November 6, 2024 • 28 mins
Karen Kirsten’s memoir 'Irena's Gift' offers a profound exploration of family secrets, trauma, and the quest for identity against the backdrop of the Holocaust. Raised by a Holocaust survivor, Kirsten grew up in a household characterized by silence and hidden truths, where questions about her family's past were often met with dismissal. This episode delves into her personal journey of uncovering the complexities of her heritage, which was shrouded in layers of fear and secrecy including the unexpected kindness from an SS officer who played a crucial role in her mother's survival.
Kirsten’s reflections encourage a dialogue about the nature of good and evil, as well as the legacies of trauma that can permeate through generations. Kirsten's story becomes a mirror reflecting the struggles of many who grapple with their ancestry while trying to forge their own identity.
- St. Louis Jewish Book Festival Events & Schedule | St. Louis JCC
- Tickets to Karen Kirsten Presentation at the Jewish Book Festival
- Karen Kirsten Website
This is Season 7! For more episodes, go to stlintune.com
Links referenced in this episode:
- jccstl.com
- karenkirsten.com
#holocaust #holocaustsurvivor #jewishhistory #australianjewishcommunity #generationaltrauma #kristallnacht #nazirescuestories #warsawghetto
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
What do you do if you find outthat the parents who raised you weren't
actually your parents and thelife that you grew up believing wasn't
exactly the truth? We're goingto find out more today on St. Louis
in Tune. Welcome to St. Louisin Tune and thank you for joining
(00:29):
us for fresh perspectives onissues and event with experts, community
leaders and everyday peoplewho make a difference in shaping
our society and world. I'myour host Arnold Stricker along with
co host Mark Langston. KarenKirsten is an Australian American
writer and Holocaust educatorwho speaks on the topics of hatred
and reconciliation around theworld. Her essay Searching for the
(00:50):
Nazi who Saved My Mother'sLife was selected by Narratively
as one of the best everstories and nominated for the best
American Essays. Her writinghas appeared in Salon.com the Week,
the Jerusalem Post, Boston'sNational Public Radio Station, the
Boston Herald, the ChristianPost, many, many more. And she was
raised in Australia by aHolocaust survivor mother and grandparents
(01:12):
who silenced her questionsabout extermination camps. Karen
lived among refugees who werehiding horrible secrets to reinvent
themselves and we're going totalk to her today about her book
Arena's Gift, an epic WorldWar II memoir of sisters, Secrets
and Survival. She's going tobe speaking at the Jewish Book Festival
November 10th at 7:30pm at theMirowitz Performing Arts Center.
(01:35):
Karen, welcome to St. Louis inTune. I'm glad you're joining us
today.
Thank you Arnold. It's just apleasure to be here.
Now one of the things inreading the book was very interesting
to me is that your backgroundwas hidden from you and it was really
hidden from your mother. Andwhy did you attempt to investigate
this and then write the bookabout that?
(01:55):
The subject we're talkingabout I think made me really curious
right from the beginning. Iwas always asking questions. When
I was around 4 years old Iremember sitting in my kitchen, my
grandparents kitchen, and mygrandmother was chopping vegetables
for a poop and I asked herabout the green blue numbers on her
arm and she didn't blink. Shesaid to me, oh that's my phone number.
(02:22):
I had it tattooed thereespecially so I'd never forget my
phone number. And that's whatit was like constantly. Everything
I asked them about. Mygrandmother had a large red mark
on the side of her neck and Iwent once I'd learned a little bit
about what happened during theHolocaust, I asked her if the Nazis
(02:44):
did that to her and she toldme it was a birthmark. I didn't know
back Then that she had been inRavenstroff after Auschwitz, where
they did some pretty horribleexperiments on the inlet. And so
my grandparents were holdingeverything in behind it, the walls
(03:06):
of silence. And it wasn'tuntil Schindler's left my grandmother,
when the film came out, sheasked me to take her, not my mother
or her son. And it was a weeklater she asked me to take her out
to a restaurant. And we wereeating dinner and she started telling
(03:27):
me about Dr. Mengele and howhe would line the Auschwitz prisoners
up on the assembly plot forhours in the snow, and he would infect
them with his white blobs andwhip. And I had never. Nobody. She
had never told it to anybodybody before. And it was after I moved
(03:48):
to the US that I called herand asked her if she'd let me interview
her. And I flew back forvacation to Australia. And it was
over a week. She told me herstory. And on the very last day,
she said to me, I'm reallyworried that what happened to me
will happen again. Do youthink someone will want to know all
(04:11):
of this? And that's why Idecided to tell her story. And when
I made her the promise that Iwould tell her.
Now, how old were you when youasked her the question about what
was on her arm and what was onher neck?
I was around four, somewherebetween four and four and a half
years old. When I asked herabout the tattoo, the question on
(04:34):
the Nacra probably would havebeen about 10 or 11.
So she had confidence in yourather than your mother, to take
her to Schindler's List. Andyou must have had a close relationship
or a different relationshipthan your mother had with her. Or
maybe you were askingquestions and your mother was not,
(04:56):
or why did she ask you to do that?
That's incredible. That'sreally interesting. The answer to
that is that. And this isreally the focus of the. What I explore
in Irena's Gift. One of theother mysteries in my family was
that my grandmother adored me.She would. I stayed over once a week,
(05:16):
once every two weeks, and shewould take me to the beach. She would.
We would go to the ballet, toconcerts, to cafe together. And she
talked, always talked down tomy mother. She would laugh at her,
and I could never understandwhy. And so the central question
I explore in Irena's Gift whenI learned that how my grandmother
(05:38):
risked my life during her lifeover and over during the war to save
my mother, why did she dislikeher so much? And I think she, you
know, I don't know thisbecause she didn't tell me. But I
think I was the curious childin the family. I was. Always had
my nose stuck in a book. And Ithink she knew that I would later
(06:06):
on be curious enough to delveinto the bits of her story that she
wasn't able to tell, to tellinto those gray areas, and that I
would somehow figure out allthe things in her life that she hadn't
been able to describe toanybody else.
Wow. Now was your grandfatherstill alive at that point?
(06:29):
My grandfather died when I was21 years old. And so I knew nothing
about his life during the war.I didn't know that he. I knew he'd
been a lawyer in Poland beforethe war, but he wasn't able to practice
in the 1930s because of lawsthat were passed before Hitler came
to power banning Jews from alot of liberal professions. So I
(06:54):
knew he was a lawyer, but Ididn't until 2000, end of 2011, I
knew nothing about, I knewnothing about what he had done. Immediately
after the war, I discovered in2011 I was digging my grandparents
name and I stumbled upon avideo, a film that a Hollywood filmmaker
(07:18):
had taken. They had beenembedded with the US army as they
liberated Dachau. And I foundmyself staring at a 34 year old man
in a striped prisoner uniform.And when they asked him in English,
this is my grandfather. Wow.When they asked him in, why are you
(07:41):
here as a prisoner in Dachau?And my grandfather was atheist and
he said, because I'm a Jew.And that actually was the catalyst
to me really getting off mybutt and going to Poland to find
people who would save mymother during the war to piece together
the mystery of my family. The Bible?
(08:03):
No. And what are the odds ofthat happening that you actually
see your grandfather on a reelfrom the war? That's, that's so totally
strange. That's unbelievable.
It was unbelievable. And it'sa really, it's a. He speaks for 15
minutes.
Wow.
In English. And he describes.Now this is a man who I knew nothing
(08:24):
about really. And he speaksfor 15 minutes. One of the things
he, he did with the prisonersand my mother told me this later,
is that at night in thebarracks, he, because he was a lawyer,
what kept him alive was theprospect of bringing the criminals
to justice. And he would makethe men recount the names of and
(08:47):
their crimes. And so theyrepeated them over and over so that
after the war he wanted toprosecute them. And indeed after
the war, the U.S. army hiredhim to be administrative director
of the war crime branch, andhe was responsible for helping them
prepare for the Dachau andNuremberg trial.
(09:09):
But you never knew any of thatuntil 2011, right?
It took me 10 years toresearch and write Irina's Gift.
So during that period of time,I discovered the video in 2011, and
I did know a little bit frommy grandmother that after I interviewed
her a few years before that,that I think I interviewed her in
(09:33):
around 2003. And so I knew alittle bit that he. That they were
in Dachau and he was workingfor the US Army, But I really didn't
know the details. And nobodyin my family had ever seen some clip.
Wow, that really speaks tothe. You write about this. If we
seal off the past, how will weever know the truth? And I have some
(09:56):
words underlined, likegenerational trauma and silence and
hidden history and pain andsecrets. And I think about many in
that generation, even thatcame through the Depression that
were quiet about things thathappened in their past, whether they
were shameful, they wereashamed of what they did or what
(10:18):
happened or how they lived orwhat do you think this was? Or was
this too much trauma in theirlives that they were not able to
talk about it because of whatit would do internally to them? And
bringing it all back up, whatare your thoughts on that?
I think how you described itis absolutely correct. And it's obviously
(10:40):
very different for anybody whosurvived all their reasons for holding
things in. I think back then,people who went through the camp,
they couldn't believethemselves what had happened to them,
what happened to them. So howon earth could they explain it? Others.
But I think it's a theme, andI have worked with refugee. I do
(11:02):
work with a volunteer withrefugees. And it's a common theme
when you come to a new countryand you have to start over again
and find a job and often dosomething that you did differently
in your. In your home country.And you've lost everything. You have
to put the path behind you insome way and hold it in to just move
(11:23):
forward to survive. And backthen, certainly in Australia, there
were no therapists orcounselors to help survivors deal
with what with theirnightmares and their traumas. Now,
at least we're a little bitmore sensitive to that. But they
just, they did what they hadto do to move forward and create
(11:47):
a life for their children, abetter life for their children.
I think we're familiar withrefugees coming to the States after
the war. Many people here,probably in the United States, aren't
familiar as much that refugeeswent to Australia also. How many
Jewish refugees went toAustralia after the war?
Roughly right here acceptedproportionally to the population.
(12:13):
The second largest number ofrepublical survivors after Israel
they were before the war therewere. They had a quota of 35,000
visas for people afterKristallnacht trying to escape Europe.
Now that shut down, thatprogram shut down once Nazi Germany
(12:34):
invaded Poland and the warstarted. And my grandfather's two
sisters managed to get outmid-1939 to Australia, which is why
we and he ended up wanting togo there because his two sisters
were there. So the wholelarger population in Australia, although
(12:54):
is, and I may be getting thiswrong, may have to look it up later,
but it's around 110,000, whichis much smaller than the U.S. the
obviously the number of Jewishpeople in the U.S. but because they
lived in a high in two cities.I grew up in Melbourne. They were
(13:14):
in my grandparents home. Ijust remember drinking coffee with
lots of people who had numberson their arm, but none of them were
religious. Many of them wereatheists. And so I grew up thinking
of them more as Polish andHungarian, not as Jewish. It wasn't
(13:34):
until I moved to the US and Ilive in the Botan area and for the
first time I went surroundedby and worked with people who identified
as Jewish. So that was a bigshock for me because I'd never heard
of Hanukkah or Rosh Hashanahor anything like that until I moved
to the U.S. wow.
(13:55):
We're talking to KarenKirsten. She's the author of Irena's
Gift, an epic World War IImemoir of sisters, Secrets and survival.
She's going to be speakingNovember 10th at 7:30pm in the Jewish
Book Festival. And it's inremembrance of Kristallnacht and
Karen. Can you tease theaudience, our listeners, a little
(14:15):
bit about really what the bookis about? I know we've delved into
it a little bit and teasedthat a little bit, but give us a
little bit more detailsbecause you do go into some detail
about your mom and Canada andyour mother's real father.
Sure. There's a lot of hopeand love in Irena's Gift. It is in
the background of theHolocaust, but it's really about,
(14:37):
as Geraldine's book, aPulitzer Prize winning author said,
it's about complicated, messyfamily. It's really about what happened
when my mother asked her. Mymother received this letter from
a stranger when she was 32years old. And this man wrote to
her and said that during thewar as a law. She had been rescued
(14:59):
by a notorious Nazi SS officerand that her mother, Irina, had been
murdered. And if that wasn'tenough to give my mother a heart
attack, the mother said thatthe people she thought were her parents
were actually her aunts anduncles. And my mother kept all of
that secret. A teenager when Ifound out that the grandparents I
(15:23):
adored were not my biologicalgrandparents. So it's really about
the lies we tell to protectinnocent children and ourselves and
what happens when those liesunravel. That it's also a testament
to the power of empathy, hope,and love that binds us together through
(15:45):
the worst imaginablecircumstances, and that also resonates
through each kind. It's reallyalso about the heroes who saved my
mother and the power ofempathy and kindness to save Nicholas
Mars.
And it seemed like there was alittle empathy, albeit the passing
of some kind of monetary orfavorite, for the SS officer to allow
(16:12):
this all to happen. Correct?
Yeah. One thing that I lovewhen I talk to students in school,
I tell them the story of thisSS officer who saved my mother's
life. And I won't give toomuch away for you listeners, but
when the student asked me, Ithink he was a evil man or a good
(16:37):
man. And I think it taps intothe nuance in the book that history
and human behavior andidentity is nuanced and complicated.
That ensemble's officer killedwomen, tortured women, but he saved
my mother, a Jewish child. Andit. It also highlights when I talked
(17:00):
to you earlier about thecomplexity relationship my grandmother
had with my mother. My. Mygrandmother really is the hero in
the. What happened with theNazi SS officer did. And she is really
the one who saved my mother'slife, not him.
That's true. That's true. I'mgoing to correct myself on that.
(17:22):
What. Did your mom ever knowwho this person was who wrote this
letter or just come out of the blue?
Yeah, she had. She didn't.She. The address came from Canada,
this man in Canada, and heturned out to be her biological father.
That was probably another shock.
(17:42):
It was a horrendous shock. Myfather described it as he thought
my mother had cut herself forthe knife because she was screaming
in the kitchen when she gotthis letter. She had always felt
like she didn't belong to thefamily. They were reunited after
the war. My mother wasextracted from Poland and they lived
(18:02):
in Germany for a number ofyears while my grandfather was working
for the US Army. And they. Shewould have these nightmares that
they shut down for years ofhiding in dark rooms and of men in
jackboots. And they shut downall her questions about the war where
(18:23):
she was she. Because theytreated her so differently from her
brother. She felt like theyhad collected the wrong child from
Poland. And of course, whenthis letter arrived, that's where
she screamed this sense oforphanhood, which is really common
apparently with childsurvivors of the war, this sort of
(18:44):
blitz identity. Everythingmade sense to her when she got this
letter. And she described itto me as a weight just lifting off
her shoulders. Her shoulders,not her shoulders.
I can't imagine living a lifeand then finding out all these things.
Maybe you think that the lifethat you've lived is a lie or you've
(19:07):
been lied to. And how did yourmom deal with all of that?
My mom is a really bubbly,optimistic woman who always saw the
best in people. And despiteher emotional scars in the war, she
was the kind of person who wasalways planning hard act, delivering
(19:28):
casseroles when people weresick and picking up their kids from
school and. But she also hadthis sort of anger deep inside her.
And I think she really, I. Wesaw that behind closed doors, which
is that anger of holdingthings in is very typical for Holocaust
survivors and people whosurvived war. And I think she dealt
(19:51):
with by. Through reaching outto other people and being apathetic
towards other people. Shealso, and this is a very something
interesting in the book, shealso had a really strong faith. And
it wasn't initially a Jewishfaith she encountered growing up
(20:12):
a teenager, a Christian familyat her school who showed. Who hugged
her and showed her physicallove, the kind of love that she didn't
receive at home, being rapedby these damaged Holocaust providers.
And so she converted at 15years old. And that only alienated
her more from her atheistJewish Karen. So her faith community,
(20:38):
the church that eventually shebelonged to in her when she was in
her 30s, I think sustained heras well. And she did when I took
her back to Poland to reuniteher with some of the people that
she. That saved her during thewar. And the more she learned about
what had happened to her, shereconnected with her. She was later
(21:03):
in life.
And your mom is still alive?
Not unfortunately. She parkedaway in 2018.
You've uncovered a treasuretrove of things and you were able
to really provide some what Iwould say, possible closure for your
grandparents, a possibleclosure for your mom. What has that
(21:26):
done for you?
I spent 10 years studying thebest of human behavior and the worst
of human behavior. And to me,the people who saved my mother do
so extreme record forthemselves and for Me it the power
of that. I wouldn't be talkingto you if a few people hadn't have
(21:46):
shown kindness and empathytowards my mother instead of hate.
And that to me is has been themost inspirational thing of it in
the 10 years I've been workingon this project.
I'm trying to speak to thosepeople who would be listening to
this and wondering what will Iget out of this book when I read
(22:08):
it? What would you tell them?
I think they'll be inspired bythe power of love and the power of
empathy and kindness that theman who risked his life to smuggle
help smuggle my mother out ofthe Warsaw ghetto and then found
her parents a place to hideoutside of Warsaw, she didn't do
(22:33):
that. He did that inincredible risk to his own life.
And I think he didn't do itbecause they were Jewish. He just
did it because it was theright thing to do. And so I think
people will be inspired bythese everyday people. And he wasn't
the only one. There were otherpeople who risked their lives to
save my mother. And again,they didn't see my mother after her
(22:55):
mother was killed. They didn'tsee my mother as a Jewish child.
They saw my mother as a sickchild, a hungry child, a little girl
crying for her mother. Andthat kind of empathy is what we need
more of in the world today.And I think that's what will inspire
people when they read thisbook is the power of empathy and
(23:16):
kindness to bring us together,but also to save people's lives because
it saves my mother's life.
Well said. We're talking toKaren Kirsten. She is the author
of Arena's Gift, an epic WorldWar II memoir of sisters, Secrets
and Survival. She's going tobe speaking November 10th at 7:30pm
(23:37):
at the Jewish Book Festivaland it's entitled in remembrance
of Kristallnacht. You can alsofind out more about her on Karen
Kirsten.com K A R E N K I R st e n.com for the Jewish Book Festival.
You could go to jccstl.comKaren, thank you very much for your
time today and we appreciateyou being on St. Louis and tune.
(23:58):
Thank you, Arnold. It was anabsolute pleasure.
That's all for this hour andwe thank you for listening. If you've
enjoyed this episode, you canlisten to additional shows@st.luntune.com
Please consider leaving areview on Apple Podcasts, Podchaser
or your preferred podcastplatform. Your feedback helps us
reach more listeners andcontinue to grow. Want to thank Bob
Berthazel for our theme musicco host Mark Langston. And we thank
(24:21):
you for being a part of ourcommunity of curious minds. St. Louis
in tune is a production ofMotif Media Group and the US Radio
Network. Remember to keepseeking, keep learning, walk worthy
and let your light shine. ForSt. Louis in tune, I'm Arnold Str
Trickery.
What do you do if you find outthat the parents who raised you weren't
actually your parents and thelife that you grew up believing wasn't
exactly the truth? We're goingto find out more today on St. Louis
in Tune. Welcome to St. Louisin Tune and thank you for joining
(00:29):
us for fresh perspectives onissues and event with experts, community
leaders and everyday peoplewho make a difference in shaping
our society and world. I'myour host Arnold Stricker along with
co host Mark Langston. KarenKirsten is an Australian American
writer and Holocaust educatorwho speaks on the topics of hatred
and reconciliation around theworld. Her essay Searching for the
(00:50):
Nazi who Saved My Mother'sLife was selected by Narratively
as one of the best everstories and nominated for the best
American Essays. Her writinghas appeared in Salon.com the Week,
the Jerusalem Post, Boston'sNational Public Radio Station, the
Boston Herald, the ChristianPost, many, many more. And she was
raised in Australia by aHolocaust survivor mother and grandparents
(01:12):
who silenced her questionsabout extermination camps. Karen
lived among refugees who werehiding horrible secrets to reinvent
themselves and we're going totalk to her today about her book
Arena's Gift, an epic WorldWar II memoir of sisters, Secrets
and Survival. She's going tobe speaking at the Jewish Book Festival
November 10th at 7:30pm at theMirowitz Performing Arts Center.
(01:35):
Karen, welcome to St. Louis inTune. I'm glad you're joining us
today.
Thank you Arnold. It's just apleasure to be here.
Now one of the things inreading the book was very interesting
to me is that your backgroundwas hidden from you and it was really
hidden from your mother. Andwhy did you attempt to investigate
this and then write the bookabout that?
(01:55):
The subject we're talkingabout I think made me really curious
right from the beginning. Iwas always asking questions. When
I was around 4 years old Iremember sitting in my kitchen, my
grandparents kitchen, and mygrandmother was chopping vegetables
for a poop and I asked herabout the green blue numbers on her
arm and she didn't blink. Shesaid to me, oh that's my phone number.
(02:22):
I had it tattooed thereespecially so I'd never forget my
phone number. And that's whatit was like constantly. Everything
I asked them about. Mygrandmother had a large red mark
on the side of her neck and Iwent once I'd learned a little bit
about what happened during theHolocaust, I asked her if the Nazis
(02:44):
did that to her and she toldme it was a birthmark. I didn't know
back Then that she had been inRavenstroff after Auschwitz, where
they did some pretty horribleexperiments on the inlet. And so
my grandparents were holdingeverything in behind it, the walls
(03:06):
of silence. And it wasn'tuntil Schindler's left my grandmother,
when the film came out, sheasked me to take her, not my mother
or her son. And it was a weeklater she asked me to take her out
to a restaurant. And we wereeating dinner and she started telling
(03:27):
me about Dr. Mengele and howhe would line the Auschwitz prisoners
up on the assembly plot forhours in the snow, and he would infect
them with his white blobs andwhip. And I had never. Nobody. She
had never told it to anybodybody before. And it was after I moved
(03:48):
to the US that I called herand asked her if she'd let me interview
her. And I flew back forvacation to Australia. And it was
over a week. She told me herstory. And on the very last day,
she said to me, I'm reallyworried that what happened to me
will happen again. Do youthink someone will want to know all
(04:11):
of this? And that's why Idecided to tell her story. And when
I made her the promise that Iwould tell her.
Now, how old were you when youasked her the question about what
was on her arm and what was onher neck?
I was around four, somewherebetween four and four and a half
years old. When I asked herabout the tattoo, the question on
(04:34):
the Nacra probably would havebeen about 10 or 11.
So she had confidence in yourather than your mother, to take
her to Schindler's List. Andyou must have had a close relationship
or a different relationshipthan your mother had with her. Or
maybe you were askingquestions and your mother was not,
(04:56):
or why did she ask you to do that?
That's incredible. That'sreally interesting. The answer to
that is that. And this isreally the focus of the. What I explore
in Irena's Gift. One of theother mysteries in my family was
that my grandmother adored me.She would. I stayed over once a week,
(05:16):
once every two weeks, and shewould take me to the beach. She would.
We would go to the ballet, toconcerts, to cafe together. And she
talked, always talked down tomy mother. She would laugh at her,
and I could never understandwhy. And so the central question
I explore in Irena's Gift whenI learned that how my grandmother
(05:38):
risked my life during her lifeover and over during the war to save
my mother, why did she dislikeher so much? And I think she, you
know, I don't know thisbecause she didn't tell me. But I
think I was the curious childin the family. I was. Always had
my nose stuck in a book. And Ithink she knew that I would later
(06:06):
on be curious enough to delveinto the bits of her story that she
wasn't able to tell, to tellinto those gray areas, and that I
would somehow figure out allthe things in her life that she hadn't
been able to describe toanybody else.
Wow. Now was your grandfatherstill alive at that point?
(06:29):
My grandfather died when I was21 years old. And so I knew nothing
about his life during the war.I didn't know that he. I knew he'd
been a lawyer in Poland beforethe war, but he wasn't able to practice
in the 1930s because of lawsthat were passed before Hitler came
to power banning Jews from alot of liberal professions. So I
(06:54):
knew he was a lawyer, but Ididn't until 2000, end of 2011, I
knew nothing about, I knewnothing about what he had done. Immediately
after the war, I discovered in2011 I was digging my grandparents
name and I stumbled upon avideo, a film that a Hollywood filmmaker
(07:18):
had taken. They had beenembedded with the US army as they
liberated Dachau. And I foundmyself staring at a 34 year old man
in a striped prisoner uniform.And when they asked him in English,
this is my grandfather. Wow.When they asked him in, why are you
(07:41):
here as a prisoner in Dachau?And my grandfather was atheist and
he said, because I'm a Jew.And that actually was the catalyst
to me really getting off mybutt and going to Poland to find
people who would save mymother during the war to piece together
the mystery of my family. The Bible?
(08:03):
No. And what are the odds ofthat happening that you actually
see your grandfather on a reelfrom the war? That's, that's so totally
strange. That's unbelievable.
It was unbelievable. And it'sa really, it's a. He speaks for 15
minutes.
Wow.
In English. And he describes.Now this is a man who I knew nothing
(08:24):
about really. And he speaksfor 15 minutes. One of the things
he, he did with the prisonersand my mother told me this later,
is that at night in thebarracks, he, because he was a lawyer,
what kept him alive was theprospect of bringing the criminals
to justice. And he would makethe men recount the names of and
(08:47):
their crimes. And so theyrepeated them over and over so that
after the war he wanted toprosecute them. And indeed after
the war, the U.S. army hiredhim to be administrative director
of the war crime branch, andhe was responsible for helping them
prepare for the Dachau andNuremberg trial.
(09:09):
But you never knew any of thatuntil 2011, right?
It took me 10 years toresearch and write Irina's Gift.
So during that period of time,I discovered the video in 2011, and
I did know a little bit frommy grandmother that after I interviewed
her a few years before that,that I think I interviewed her in
(09:33):
around 2003. And so I knew alittle bit that he. That they were
in Dachau and he was workingfor the US Army, But I really didn't
know the details. And nobodyin my family had ever seen some clip.
Wow, that really speaks tothe. You write about this. If we
seal off the past, how will weever know the truth? And I have some
(09:56):
words underlined, likegenerational trauma and silence and
hidden history and pain andsecrets. And I think about many in
that generation, even thatcame through the Depression that
were quiet about things thathappened in their past, whether they
were shameful, they wereashamed of what they did or what
(10:18):
happened or how they lived orwhat do you think this was? Or was
this too much trauma in theirlives that they were not able to
talk about it because of whatit would do internally to them? And
bringing it all back up, whatare your thoughts on that?
I think how you described itis absolutely correct. And it's obviously
(10:40):
very different for anybody whosurvived all their reasons for holding
things in. I think back then,people who went through the camp,
they couldn't believethemselves what had happened to them,
what happened to them. So howon earth could they explain it? Others.
But I think it's a theme, andI have worked with refugee. I do
(11:02):
work with a volunteer withrefugees. And it's a common theme
when you come to a new countryand you have to start over again
and find a job and often dosomething that you did differently
in your. In your home country.And you've lost everything. You have
to put the path behind you insome way and hold it in to just move
(11:23):
forward to survive. And backthen, certainly in Australia, there
were no therapists orcounselors to help survivors deal
with what with theirnightmares and their traumas. Now,
at least we're a little bitmore sensitive to that. But they
just, they did what they hadto do to move forward and create
(11:47):
a life for their children, abetter life for their children.
I think we're familiar withrefugees coming to the States after
the war. Many people here,probably in the United States, aren't
familiar as much that refugeeswent to Australia also. How many
Jewish refugees went toAustralia after the war?
Roughly right here acceptedproportionally to the population.
(12:13):
The second largest number ofrepublical survivors after Israel
they were before the war therewere. They had a quota of 35,000
visas for people afterKristallnacht trying to escape Europe.
Now that shut down, thatprogram shut down once Nazi Germany
(12:34):
invaded Poland and the warstarted. And my grandfather's two
sisters managed to get outmid-1939 to Australia, which is why
we and he ended up wanting togo there because his two sisters
were there. So the wholelarger population in Australia, although
(12:54):
is, and I may be getting thiswrong, may have to look it up later,
but it's around 110,000, whichis much smaller than the U.S. the
obviously the number of Jewishpeople in the U.S. but because they
lived in a high in two cities.I grew up in Melbourne. They were
(13:14):
in my grandparents home. Ijust remember drinking coffee with
lots of people who had numberson their arm, but none of them were
religious. Many of them wereatheists. And so I grew up thinking
of them more as Polish andHungarian, not as Jewish. It wasn't
(13:34):
until I moved to the US and Ilive in the Botan area and for the
first time I went surroundedby and worked with people who identified
as Jewish. So that was a bigshock for me because I'd never heard
of Hanukkah or Rosh Hashanahor anything like that until I moved
to the U.S. wow.
(13:55):
We're talking to KarenKirsten. She's the author of Irena's
Gift, an epic World War IImemoir of sisters, Secrets and survival.
She's going to be speakingNovember 10th at 7:30pm in the Jewish
Book Festival. And it's inremembrance of Kristallnacht and
Karen. Can you tease theaudience, our listeners, a little
(14:15):
bit about really what the bookis about? I know we've delved into
it a little bit and teasedthat a little bit, but give us a
little bit more detailsbecause you do go into some detail
about your mom and Canada andyour mother's real father.
Sure. There's a lot of hopeand love in Irena's Gift. It is in
the background of theHolocaust, but it's really about,
(14:37):
as Geraldine's book, aPulitzer Prize winning author said,
it's about complicated, messyfamily. It's really about what happened
when my mother asked her. Mymother received this letter from
a stranger when she was 32years old. And this man wrote to
her and said that during thewar as a law. She had been rescued
(14:59):
by a notorious Nazi SS officerand that her mother, Irina, had been
murdered. And if that wasn'tenough to give my mother a heart
attack, the mother said thatthe people she thought were her parents
were actually her aunts anduncles. And my mother kept all of
that secret. A teenager when Ifound out that the grandparents I
(15:23):
adored were not my biologicalgrandparents. So it's really about
the lies we tell to protectinnocent children and ourselves and
what happens when those liesunravel. That it's also a testament
to the power of empathy, hope,and love that binds us together through
(15:45):
the worst imaginablecircumstances, and that also resonates
through each kind. It's reallyalso about the heroes who saved my
mother and the power ofempathy and kindness to save Nicholas
Mars.
And it seemed like there was alittle empathy, albeit the passing
of some kind of monetary orfavorite, for the SS officer to allow
(16:12):
this all to happen. Correct?
Yeah. One thing that I lovewhen I talk to students in school,
I tell them the story of thisSS officer who saved my mother's
life. And I won't give toomuch away for you listeners, but
when the student asked me, Ithink he was a evil man or a good
(16:37):
man. And I think it taps intothe nuance in the book that history
and human behavior andidentity is nuanced and complicated.
That ensemble's officer killedwomen, tortured women, but he saved
my mother, a Jewish child. Andit. It also highlights when I talked
(17:00):
to you earlier about thecomplexity relationship my grandmother
had with my mother. My. Mygrandmother really is the hero in
the. What happened with theNazi SS officer did. And she is really
the one who saved my mother'slife, not him.
That's true. That's true. I'mgoing to correct myself on that.
(17:22):
What. Did your mom ever knowwho this person was who wrote this
letter or just come out of the blue?
Yeah, she had. She didn't.She. The address came from Canada,
this man in Canada, and heturned out to be her biological father.
That was probably another shock.
(17:42):
It was a horrendous shock. Myfather described it as he thought
my mother had cut herself forthe knife because she was screaming
in the kitchen when she gotthis letter. She had always felt
like she didn't belong to thefamily. They were reunited after
the war. My mother wasextracted from Poland and they lived
(18:02):
in Germany for a number ofyears while my grandfather was working
for the US Army. And they. Shewould have these nightmares that
they shut down for years ofhiding in dark rooms and of men in
jackboots. And they shut downall her questions about the war where
(18:23):
she was she. Because theytreated her so differently from her
brother. She felt like theyhad collected the wrong child from
Poland. And of course, whenthis letter arrived, that's where
she screamed this sense oforphanhood, which is really common
apparently with childsurvivors of the war, this sort of
(18:44):
blitz identity. Everythingmade sense to her when she got this
letter. And she described itto me as a weight just lifting off
her shoulders. Her shoulders,not her shoulders.
I can't imagine living a lifeand then finding out all these things.
Maybe you think that the lifethat you've lived is a lie or you've
(19:07):
been lied to. And how did yourmom deal with all of that?
My mom is a really bubbly,optimistic woman who always saw the
best in people. And despiteher emotional scars in the war, she
was the kind of person who wasalways planning hard act, delivering
(19:28):
casseroles when people weresick and picking up their kids from
school and. But she also hadthis sort of anger deep inside her.
And I think she really, I. Wesaw that behind closed doors, which
is that anger of holdingthings in is very typical for Holocaust
survivors and people whosurvived war. And I think she dealt
(19:51):
with by. Through reaching outto other people and being apathetic
towards other people. Shealso, and this is a very something
interesting in the book, shealso had a really strong faith. And
it wasn't initially a Jewishfaith she encountered growing up
(20:12):
a teenager, a Christian familyat her school who showed. Who hugged
her and showed her physicallove, the kind of love that she didn't
receive at home, being rapedby these damaged Holocaust providers.
And so she converted at 15years old. And that only alienated
her more from her atheistJewish Karen. So her faith community,
(20:38):
the church that eventually shebelonged to in her when she was in
her 30s, I think sustained heras well. And she did when I took
her back to Poland to reuniteher with some of the people that
she. That saved her during thewar. And the more she learned about
what had happened to her, shereconnected with her. She was later
(21:03):
in life.
And your mom is still alive?
Not unfortunately. She parkedaway in 2018.
You've uncovered a treasuretrove of things and you were able
to really provide some what Iwould say, possible closure for your
grandparents, a possibleclosure for your mom. What has that
(21:26):
done for you?
I spent 10 years studying thebest of human behavior and the worst
of human behavior. And to me,the people who saved my mother do
so extreme record forthemselves and for Me it the power
of that. I wouldn't be talkingto you if a few people hadn't have
(21:46):
shown kindness and empathytowards my mother instead of hate.
And that to me is has been themost inspirational thing of it in
the 10 years I've been workingon this project.
I'm trying to speak to thosepeople who would be listening to
this and wondering what will Iget out of this book when I read
(22:08):
it? What would you tell them?
I think they'll be inspired bythe power of love and the power of
empathy and kindness that theman who risked his life to smuggle
help smuggle my mother out ofthe Warsaw ghetto and then found
her parents a place to hideoutside of Warsaw, she didn't do
(22:33):
that. He did that inincredible risk to his own life.
And I think he didn't do itbecause they were Jewish. He just
did it because it was theright thing to do. And so I think
people will be inspired bythese everyday people. And he wasn't
the only one. There were otherpeople who risked their lives to
save my mother. And again,they didn't see my mother after her
(22:55):
mother was killed. They didn'tsee my mother as a Jewish child.
They saw my mother as a sickchild, a hungry child, a little girl
crying for her mother. Andthat kind of empathy is what we need
more of in the world today.And I think that's what will inspire
people when they read thisbook is the power of empathy and
(23:16):
kindness to bring us together,but also to save people's lives because
it saves my mother's life.
Well said. We're talking toKaren Kirsten. She is the author
of Arena's Gift, an epic WorldWar II memoir of sisters, Secrets
and Survival. She's going tobe speaking November 10th at 7:30pm
(23:37):
at the Jewish Book Festivaland it's entitled in remembrance
of Kristallnacht. You can alsofind out more about her on Karen
Kirsten.com K A R E N K I R st e n.com for the Jewish Book Festival.
You could go to jccstl.comKaren, thank you very much for your
time today and we appreciateyou being on St. Louis and tune.
(23:58):
Thank you, Arnold. It was anabsolute pleasure.
That's all for this hour andwe thank you for listening. If you've
enjoyed this episode, you canlisten to additional shows@st.luntune.com
Please consider leaving areview on Apple Podcasts, Podchaser
or your preferred podcastplatform. Your feedback helps us
reach more listeners andcontinue to grow. Want to thank Bob
Berthazel for our theme musicco host Mark Langston. And we thank
(24:21):
you for being a part of ourcommunity of curious minds. St. Louis
in tune is a production ofMotif Media Group and the US Radio
Network. Remember to keepseeking, keep learning, walk worthy
and let your light shine. ForSt. Louis in tune, I'm Arnold Str
Trickery.
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