Claire Sicherman read from her book Imprint, about intergenerational trauma, at UBC Hillel on Jan. 21.(photo by Pat Johnson)
Understanding of intergenerational trauma has expanded in recent decades. Two granddaughters of Holocaust survivors discussed the larger phenomenon and their personal experiences recently at the University of British Columbia’s Hillel House, part of Hillel’s Holocaust Awareness Week.
Claire Sicherman, author, workshop facilitator and trauma-informed somatic writing coach, shared her experiences and read from her book, Imprint: A Memoir of Trauma in the Third Generation, which was published in 2017. She was in conversation with Dr. Abby Wener Herlin, associate director of programs and community relations at the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre, which co-sponsored the Jan. 21 event with Hillel BC.
Sicherman attributed to psychologist Dr. Arielle Schwartz the definition of intergenerational trauma as the ways in which the unresolved experiences of traumas, losses and griefs of one generation can become a legacy that is passed down to the next generation.
“In other words,” said Sicherman, “the experiences of my grandparents are passed down through my parents to me.”
In addition to the “nurture” component of family legacies, there is the “nature” component of epigenetics, which Sicherman described as “the study of how genes turn on and off in response to environmental change.”
“I’ve heard it talked about like it’s sort of like light switches switching on and off in the body,” she explained. “Whatever switches switched on for my grandparents would then be switched on, passed down to my parent, passed down to me.”
Experts in the field say it’s not a biological prison, Sicherman said. “They are actually malleable, so what you’re born with, you are not necessarily stuck with. We do have the ability to change certain things. There is hope in that.”
Growing up, Sicherman knew little or nothing about inherited trauma.
“When I started reading about it, I began to understand that what was going on with me wasn’t really my fault or that it wasn’t really something wrong with me,” she said. “It was just that I was carrying this huge thing.”
Reading excerpts from her book, Sicherman recounted being “disconnected from my body.” The inherited trauma manifested as a nervous system on overdrive and a tendency to hypervigilance. She was always ready to bolt out the door, looking for exit signs, aware of potential dangers, unable to fully rest, and prone to stress and anxiety.
She said that untold stories often pass more powerfully from generation to generation than stories that are recounted.
“When you think about that,” said Sicherman, “it’s what we don’t talk about that has more weight. It’s the silence. It’s the secrets.… That’s why it’s also important to me to speak out about these things, because it’s healing that goes across generations.”
Her survivor grandparents thought they were protecting their children through silence, Sicherman said. In response, the second generation learned not to ask questions.
There were other silences. In addition to the limited discussion around the Holocaust, Sicherman did not learn until well into her own adulthood that, when she was 4 years old, her grandfather had taken his own life, and not died of a heart attack, as she had been led to believe.
As someone who writes about and works with others on issues of healing intergenerational trauma, she urges people to embrace the totality of what they have inherited.
“Aside from trauma, what are the legacies that your ancestors bring to you?” she asked. “What are the gifts? What are the strengths? That’s also an important question to ask yourself, and a way of connecting with Jewish heritage. What are the strengths of your lineage? Is it survival? Is it tenacity? Is it humour? Is it creativity? Those are questions that you can ask yourself.”
Her son, Ben Sicherman, a UBC student, was present and also spoke of his family’s legacy of trauma. He described struggling with anxiety when he was younger and learning mechanisms for addressing issues through his parents’ modeling. He also spoke of carrying the legacy of his ancestors in ways like choosing 18 as his hockey number, not only because it represents chai, life, but because the numbers on his great-grandmother’s Auschwitz tattoo added up to the number 18.
Intergenerational trauma is a major component of her life’s work, said Sicherman.
“I do feel a sense of obligation, as a third generation,” she said. “But I also feel like this is part of my calling, too. It’s very meaningful. It’s an obligation that is not homework. It’s part of what I was set out to do.”
Co-authors Raja G. Khouri, left, and Jeffrey J. Wilkinson in a conversation at Canadian Memorial United Church and Centre for Peace June 13. (photo by Pat Johnson)
To bridge a divide between peoples, Jews and Palestinians need to listen and understand one another’s stories of trauma, according to two authors who spoke in Vancouver June 13.
“Not only do we not know each other’s narrative, we don’t want to know each other’s narrative,” said Raja G. Khouri. “We are resistant to the other’s narrative. Palestinians need to understand Jewish suffering and Jews need to understand Palestinian suffering.”
Khouri, founding president of the Canadian Arab Institute, is a Palestinian-Canadian. With Jeffrey J. Wilkinson, a Jewish American who lives in Canada, he wrote The Wall Between: What Jews and Palestinians Don’t Want to Know About Each Other.
The two men have been engaged in ongoing dialogue around trauma and other topics related to Israel and Palestine. Their book was released four days before the Oct. 7 terror attacks.
Jewish trauma from the Holocaust and Palestinian trauma from the Nakba, or the “Catastrophe” of the 1948 war, replay in various ways among the peoples today, said Wilkinson, an educator who works on issues of trauma.
“It’s not about amount of loss,” said Wilkinson. “Six million Jews died, 750,000 Palestinians [were] displaced. That impact is not about the numbers. That impact is about that loss, that something being taken from you, that feeling of anger, resistance.”
The conversation, at Canadian Memorial United Church and Centre for Peace, was sponsored by Vancouver Friends of Standing Together, in partnership with several other organizations. Standing Together describes itself as “a progressive grassroots movement mobilizing Jewish and Palestinian citizens of Israel against the occupation and for peace, equality and social justice.”
The authors acknowledge the chasms between the consensus Israeli and Palestinian narratives, while carefully noting that they did not claim to speak on behalf of their respective peoples.
“Zionists are saying 1967, 1967, 1967,” said Wilkinson, referring to the war that marks the beginning of what many consider “the occupation.”
“Palestinians are saying 1948, 1948, 1948. The two-state solution does nothing to address 1948,” Wilkinson said.
A two-state solution is not something either author views as a reasonable proposition, said Wilkinson – unless it is as a waystation to an alternative that neither author spelled out explicitly.
“I’m not saying it’s a bad solution and you can’t support it,” Wilkinson said of the idea of two states. “But I want you to frame it from the perspective of justice, and it does not address the injustice of Palestinians.”
While the evening – and the book – were billed as a conversation across barriers, the divide was not as big as advertised. Both authors view the existence of Israel as a problem to be solved.
“I believe that Zionism and my Judaism are not compatible,” Wilkinson said. “That does not lessen my compassion for the vast majority of my community who are somewhere on that journey but not where I am, and I embrace you as you walk through that.”
Wilkinson explicitly denounced the extremist rhetoric heard in some anti-Israel protests, such as calls to destroy Tel Aviv and telling Jews to “go back to Poland.”
Khouri said Palestinians believe that “the antisemitism label” has been misused to silence them.
“We both know that antisemitism is real and it’s dangerous,” he said. “But, to Palestinians, it is a weapon that has been used to silence criticism, or at least that’s what we believe. And it’s important to get that.”
Both men believe there is a misunderstanding around definitions of terms.
Israelis and their allies might hear the word “apartheid” and reject it.
“Lens the word from the person who is speaking,” Wilkinson advised, outlining how he views separate treatment of Palestinians as equivalent to the racist regime of 20th-century South Africa.
“Likewise with terms like genocide,” said Khouri. “We both avoided using the term for the longest time. But I can tell you there isn’t a Palestinian I know who isn’t convinced that this is absolute genocide because of the mass killing that is happening. Whether it meets the legal definition of genocide or not, it feels very much like genocide.”
The defensiveness that comes around these terms, they said, is a barrier to the peoples’ understanding of each other.
The flexibility of definitions extends to the term “intifada.”
“When you hear someone, say, we’re calling for intifada, ask them what they mean by this,” said Khouri. “Do you mean going and blowing up cafés and buses?”
Neither author offered their interpretation of the term.
The Oct. 7 attacks took place in a particular context, they said.
“If you fixate on Oct. 7 only, then you’re missing a big part of the picture,” said Khouri.
“That doesn’t mean you grieve less for the victims of Oct. 7,” Wilkinson said. “It doesn’t mean that.”
Avril Orloff, representing Vancouver Friends of Standing Together, emceed the event. Rabbi Laura Duhan Kaplan, director of inter-religious studies and professor of Jewish studies at the Vancouver School of Theology provided a land acknowledgment and contextualized the discussion in the context of Shavuot, which was ending as the event began.
Rabbi Dr. Tirzah Firestone spoke in a Zoom webinar hosted by Victoria’s Kolot Mayim Reform Temple on Jan. 14. (PR photo)
Rabbi Dr. Tirzah Firestone unraveled intergenerational trauma, and offered solutions to help remedy it, in a Zoom webinar hosted by Victoria’s Kolot Mayim Reform Temple on Jan. 14. Firestone, the author of the award-winning 2019 book Wounds into Wisdom: Healing Intergenerational Jewish Trauma, is a Jungian psychotherapist and a leader in the Jewish Renewal movement.
“When I was first approached by Kolot Mayim last year to present this talk, nobody had any idea of the life-changing events that we would be experiencing,” Firestone began, acknowledging the geopolitical developments on and after Oct. 7. “Nor did I ever fathom when I wrote Wounds into Wisdom that it would be so very painfully relevant today in the midst of historical traumas in the making.”
An objective of the January talk was to address traumas experienced by one’s ancestors that get transmitted onto future generations in the form of fears, anxieties and hopelessness. Firestone’s goal is to help current generations “metabolize life better” so that the damaging psychological effects of trauma are not extended to future generations. In other words, those who come after should experience life from a position of resilience and hopefulness.
Firestone, who currently lives in Boulder, Colo., spoke about her own parents, who were deeply impacted by the Shoah – her mother as a German survivor and her father as an American soldier stationed in Germany.
“The past does not disappear. The painful histories our ancestors endured, along with their warmth, resilience and all their good resources, are intertwined within us, both psycho-spiritually as well as physically and physiologically,” said Firestone. “And they create the patterns of who we are and who we are becoming.”
Along these lines, the pain from trauma can be unspoken over the course of generations, yet becomes part of the individual nonetheless. Or, as in a quote from Israeli psychologist Dan Bar-On, cited by Firestone: “Untold stories often pass on more powerfully from generation to generation than stories that can be recounted.”
Ongoing patterns, whether ones of heroism and activism or depression and anxiety,are transmitted across generations.A young woman Firestone worked with, for example, became an activist, not knowing it ran in the family – her grandmother and great-aunt, neither of whom she had ever met, were rebels in their shtetl decades earlier.
Another example involved a woman whose very first memories as a young child were nightmares. One night, she explained to her concerned mother why she would wake up crying so often. The image in the young child’s mind was of an old wooden town where a man at the train station would jump from the platform to the train tracks. The man would run along the tracks yelling, “Stop! Stop!”The train would go on with the young man unable to catch it.
When the mother heard her child’s story, she cried and asked in disbelief, “How could you possibly have known this?” It was the story of the child’s grandfather who, in the Second World War, found out belatedly that Jews in his town, including his young family, had been rounded up and deported by train. He ran after the train, but never caught up and never saw his family again. The man survived the Holocaust and started a new life and family in the United States.
Traumas can happen collectively.Firestone noted that Israeli journalist Chemi Shalev wrote, “I am a Jew, and there are scenes of the Holocaust that are indelibly etched in my mind, even though I was not alive at the time.”
Firestone also outlined research conducted by Rachel Yehuda of New York’s Mount Sinai Hospital, which showed that the children of Holocaust survivors were three times more likely to develop post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms when exposed to traumatic events than the children of other Jews.
In the latter part of her talk, Firestone focused on what can be done towards healing trauma. Every family has its own ruptures and resources, no matter who or where it is, she said. Whether through intelligence, resilience or good fortune, every family today is a survivor. Thus, she asked, “What family resources can you tap to assist you in this current moment in history?”
Among some of the keys she highlighted for healing trauma, and which are discussed in greater depth in her book, is being aware of family legacies. This awareness, she asserts, will hinder the transmission of trauma to succeeding generations.
Another is to face one’s losses. “When we face our grief, we can start to feel our grief. When we don’t feel our grief, it becomes pathogenic. It makes disease on the inside of us,” she said.
A third technique for healing, according to Firestone, is “to harness the power of one’s pain.” That is, one can use the tremendous power contained in pain to bring on more destruction and further pain or to bring light, warmth and hope.
Firestone advised taking action. Here she employed a saying from Midrash: “Had I not fallen, I would not have arisen. Had I not been subject to darkness, I would not have seen the light.”
In concluding her remarks, Firestone said, “We have a mandate to draw on our ancestors’ greatest traits – their survival skills, their courage, their ingenuity – to apply to circumstances now. There are so many people who are suffering. What can we do from our own pain by harnessing its power and going places that we could not have gone before we endured [it]?”
For more on Firestone and her writings and ideas, visit tirzahfirestone.com.
To register for future Kolot Mayim speaker series Zooms, the next of which takes place Feb. 4, click here.
Sam Margolishas written for the Globe and Mail, the National Post, UPI and MSNBC.
Composer Rita Ueda has written an opera inspired by Barbara Bluman’s book I Have My Mother’s Eyes. (photo by Danilo Bobyk)
“In light of what is happening in the news today, we need to tell the story of Chiune Sugihara and the Bluman family more than ever,” composer Rita Ueda told the Independent. “I suspect more and more world leaders, communities and individuals will be faced with the decision to either do the easy thing, or the right thing. We need to tell ourselves more stories of compassion, courage, healing and family love.”
Ueda’s chamber opera I Have My Mother’s Eyes: A Holocaust Memoir Across Generations premières at the Rothstein Theatre Nov. 18-19, as part of the Chutzpah! Festival. Directed by Heather Pawsey, the opera tells the story of Sugihara, the Japanese diplomat who risked his own life during the Holocaust to issue visas to Jews, including members of Vancouver’s Bluman family. Its title comes from the late Barbara Bluman’s book of the same name, which was published in 2009, five years after her death from cancer.
“I don’t think I fully knew why I wanted my mother’s book published … when I immersed myself in this legacy project,” said Danielle Schroeder. “Looking back, bringing her story and my grandmother’s stories to life brought me a lot of comfort and meaning as I grappled with the profound sense of loss her death brought…. Also, at the time it was published, stories about the impact of intergenerational trauma and resilience were not being written about that much in the mainstream, so I felt my mom’s book was unique in the way it interweaves and interconnects her and her mother’s stories of trauma, loss and hope. And, of course, being able to share with the world the story of courage, generosity and compassion of the Sugihara family was also important to me.”
Ueda found out about the Bluman family in 2017, through an installation at the Maritime Museum, and reached out to George Bluman, Barbara’s brother. She was moved by the intergenerational nature of I Have My Mother’s Eyes.
“Zosia [Susan] Bluman’s escape from the Holocaust is only a part of the story,” she said. “The story of how the next two generations carried on the family legacy affected me to the core. When George suggested I expand the opera to include the story of the three generations of the Sugihara family that saved them, I became compelled to create the opera!”
“I was very touched and honoured that such a well-respected Canadian composer would want to write an opera about my mom’s book,” said Schroeder. “Especially after meeting Rita in person and learning … how my mom’s book impacted her, it was easy to say ‘yes.’”
Ueda’s opera is inspired by Barbara Bluman’s book, rather than based on it.
“Opera is best suited to convey the characters’ emotional journey,” Ueda explained. “The opera covers all three characters from the book – Zosia, Barbara and Danielle – the three generations of the Bluman women, and their love for each other in light of all the events in their lives. Materials on the three generations of the Sugihara family were based on my two visits to the Sugihara family in Tokyo. Madoka Sugihara spent over five hours with me on each visit, and she showed me many photos and books. She let me play [her grandfather] Chiune Sugihara’s collection of sheet music on his piano, and she told me many family stories. I was truly moved by the two families’ journey of survival, healing, and love for each other.”
George Bluman shared a bit about the real-life people depicted: Zosia, Barbara and Danielle on the Bluman side and Chiune, Yukiko, Hiroki and Madoka on the Sugihara side.
Bluman’s mother was born in 1920 and died in 2004. “Her story, before coming to Vancouver in July 1941, comes to life in I Have My Mother’s Eyes,” he said. “In Vancouver, she worked as a salesperson/buyer in women’s clothing at Cordell’s and Jermaine’s. She was one of the founders of the annual Warsaw Ghetto memorial program, the forerunner of the current annual Yom Hashoah commemoration. Mum is featured in the 2000 PBS documentary Sugihara Conspiracy of Kindness, as well as in the Holocaust museums in Washington, New York and Los Angeles. She loved her family, hosting raucous weekly Sunday dinners for all, often including her children’s friends.
“My sister, Barbara Bluman (1950-2001), graduated from UBC Law School in 1975, among the first large class of women. She was an independent thinker and feminist who lovingly balanced raising her children and her career in law. Her commitment to human rights was demonstrated in all of her pursuits…. Her deep dedication to Holocaust understanding led to her contribution to the Gesher Project, a second-generation cultural exploration of the Holocaust, and organizing an important symposium on the Nuremberg trials.”
Bluman said that, from 1996 to 2000, his sister made notes from 19 interviews with their mother. “Excerpts from these notes formed the basis for her book,” he said, praising his niece’s efforts in getting the book published.
“Yukiko Sugihara (1913-2008) married Chiune Sugihara (1900-1986) in 1936,” said Bluman. “In 1993, my family first met her, together with her oldest son, Hiroki (1936-2002), and Michi (Hiroki’s wife) for a few hours at the Vancouver airport during a stopover on their way to a dinner in Toronto organized by Ontario Premier Bob Rae involving the Jewish and Japanese communities. There was a spontaneous outpouring of strong emotions. To me, in her demeanour, she was an empress! She knew no English and I no Japanese, but I felt what she was saying. My mum and Barbara attended the dinner in Toronto, where the principal guest speaker was David Suzuki.”
There were a few other encounters, and Bluman said he and his brother Bob have corresponded regularly with Madoka. “I have met her twice in visits to Japan,” said Bluman, noting that Bob joined him on the second visit.
“Madoka is a very gracious person and works passionately on making the world aware of the heroic legacy of her grandparents. According to Madoka, her grandmother Yukiko played a most essential role in the Sugihara story.”
Ueda’s opera is “especially meaningful,” said Schroeder, “because it brings my mother back to life and honours her in such a profound way.”
She added, “I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for the Sugihara family, so to see a piece of art be created that brings our family together is moving beyond words.”
Teiya Kasahara as Yukiko Sugihara and Barbara Ebbeson as Zosia Bluman in I Have My Mother’s Eyes, which is part of the Chutzpah! Festival. (photo by Flick Harrison)
It has taken seven years to get to this point – the opera’s première.
“George and Danielle have been wonderful to work with,” said Ueda. “They have shown me photos (which you will see in the production) and shared family stories with me. They also introduced me to the wonderful Sugihara family.”
Ueda shared “two fun facts”: George Bluman, an emeritus math professor at UBC, trained her brother, a former math professor himself; and she has received permission to turn Yukiko Sugihara’s Midnight Sun Songs, poems that chronicle her story as the wife of Chiune Sugihara, into a sequel to I Have My Mother’s Eyes. The world première will be in Tokyo in October 2024.
Ueda has been composing since she was a toddler. “My late mother was an opera singer, so I grew up in a household with music,” she said. “My early musical ‘scores’ were crayon drawings of picture-representations of the sounds I improvised at the piano. My very first composition teacher when I was 3 (who was about 95 at the time) encouraged me to improvise at the piano and to keep on ‘drawing’ scores in crayon colours, even though his own teachers in the 1880s were Helmholtz and Tchaikovsky. He also arranged for me to see many concerts and events with composers such as Steve Reich, Earle Brown and John Cage.”
The environment, human rights and other societal issues have inspired Ueda’s work. “People in the audience do not need to agree with what I say in my music, but I want them to use the experience as a catalyst for important community dialogue,” she said.
For Ueda, opera is the perfect medium for telling a story with a strong emotional content.
“Opera cannot deliver a blow-by-blow story like a TV drama, film or documentary,” she acknowledged, “but music combined with voice can speak to you at the deepest, most profound level. Through opera, I hope to tell engaging and relevant stories that are important to us – who we are, what we stand for, and what we believe in. European opera has had a history of elitism throughout the past 400 years, but recent Canadian opera productions have been changing this. I hope I Have My Mother’s Eyes will contribute to this change.”
Lindsey Tyne Johnson (photo from Lindsey Tyne Johnson)
Returning from a Birthright trip to Israel in 2019, artist Lindsey Tyne Johnson was inspired. Learning the aleph-bet, she made a laser-engraved spirit board in Hebrew, but accidentally arranged the letters left to right, as they would be in English, and not right to left, as Hebrew is read. The mistake spurred her not only to create the exhibit Hebrew Spelled Backwards, which is on display at the Kamloops Art Gallery until April 1, but to explore her cultural heritage, from which she had been estranged, and learn more about Judaism.
The other, more sombre, inspiration for the Hebrew spirit board and the exhibit was, Johnson writes in a blog post, a “desire to feel closer to my brother after the events that left him homeless and his eventual passing.”
“Born with the name Liam, my brother changed his name to his chosen Hebrew name, Noah as an adult,” she writes on her website (lindseytynejohnson.com). “My mother had mentioned our Jewish ancestry to us as children, but my brother was the only person to explore it…. I can still remember it as what my mother called ‘one of his many phases’ in his late teenage years. She chalked it up to a phase, but it’s the string I use to tie memories of my brother together.”
“My brother was the first person I witnessed who explored their Jewish heritage,” Johnson told the Independent. “When he moved to Vancouver in his early 20s, he legally changed his name to his Hebrew name, Noah. He struggled a lot with his mental health, and there were times when I felt like I was losing the brother I grew up with. It was an attempt to feel closer to him that I went on Birthright and had a bat mitzvah. I wanted to remember the part of him that was happy, passionate and excited about life.
“My brother lost his life to fentanyl in 2021. It was devastating and broke my family apart,” said Johnson, who has two other siblings. “Many struggle to understand substance abuse/mental illness’s connection to generational or cyclical trauma. It’s unfair to look down upon those who might suffer from those things. I try my best to advocate for the destigmatization of mental illness where I can, though I’ve had to be careful not to let others’ ideas also negatively affect my mental health.”
While not a large exhibit, Hebrew Spelled Backwards is powerful, thought-provoking in a serious way, but also using humour. For the exhibit’s images, Johnson explains on her website, “The sandy colour palette was chosen as a tribute to the desert, a significant location in Jewish history and culture. I use digital media to blend traditional Jewish motifs with modern techniques, creating a dynamic visual experience.”
Johnson said, “Like many artists, my process is sporadic and requires a particular head space to create something I’m happy with. I often have ideas for pieces while doing mundane daily activities; if I don’t write them down, they’re lost forever. I practise a lot of sequential art, which is usually silly comics about everyday life, but they’re generally never seen by other humans. My style reflects the graphic novels I like to consume. I can’t help but be inspired by artists like Craig Thompson and Marjane Satrapi, both visually and thematically. My dream is to produce a graphic novel one day.”
The Hebrew Spelled Backwards exhibit comprises not only Johnson’s artwork, but her voice. Each picture has a QR code and viewers can hear Johnson give explanations of the Hebrew words and some context for the images, making the exhibit more accessible and inclusive. The illustrations variously include Jewish symbols and/or Hebrew text, supernatural elements, pop art iconography (a Warholesque can of Birthright’s Instant Bat-Mitzvah, for example) and current topics of concern, like rapper Ye’s antisemitic comments, poignantly drawn as a short series of cellphone text messages from a mom to her child that ends with the child asking, “mum, why is ye mad at us?” This is one of the works that, as the exhibit description reads, “examines the complexities of identifying as Jewish and the fear and uncertainty that often come with it.”
“I have a couple of fears about identifying myself as Jewish,” Johnson told the Independent. “Initially, when diving into Jewish culture and Judaism as a religion, I was afraid people might not think I was ‘Jewish enough,’ since only one of my parents has Jewish ancestry. My siblings and I were raised without Jewish traditions or education…. Having a bat mitzvah really helped with that fear, though. I’m also grateful that I’ve never really encountered anyone from the Jewish communities I’ve belonged to that has made me feel that way.
“RaeF” by Lindsey Tyne Johnson
“The other part of that fear was that people would think differently of me or assume certain tropes or ideologies about me if I publicly identified myself as Jewish. This is an unfortunate reality I’ve experienced, even if subtly. Most commonly, people think I’m OK with antisemitic jokes or jokes that involve the Holocaust. It’s an exhausting thing to experience.”
Putting together the exhibit has allowed Johnson not only to explore her fears, but also her own biases.
“Creating these pieces required me to reflect on the experiences of people like Batsheva Dueck (aka Cynical Duchess, a modest fashion content creator) or more conservative Jews, who experience more assumptions made about them based on their dress or religious beliefs,” she said. “Since working on this exhibition, I’ve been more sensitive to times when I’ve excused antisemitic values expressed by my peers or acquaintances. When I lived in Brooklyn, I lived with someone who spoke quite negatively about Hasidic communities. This has been an excellent opportunity to witness my biases and encourage others to reflect on their biases or assumptions, too.
“It’s also allowed me to tie other pieces of my identity together,” she continued. “I’ve been able to connect my Irish ancestry with my Jewish ancestry, for example. It has given me a sense of wholeness or completeness and I’ve accepted that I can be many things all at the same time and I’ve accepted that that’s OK. We all contain multitudes.”
Johnson went to Ireland this past summer to visit where her Ashkenazi family moved to in the 19th century, and “to visit the Irish Jewish Museum and Waterford treasures.”
“I was probably in the fourth grade when my mother talked to my siblings and me about it,” said Johnson of first learning about her Jewish heritage. “It was after I had come home and talked about how we were learning about World War II at school. It was surreal to hear my mother, an immigrant from England, talk about a side of our ancestry that had never really been discussed before. I didn’t understand what it meant at the time.”
Johnson herself has lived many places. She was born in Edmonton in 1993, but her family moved to Saskatchewan and then Prince George, B.C., shortly after.
“I spent most of my youth in Prince George but moved to Dawson City, Yukon, as soon as I could save up enough money to attend the Yukon School of Visual Arts,” she said. “Yukon SOVA is a one-year foundational arts program. Still, I decided to stay in the Yukon upon completion and remained in the territory for about five years before I moved to Brooklyn in 2018. I was in Brooklyn for only half a year before moving to Kamloops to be closer to my family, but it made a lasting impression. Going from a territory of 35,000 people to my neighbourhood in Williamsburg with four times that amount was dizzying.”
Johnson said she loves the Kamloops Jewish community. “I joined shortly after moving to Kamloops from Brooklyn and felt incredibly welcomed,” she said. “The [Okanagan Jewish Community Centre] president, Heidi Coleman, is a huge inspiration and comfort to me. It’s pretty relaxed in terms of how often we have gatherings. We don’t have a synagogue or a place to meet, so we usually celebrate holidays at someone’s house. The ‘younger’ (20 to 30 years old) of us have a close bond, and I often have a group of us over for various holidays, too.”
Johnson is currently in her third year at Thompson Rivers University, where she is doing a bachelor’s in criminology. “I’m most interested in victimology,” she said. “I think Canada and most of the world fail victims of crime to an astronomical degree. It’s wild to think about how much attention we give criminals without considering how we could better support the survivor or victims of their crimes.”
Artistically, she is planning a piece that more specifically honours her brother Noah. “I want to educate the general public about how the consequences of generational or cyclical trauma can lead to mental health struggles like substance abuse,” she said. “I would like to highlight that it’s not specifically someone’s ‘fault’ for struggling the way they do.”
Much of artist Seth Book’s work has been influenced by his maternal grandfather, who was a Holocaust survivor, including “A Series I Don’t Want to Continue” – “One work to symbolize each character tattooed on his arm, and each million Jewish people that were massacred,” explained Book. (photo from Seth Book)
“My art began as solely for the enjoyment of creating work that was esthetically pleasing, but it has since changed to serve a didactic purpose and to provide awareness to social issues and histories that are important to me and my family,” Seth Book told the Independent. “A significant part of my work is to keep the legacy of my grandfather, survivors, and Jewish history alive.”
Book is a member of the third generation. “My mother’s father was a Holocaust survivor, originally from Romania. He went through a few camps, Auschwitz being one of them. Since seventh grade, I have completed a significant amount of research on his story, directly with him while he was alive, as well as after his passing, and, like many other survivors, he had an unbelievable journey,” explained Book, whose work will be on display at Art Vancouver April 16-19, in the unlikely event that the spread of COVID-19 is under control by then and the fair is allowed to take place.
“His presence in my early life has been extremely impactful on the way I live and see the world,” said Book of his grandfather, “and this is what has influenced my art. I truly believe that, in school, work and life in general, I have gotten my tenacity, conscientiousness and resilience from my zaide. As I learned more about his life and what he fought so hard to build for my family, he became a strong source of motivation and drive to succeed in my life. I still uncover bits and pieces about his life after the Holocaust.”
While his art for the past few years has been primarily concerned with his grandfather, the Holocaust, survivors in general, and present-day antisemitism, Book said the past year has been “transformational.”
“My connection to my grandfather allowed me to begin my work at this starting point relative to my own history,” he said, “but it has since expanded to include broader focuses, such as the current generation living on the legacies of survivors, as well as generational trauma and current events affecting the global Jewish community.”
Book, who works at a branding agency doing graphic design and writing copy for clients, is set to finish his bachelor of fine arts degree at the University of British Columbia. His coursework has allowed him to learn about and use many different mediums, he said, “including drawing, digital media, photography, painting and metalwork.”
Born in Vancouver, Book has lived in the Dunbar area his entire life. He attended Vancouver Talmud Torah from preschool to Grade 7, and then went to St. George’s School for his secondary education. He continued his involvement in the Jewish community via Temple Sholom, he said, “where I participated in the confirmation class in 10th grade and then taught at the Sunday school in 11th and 12th grade. I was also lucky enough to travel to Israel with my family on the Temple Sholom trip after my bar mitzvah.”
He was well-versed in diverse media long before his university years.
“Growing up, I was always interested in creativity: building structures, doing crafts, colouring, and especially playing with LEGO,” he said. “I recall being hilariously picky with colours and colouring inside the lines when drawing with other kids as early as preschool; I always find it funny to this day how much it bothered me as a toddler to see other toddlers using odd colour combinations or messy drawing.
“This interest in art was then supplemented by Colette Leisen’s art class all throughout VTT – it was probably my favourite in elementary school. This carried on into various art classes in high school, including drawing, animation, graphic design, ceramics and painting.”
Seth Book (photo from Seth Book)
Book said it is hard to define his artistic style because he has always been interested in finding new mediums and approaches. But he has less need for such definition since he began university. Since then, he said, “I have been able to let go of that and continue exploring what interests me rather than being labeled as a ‘painter’ or a ‘photographer.’ I always find that different mediums have such an incredibly unique ability to succeed in accomplishing a piece better than others. In other words, certain mediums are more effective than others in conveying certain ideas or concepts for varying projects. That being said, I try to use the best option I can for each work, trying not to limit myself in expertise. I can always try and learn! I did not work with metal until late 2019, and have already created two works using it, and I am very satisfied with how they turned out.”
Book, who has a background in business management in addition to his art training, said he first heard about Art Vancouver through a summer internship program he took part in a couple years ago, and has kept in close contact with the team there since. “I have loved working with the organizers and enjoyed attending the event every year,” he said. “I quite like the efforts they make to advance the art scene in my hometown and can’t wait to be a part of it as an artist this time.”
Hopefully, he will get that chance, but, even if Art Vancouver is canceled or postponed because of COVID-19, Book is an emerging artist whose works will available at other venues at other times.
He was able to tell the Independent about two pieces he was planning on bringing to the art fair. While he had not firmly decided on all the pieces yet, he said, “I selected the works from my portfolio which I have found to be the most striking, the works that I have received most compliments about, as well as the works which I feel represent my wide practice the best when shown together.”
One of those creations is called “A Series I Don’t Want to Continue,” which comprises six digitally rendered vinyl decals adhered to six two-foot-by-three-foot melamine sheets.
“A series opens an idea and simultaneously closes it,” reads the work’s description. “The values in between the first and last work tell a story or convey some sort of meaning through the relationships formed with the works in between.”
It continues, “A series of works in any media all relate to one another through consecutive nature. Labeling a group of entities as part of a series can bind them together, locking them out from further creation or reproduction. This is where the concept of my work integrates itself reflexively within the format of a series work. Through this work, I explore the contained value of past events, and particularly the Holocaust, in relation to my grandfather’s story.
“When he passed away, the evaluation of his extreme tenacity and hard work to establish our family and provide futures for generations to come was recognized more than ever. ‘Never again,’ the words that often cross our mind, could not be stronger upon recounting the horrors he endured. Never again, but also never forget. These events happened. They must be taught and preserved, but they are contained, and must never grow…. One work to symbolize each character tattooed on his arm, and each million Jewish people that were massacred. There will not be a seventh work in this series.”
The other piece that Book wanted to bring for sure to Art Vancouver is called “Untitled Crowd (The Stars, The Blues, The Ashes).” The 22-inch-by-30-inch ink-on-paper work is also related to the Holocaust. The description reads, in part, that the Nazis’ attention to detail was “dual-edged.”
“On one hand,” it notes, “they kept extremely particular and accurate data records of the prisoners murdered. Ironically, on the other hand, the attention to human detail was nonexistent. When Jewish people were funneled through various camps, they were stripped of their belongings and identities. They were nothing but a number.”
In “Untitled Crowd,” Book writes, “I attempt to discuss this specific lack of attention and elimination of one’s person. Each work is a recreation of real people who either survived or perished during the Holocaust. In order to illustrate the lack of respect and attention given to these unfortunately abused people, I spent a specifically short time on depicting them in the piece. Each face was dedicated about six minutes, to correspond with the six million lives lost. The faces are all overlapping with one another to represent not only the crowds of people who were murdered and their brutal living conditions, but also the morphing of individuals into a mess of numbers and bodies rather than human beings.”
The piece’s three parts carry added symbolism. “The first work is done with shades of mustard yellow to signify the yellow stars Jewish people were forced to use as identification, and the shades are more distinct in overlapping to show not all identity had yet been lost,” writes Book. “The second work is completed with shades of blues to represent the blue-striped pyjamas prisoners wore, and the difference in tone decreases to create a more homogenized look as they lost identity. The final work uses the greyscale to convey the ashes of those perished, and the gaining age of survivors around the world.”
Dr. Gita Arian Baack, author of The Inheritors: Moving Forward from Generational Trauma. (photo from Gita Arian Baack)
Dr. Gita Arian Baack, author of The Inheritors: Moving Forward from Generational Trauma, was in town earlier this month to speak at the Cherie Smith JCC Jewish Book Festival and hold a three-day experiential workshop with the Second Generation Group in Vancouver.
The Ottawa-based counselor began her festival presentation with a quote from the late Israeli novelist Amos Oz, who wrote, “Our past belongs to us, but we do not belong to it.” For Baack, the quote underscores her message to inheritors of the Shoah – that “we were given life and an obligation to bear witness and honour the martyrs and heroes of the Holocaust. And that we also have the right to live full and joyful lives.”
“Generational trauma stems from devastating events which transpired before we were born,” Baack told the Independent. “In the case of the Holocaust, we have experienced it from birth; it is as if we were there. We carry an unrelenting sadness, sense of absence and betrayal.”
The ultimate question her book explores is: “How can we live a full life despite the difficult trauma we inherited?”
Prior to writing The Inheritors, Baack conducted doctoral research into the subject of intergenerational trauma and resilience, yet what she uncovered did not fit or go deeply enough into either. Often, resilience is described as bouncing back with support from others. But, she said, “You don’t bounce back from the Holocaust!”
She was resolved to unravel answers to these and other questions, such as why are so many of us resilient and compassionate despite our inherited trauma? Do we carry memory from one generation to another? How do we move forward, when the usual therapies for trauma have proven not to work for us?
“We are also faced with the difficulty of piecing together our family stories,” said Baack. “Much of our family stories are full of holes, unknowns and even secrets, our roots destroyed. Understandably, we have strong emotions but don’t know how to deal with them; for example, excessive sadness, fear of authority, worry, lack of trust, lack of safety, etc.”
Further, inherited trauma is often frozen, embedded in the brain stem, also known as the primitive brain – accessing it is difficult, but it can be done, she said.
Baack noted that ancient wisdom, the Bible and new epigenetic scientific research explain that trauma is passed onto generations in the DNA, and even the cells, for as many as seven generations. She strongly believes that this is the case if it is acknowledged and processed; if it is not, then it can take longer than seven generations.
Though Baack’s own experience is being a child of Holocaust survivors, The Inheritors encompasses others who have been victimized: Canada’s indigenous population, survivors of the Rwandan genocide and of several other horrible episodes of recent history. The book also looks at trauma on a personal level, from those who have suffered as a result of natural disaster, an accident, economic hardship, the justice or education system, illness or loss of a loved one.
The intent of The Inheritors is to serve as a tool for moving forward, said Baack. The book is filled with dialogues, poetry and stories from people of different backgrounds. Readers are invited to explore their story, and there are questions at the end of each chapter to help them process that story and, in so doing, transform their pain. At the least, in the end, they will have a written story as a legacy to their descendants.
The Inheritors has had other, unexpected, impacts. For example, the conductor of the North Carolina State University orchestra commissioned composer and flutist Allison Loggins-Hull to write a piece for an upcoming performance and she has chosen to write a work inspired by the book – Inheritors Overture will première on April 5 in Raleigh, N.C.
The group dialogues that Baack conducts offer a means of validation through other people with similar experiences and various experiential tools that can help further a deeper exploration of their trauma stories, the “undiscussables” and the unknowns. Group participants, she said, are often surprised by the creativity, laughter and camaraderie that arise.
The Inheritors is dedicated to (and inspired by) Baack’s two half-siblings. “From my earliest beginnings, I remember carrying a great sadness for my siblings, Henush and Halina Arian, who were only 4 and 3 years old, respectively, when they were killed,” she writes. There was no information about the circumstances of their death or burials, “But their existence was real and has mattered to me in an extraordinary way. And so I don’t fight the sadness; I embrace it. It has a special place. I am the carrier of their memory. This burden is the most cherished of all my burdens.”
At the age of 4 or 5, Baack had what she describes as a “knowing” or “inherited memory.” A “felt sense” told her, even at that young age, that her siblings, two of 1.5 million children killed by the Nazis, had both been shot in the back. When she asked her father how her half-siblings died, he said he didn’t know. Nonetheless, the memory (and feeling) she had inherited persisted, and could be placed on a spot in the middle of her back, with a knowing that her half siblings had been shot in that place.
Her research revealed that the timing of their deaths was before gas chambers had been built, and children under 5 were regularly shot. In 2019, a tour guide in Krakow pointed to the very street where the children and their mother were shot. To Baack, it was a stunning confirmation of her lifelong memory.
Baack has been consulting and coaching individuals and organizations for more than 30 years. She recently founded the Centre for Transformational Dialogue to help individuals and communities that have inherited devastating legacies. She also has written a book of verse, Poems of Angst and Awe, published in 2017.
For more information, visit gitabaack.com. Baack continues to research inherited memory and wishes to hear from others on the subject. She can be reached at [email protected].
Sam Margolis has written for the Globe and Mail, the National Post, UPI and MSNBC.
Prof. Roger Frie’s Not in My Family rises above the merely personal (image from cenes.ubc.ca)
Forty-three years ago, at Vancouver’s first Holocaust Symposium, for which I was the chair, the keynote speaker was the Lithuanian partisan fighter Leon Kahn. His presentation to a large group of high school students described, among other things, how he watched, in hiding, while his mother and sisters were raped and murdered by members of the Einsatzgruppen – the murderous “task forces” mandated to kill Jews by gunshot (the so-called “Holocaust by bullets”) in German-occupied countries. Approximately two million Jews were murdered by the Einsatzgruppen.
After Leon was finished speaking, a tall, blond, blue-eyed boy walked slowly up to the podium. He was, he said, of German origin, and wanted to apologize to Leon. His face revealed how devastated he was. Leon shook his hand and told him, “Look, it wasn’t your fault. Now go on and live your life.”
That was my first experience with deutsche Schuld, German guilt.
There are literally hundreds of books and websites approaching deutsche Schuld from every angle. The author of Not in My Family: German Memory and Responsibility After the Holocaust (Oxford University Press, 2017) is Roger Frie, a Simon Fraser University professor and locally practising psychotherapist who is a third-generation German-Canadian. Based on his profession, he addresses the issue of German guilt in the present book from a personal psychological perspective, using his fear of being exposed as a “bad German,” along with his experience with inherited guilt, as his templates.
Frie’s Not in My Family was triggered, he says, by his mid-life discovery, long hidden by his family, of his beloved grandfather’s Nazi past. The book invites us to follow him as he slowly builds up the courage to go to the archives in Berlin to find the documentation revealing his grandfather’s Nazi membership and wartime activities.
“Opa” was hardly a high-ranking Nazi functionary, it turns out: he was “an ordinary German,” who operated, for all intents and purposes, as a minor motorcycle repairman. (Frie writes more about this apparently apolitical “motorcycle club” later in the book, but one is still left to wonder how the author, already heavily burdened with inherited guilt, would have felt if his Opa were discovered to have been say, a camp guard, or a member of the Totenkopfverbaende, the infamous Death’s Head Units.)
Ironically, Frie has professionally analyzed children of Jewish survivors, and some of his most intimate reflections arise from his wrestling, during these sessions, as to whether or not to reveal that he is himself of German heritage.
Constantly throughout Not in My Family, Frie reiterates that he “has an obligation to remember the past” and, while remembering, he has many sincere reflections on post-Holocaust German guilt and responsibility, complicity, prejudice, cowardly denial and “shameful silence” of past issues, as well as, of course, the “need for redemption” and “the problematics of trauma,” especially of his own, rooted in a questionable notion of vicarious perpetration, three generations down the line.
On this last point, clearly, there was a therapeutic dimension for the writing of Not in My Family: it reflects on every page. But the book rises above the merely personal. For example, Frie is brutally honest in rejecting the moral camouflage of the “Germans suffered too” ilk, and on the need to be suspicious of Germans who feel “deluged” with the Holocaust.
Near the end of Not in My Family, Frie reflects that “writing can be a form of discovery, of examining life and making sense of the past.” This book, for him, he admits, was “personally meaningful” and “emotionally draining.” But if, as he puts it, the book “creates a space for dialogue and reflection on the nature of German memory and the Holocaust,” it is a valuable contribution to an ever-growing body of knowledge about how the greatest crime in human history came to be perpetrated by, among others, affectionate, family-loving, probably not dogmatically antisemitic, minor motorcycle repairmen.
Graham Forst, PhD, taught literature and philosophy at Capilano University until his retirement and now teaches in the continuing education department at Simon Fraser University. From 1975 to 2010, he co-chaired the symposium committee of the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre.
Left to right: Michael Rubenfeld, Mary Berchard and Katka Reszke in We Keep Coming Back, which plays March 13 and 14 as part of the Chutzpah! Festival. (photo by Jeremy Mimnaugh)
At first, we expected the piece to focus mainly on the past and how sad the absence of Jewish life in Poland is. After going and also spending more time in Poland, we now propose that it is through focusing on the present and future, with an aim at building positive perspectives, that will ultimately lead to transformation and genuine healing,” said Michael Rubenfeld about We Keep Coming Back, which plays at the Chutzpah! Festival March 13 and 14.
Rubenfeld created the multimedia work with Sarah Garton Stanley, as well as his mother, Mary Berchard, and filmmaker and translator Katka Reszke. Rubenfeld and Garton Stanley are co-directors of Selfconscious Theatre. We Keep Coming Back is based on a trip that Rubenfeld and his mother took to Poland in 2013.
“It was always our intention to make a piece of theatre and the trip was connected to a desire to explore intergeneration trauma and, also, more specifically, the problems in my relationship with my mother that stem from unresolved trauma and disconnect from our family’s roots in Poland,” said Rubenfeld. “So, the trip was an experiment of sorts; to see if going to Poland with my mother, visiting her mother and father’s hometowns and going to Auschwitz, would give us the opportunity to mourn together, which might also bring us closer together.”
According to a blog on Selfconscious Theatre’s website, after surviving the Holocaust, “Berchard’s family moved from Poland to Sweden, where she was born. They then immigrated to Canada in 1951, where she grew up and eventually had a son, Michael.”
Rubenfeld and Berchard were in Poland for about two weeks. “My mother has since been back three or four more times, and I now have a home in Poland with my wife,” said Rubenfeld – the couple lives in both Krakow and Toronto. “We’ve toured We Keep Coming Back to Poland three times,” he added.
The project has worked to bring mother and son closer.
“It’s been really nice for us to have a piece that we do together,” said Rubenfeld. “It gives us an excuse to spend time together to do something we know we’re going to enjoy. It’s also given us commonality, which has been really essential for our relationship.
“My mother has always been very supportive, though we don’t always have a lot in common. This project has changed that. We also now have Poland in common, and our mutual interest. My mother really loves it in Poland. She’s also become quite interested in uncovering more about our history and has started researching and archiving our family tree. It’s brought her a lot of happiness and has been a really healing thing – which, in general, has been good for our relationship as well.”
We Keep Coming Back “speaks so openly and honestly about what it means to love a parent, or to be loved by a child, and how so many of the resources for a good and enduring love were torn apart by the Holocaust and all of the horrors, throughout the generations that linger,” said Garton Stanley, who is also associate artistic director of English theatre and interim facilitator for indigenous theatre at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa.
“Honestly, as someone on the ground since the get-go, I was most curious about Michael’s developing love for Poland and how, over the course of the play’s creation, he not only fell in love with a Jewish woman from Poland but that he now lives there,” she said. “Michael and I are very interested in the line between fiction and reality and the space for realizing possible worlds through dramatic form. Michael now speaks some Polish. He’s making deep-rooted reconnections and helping contribute to a vibrant Jewish life in Poland.”
Garton Stanley and Rubenfeld met just over 10 years ago, after she saw him in a show. “He was performing in it with my partner at the time,” she said. “He was amazing. We became fast friends shortly thereafter.”
At Selfconscious Theatre – which they started together – the two have also co-created The Book of Judith; Mother, Mother, Mother; and The Failure Show.
For We Keep Coming Back, Garton Stanley is not only co-creator but the director. “My co-creation,” she explained, “was part facilitator, part conceiver, part devisor, part writer, part mediator, part friend and always enthusiast.”
How Reszke became involved in the production is a little more circuitous and fortuitous.
“Once we decided to take the trip to Poland, we connected with a producer named Evelyn Tauben, who was doing research around contemporary Jewish Poland,” explained Rubenfeld. “Through Evelyn initially, we started learning about the renaissance of Jewish culture in Poland, which, at the time, I knew nothing about. Once learning about it, we determined that it was important to us that we engage with it on our trip, and that’s when Katka came into the picture.
“We knew we needed a translator to join us, and we also knew we wanted to document the process. We joked that it would be incredible if we could find someone who could both translate, film and be a Polish Jew who might want to collaborate with us artistically. On a lark, we Googled ‘Polish, Jewish, filmmaker,’ and that’s how we discovered Katka. We sent her an email, and one thing led to another.”
“Mary Berchard and Katka Reszke,” added Garton Stanley, “are fascinating performers and neither of them has any training in this area. Their stories and their curiosity combine with Michael’s to create a new family. And this feels like one of the piece’s hidden successes.”
As for what has most surprised her about the project, she said, “That we are still doing it and learning from it. And learning from the audiences whose histories intersect with Michael’s, Mary’s and Katka’s own generational challenges and traumas. And that the piece resonates as deeply as it does. It has a beautiful heart and this is always surprising, in the best way.”
“I believe that, in our desire to never forget what happened during the Holocaust, we have also forgotten that Poland was one of the most important contemporary homelands for the Ashkenazi Jewish people for over 500 years,” said Rubenfeld. “So much of our contemporary culture was bred in this land, and we forget that the Jewish people were happy living in Poland before the war. We are raised to think of Poland as only the place of tragedy. While I understand why, I think that it’s essential to remember and celebrate a time when there was such vibrant Jewish culture. Most was destroyed because of the war, and it’s impossible to not feel sad. But, as we move into the future and the pain continues to recede, it is just as important to remember the incredible prewar Polish Jewish world of Poland. It was very profound.”
For tickets to We Keep Coming Back at the Rothstein Theatre, and for the full Chutzpah! schedule, visit chutzpahfestival.com.
