Lici” I borrowed from Felicitas “Lici” Wolf and it’s the younger sister, Leyna (sometimes called Leynka), is the one who doesn’t want to talk about Lici at all. She wants to shove her memory down.
People say that “Life Goes On Without You”. But for the six million families who were hit by the Holocaust, life doesn’t really go on without their loved ones. Aunts, Uncles, Cousins, Grandparents, and sometimes Parents, life doesn’t go on for them.
The reason I wanted to make almost all the Wolf family survive, except for one, is to show what it was like for the Holocaust survivors to get the news of their loved one’s deaths. In In Pieces, the girl’s mother cannot handle the loss of her younger daughter, Felicitas. That was pulled how Otto, Kurt and Felicitas’s parents handled the deaths of their two boys. It was not easy going from a family of three kids, to just one. In my story, it’s only one sister that dies, and it’s the sister that the whole story revolves around.
In my book In Pieces, the protagonist is named after Felicitas “Lici”. She has to do a project on a family member, and she wants to talk about her. Her grandmother, Leyna, who is the youngest sister, has a difficult time of talking about her, while her older two sisters, Myla and Chava, are more open to talking about her. But with this, Felicitas takes matters into her own hands, and shows her great-niece her life in pieces (hence the title) by letting her walk through a door and seeing the past. Interesting concept, but It’s working very well.
With Holocaust trauma, it affects different families, in ways that we can never seem to understand. Holocaust survivors went through so much and as I have learned, everyone processes what happened so differently.
With the Wolf’s, the pain of the loss of two boys, was so great, that they acted like Otto or Kurt didn’t exist for years, until the mid 90’s, when Alexandra Zapruder coaxed Felicitas Wolf to talk about Otto and Kurt again. With this, I am trying to compose this novel filled of understanding and love.
The moral of my story is family and love.
I hope it gets professionally published, or it’ll just sit on my computer forever.
