May 9, 2024 • 21 mins
I talk with Bettie Denny about her book, "In the Wake of Madness," which is not only historical and deeply personal, but has a lot to say about what's going on in the world today.
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(00:00):
Welcoming here in these studios. Theauthor of a new book called In the
Wake of Madness, My Families Escapefrom the Nazis, Betty Denny, is
here on news radio eleven ten kfaband Betty, it's great to have you
here with me. Scott, thanksfor having me. You are coming here
to Omaha for a book signing.We'll tell you all the details about that
(00:20):
in just a moment. But wheredo you come from? Oh my,
I come from New York City,where my parents landed when they escaped from
Nazi occupied Europe. A familiar refrain. Yes, and you know, not
only I mean, it's crazy thedynamic here. You had so many people
escape the Third Reich coming here toAmerica, seeing the Statue of Liberty being
(00:44):
welcomed into New York, and NewYork is one of the biggest hotbeds today
of this campus strife that a lotof people look at and say, you
got Jewish students fleeing campuses, threatenedand afraid. This is not what could
have been a imagined well page,you know, Scott, it wasn't Cinderella
Landa when they arrived either. Youknow, people have misconceptions about that,
(01:10):
and I think One of the thingsthat I learned from my historical research from
this book was how ubiquitous anti Semitismwas even at that time. And you
know, you have to remember thatif the Japanese hadn't bombed Pearl Harbor,
there's a good chance we wouldn't haveentered the war because there was a lot
of anti Semitic sentiment in the UnitedStates. And one of the images that
(01:34):
made a lasting impression on me whenI was doing my research is when I
came across this picture from a rallyat Madison Square Garden where members of the
German American Bund were bunt Bund andit was, you know, sort of
the Nazi Party basically in the UnitedStates, and they were having a rally
(01:56):
that filled Madison Square Garden people andup in the stage is this huge manner
of George Washington flanked you know,by swatstikas. It's just crazy making.
But I guess what I'm saying iswhen my parents came to the city,
they quickly learned that there was stillanti Semitism there and a lot of people,
(02:20):
especially who didn't want to enter thewar. When you look at some
of the students right now, youknow, whatever their message or whatever they
think their message is. Yeah,these are not people who were alive in
this timeframe that you're talking about.Their parents weren't alive in this timeframe.
You're talking about, where does thiscome from today? Well, I don't
(02:45):
know that I can answer that.I think it comes from a lot of
things. Unfortunately. I think thatanti Semitism is something that is always just
below the surface, and so whenyou have you know, when at the
start of the Israeli Gozl war,that that obviously just kind of brought it
(03:06):
bubbled it up. But I thinkthere's a lot of other things that work
here. Recently, just this morning, I heard that they've done some research
and have found that some of thepro Hamas people have actually started gathering materials
(03:28):
for these kind of protests the dayafter October seventh attack, you know.
So, I mean it's hard toit's hard to say exactly what's behind it,
but I think that I'm kind ofwith President Biden in this. I
really think that protests or what Americais about. When I was going to
(03:49):
school in the late sixties, Iwas involved in protests too. I think
there's nothing the matter with that,But people need to be able to talk.
We learn nothing from each other,and right now that isn't happening in
many parts of America on all kindsof different levels. Yeah, there's one
thing to protest. There's another thing. When we've got students here at George
(04:12):
Washington University calling for beheadings of schooladministrators if they don't divest from Israel and
whatever else. Some of these protestersare asking about that, that's obviously very
very different. And you're right interms of people just coming together and talking
about this, you know, someof that conversation, that debate, that
(04:33):
robust discussion is lost when you havethings like this and you got police coming
in there and encampments. I thinkthe problem is that too often we just
look at these things like it's ateam sport, you know, and you
get on one side or the other, and there's no nuance. And reality
isn't like that, you know,And and I am I don't think there's
(05:00):
anything the matter with criticizing an Israelipolicy. I think that's very different than
saying Israel shouldn't exist, you know, I mean those are two and completely
different things. There are Israelis whodon't necessarily agree with Netanyahu's policies. There
are Americans who don't necessarily agree withBiden or with Trump or whoever happens to
(05:21):
be president. That doesn't make youless, you know, of an American,
or less of an Israeli. Butbeing Jewish, you know, I
mean, should be a separate thingand is and obviously there are attachments because
there's a reason that Israel is anation today. I was amazed when I
(05:45):
did the research that the Evian Conferencethat I just barely remembered from my history
books in nineteen thirty eight, PresidentRoosevelt brought together thirty two nations from around
the world to tackle the Jewish refugeeproblem so that they could hopefully land in
other places. And time after time, country after country, they would say
(06:10):
things like, oh, we don'thave a Jewish problem, we don't want
to import one, or oh wehave enough of those people, or we
don't want intellectuals or bankers, Imean, and these were statements that were
made like out loud and formally.FDR didn't even come, he didn't send
his vice president. So basically,during that conference, out of the thirty
(06:33):
two nations, one nation stood up, and that was the Dominican Republic,
And to give you an example howcrazy the world is, the Dominican Republic
did that only because the year beforethey had had something called the Parsley Massacre.
They massacred a bunch of patients,including women and children, and they
(06:56):
had a very bad reputation in theworld stage, and this was one of
the ways to kind of seem morebenevolent. And they also thought this is
just so crazy. But they alsothought that happening Jews there would eventually intermarry
and help whiten the population. So, you know, this is the sort
of granular history than when you reallystart digging, you just realize how crazy
(07:19):
it is. Did you say widenwhiten? Thought? I thought you said
whiten make the population more white,right, That's well, that's I mean,
you know that's a plan. Isthat? Yeah? It was.
It was crazy, But the realityis they you know, they said that
they would take up to one hundredthousand refugees. They ended up I think
(07:39):
issuing something like five thousand visus.But my parents were among those that got
them, and I grew up alwayswondering how did a Dominican Republic passport help
save them? You know that madeno sense to me. I want to
ask you about your upbringing and whatyou learned from your parents and grandparents.
You know, this is what thisbook is about. The Wake of Madness.
(08:00):
My Family's Escaped from the Nazis.Betty Denny is with us and she
will be at the Bookworm right offninetieth and Center this Saturday from two to
four o'clock at the Bookworm for abook signing. And is there a presentation
involved with this? Yeah, I'mgoing to explain a little bit about the
genesis of this book, because honestly, my journey was pretty miraculous in and
(08:24):
of itself. Well, I'm goingto have you read your book in its
entirety. Next, Don Kenny,Well, well, we'll talk about some
of the themes and your experiences herein this book. Next. Scott Fordies
News Radio eleven ten Kate fa ourguest in the studio is Betty Denny and
her book in the Wake of Madness. My Family's Escaped from the Nazis is
(08:48):
out now and there's a book signingthis Saturday at the the Legendary Bookworm near
ninetieth and Center from two to fouro'clock this Saturday. And Betty. I
mean your book title, My FamiliesEscaped from the Nazis, How old were
you when you learned what your parentswent through? Well, believe it or
(09:11):
not, I was about forty fouryears old. I do believe it,
you know, I mean from thatgeneration. Yes, I mean, I
think, like many immigrants anytime,they really wanted to put the pass behind
them and focus on the future.I was born only four years after the
end of World War Two, soobviously I was conscious of the broad strokes.
(09:33):
I mean, I knew that theNazi had killed millions. I knew
that my parents had escaped. Iconsidered them the lucky ones. For many,
many years, I never considered themsurvivors of the Holocaust, because I
thought that was a term that youreserved for people who were in the death
camps, of the labor camps,people who have the blue numbers tattooed on
(09:58):
their arm. But as I Igot older, and especially as my mom
got older, and I realized thatI would lose these stories if I didn't
start asking more questions, I beganto realize how much their lives had just
been upended, how my dad's livelhoodwas taking away their citizenship stripped from them.
(10:20):
My mother's family dispersed all over theworld, heartache that I honestly had
never fully understood. I had anopportunity. I was on the radio for
eight years in Kansas City, andthey asked members of the media to come
over to the Truman Library in Independence, and our job throughout a few days
(10:41):
time would be to sit there andjust interview for posterity these veterans who had
been through World War Two, andoftentimes there would be a family member with
them, and I would start talkingto this total stranger, and within half
an hour's time, we're both intears. And I'd always look over at
this family member whose jaw was onthe floor, and afterwards had no idea.
(11:05):
Right we'd walk out of there,and you know, this son or
granddaughter whoever would say, I havenever heard this individual share stories like this.
They just didn't talk about it.So when you say, you know,
I knew my parents had something todo with it, but it wasn't,
(11:26):
you know, like every single dayyou know, in my in my
upbringing, it wasn't something that waspart of my childhood. So when you
say I was forty four and Istarted asking these questions. I absolutely believe
that, But how did you Itwas actually decades after that that I actually
sat down and did something. Sure, how did you start that conversation and
(11:46):
how was it received? Well,you know, my dad had died and
so my mom was eighty eight atthe time. She had me when she
was forty four, so it wasexactly half for age, and I think
I just started to ask her abouther childhood and we literally just I just
did an interview with her a littlebit every day and tried to start piecing
(12:11):
the stories together. It wasn't veryformal, and much to my surprise,
the stories started tumbling out. Shewasn't at all resistant, and I think
in part at that time it wasbecause it was a way to bring my
dad back, you know, totalk about their time together, even if
it was sometimes painful. But Ididn't have any way to corroborate her stories.
(12:35):
So for a long time, whenI thought about writing them, I
thought I'd have to write about themisfiction, because you know, I just
couldn't quite tell what was actually true. So I put them away for a
couple of decades until I had moretime to actually do historical research, and
I began to really see the historythat was unfolding around them. And God
(12:58):
blessed the Internet. You know,things changed a lot from that time I
got those stories to today today youcan get primary sources of all kinds.
I mean I looked at diaries,I looked at newspapers of the particular day,
a weather report, if I knewthere were someplace in a particular time.
So it really let me have afull understanding. And that's when I
(13:22):
really got to to appreciate what theywent through, and you know, honestly,
what all Jews went through. Andconsidering how crazy the times are today,
I always wondered why didn't people leave? You know, that was something
that I just couldn't quite understand.My grandfather, for example, had a
(13:48):
brother who had served as he hadin World War One. You know,
they fought for their country, forGermany, and he was proud of his
service and he didn't believe that,you know, the country would turn on
him in that way, and hestayed, you know, and no doubt
we know what happened to him,But it was it was kind of going
(14:13):
through that process, seeing how itwas sort of this slow process of taking
away this right or doing this thingyou know, limiting your movements. Oh
you can't do this, but youcan still do that. Oh no,
you can't do that anymore. Andit was it just the kind of thing
(14:33):
that people could talk themselves into believingcouldn't be permanent. You know, it
can't possibly get any worse. People, somebody will assassinate Hitler something, you
know, but the people will riseup and they will see the error of
their ways because it was so ridiculous. I mean, Jews in many in
(14:54):
most parts of Germany, Jews atthat point in time had really a similar
you know. I mean, theywere just part of the fabric. They
were doctors and lawyers and movie starsand you know, you name it.
So they didn't feel the oppression ofthe centuries before. They were really in
a good place. So it wasreally shocking. And you know, now
(15:18):
I sometimes have to ask myself,well, what would it take for me
to say I have to move,I have to leave my home? You
know, I mean it's really Ithink, just I don't know, more
intense than most people realize for immigrantsanywhere, because just to upbroog yourself like
(15:39):
that is not an easy thing todo. Before I tell you this,
you should realize that my son,who's fourteen years old in an eighth grader,
is an absolute ignoramus, just likehis father. But I think that
the sentiment that he spouted forth acouple of weeks ago that I quickly tried
to say, whoa, well,well let's talk about this. I think
that it is pretty rampant among youngerpeople right now, part of what we're
(16:00):
seeing here with these college protests.And he was just talking about his history
class, you know, his gradein history lagged a little bit. And
I said, what's going on?He goes, well, I don't know
why we got to know this stuff. This stuff happened years ago, sometimes
hundreds of years ago. Who cares? And I said, all right,
let's sit down here and talk aboutthis. I think that a lot of
(16:22):
what you see here is ignorance onparade among young people because and on this
one, I can almost hold handswith him. You try and conceive of
what happened under Hitler's Germany, andyou think there's no possible way that could
happen today. Well, the realityis things like that happen all over the
globe all the time. But lookingspecifically at this, there's no possible way
(16:45):
that could happen today. I'll askyou, do you think that we could
get to a point where there'd bea leader and followers that say, yeah,
this sounds perfectly reasonable to do somethinglike this. And why do I
not want to answer that question?I mean, I don't want my head
(17:06):
to go there, to be honestwith you, Sure, I don't think
it's you know, you would hopenot. You know, we're right.
I mean my parents wouldn't have thoughtso either, So I mean I'm mindful
of that. One of the thingsthat that disturbs me is, you know,
the way the people of Germany weresort of groomed over the course of
(17:30):
about twelve years, you know,so because Hitler began in nineteen thirty three,
he was burning books actually starting Maytenth and so two days from now
in ninth grade anniversary. Thanks youreally, So it was slow, but
over time people began to believe it, you know. And I worry because
(17:53):
the way things are today with socialmedia and the internet and how quickly things
can disseminate, you know, thatkind of that kind of propaganda can intensify
in a hurry. So it's it'shard to know. I believe that the
(18:15):
right kind of leadership can keep ittamped down, because I think that any
any kind of anti Semitism is kindof like the canary in the coal mine.
It's often the first thing that bubblesup, but it's usually not the
last. Once you get into amindset of othering people, you know,
(18:40):
then there's as was in Hitler's Germany, there was LGBTQ, plus you know,
there were the disabled. You know, there were a whole bunch of
people, Communists, Catholics, youknow, other people who started coming under
that same umbrella. So I youjust hate to see a country so divide,
(19:03):
right, Well, as you saidearlier, like we always got to
retreat to our own encampments. Butwhat's interesting to me is that you'll have
people retreat to their encampment and think, all right, I'm surrounded by like
minded people, and then they'll starttrying to divide up each other, like,
well, you and I agree onprobably ninety six percent of things,
but boy, there's a few percentagepoints here that are probably not even very
important. But let's find about thatfor a little bit and start dividing up
(19:26):
even further. I mean, wegot to find We've got to find ways
to make enemies out of potential friends, and I don't like seeing it.
We've seen in history what this kindof thing leads to, which leads me
to the last question here, Betty. Then I'll let you get back here
towards preparing for this event on Saturday. There are so many books about this
(19:48):
period in history, family perspectives andso forth. Why did you write this
one? Why does the world needthis one? Well, one of the
reasons that I think it's important isbecause, believe it or not, but
there aren't many Holocaust memoirs that dealwith the lucky survivors. Most of them
are about people who unfortunately had theirexperiences or survived the death camps or the
(20:11):
labor camp, or the labor camps, or from the perspectives of the soldiers
who liberated those camps. But myparents' story is really about not just their
escape because they're about halfway, you'reabout halfway through the book when they land
in New York. So it's alsoabout the immigration experience, the effects of
(20:33):
the diaspora, and I think allof those stories are very pertinent today.
The book is called In the Wakeof Madness, perfect title. In the
Wake of Madness My Families Escaped fromthe Nazis. The author of Betty Denny,
will be doing a presentation as wellas a book signing this Saturday afternoon
from two to four o'clock at theBookworm at ninetieth and Center. Betty,
(20:56):
it's great to have you back herein Omaha, and thank you very much
for spending time with us here today
Welcoming here in these studios. Theauthor of a new book called In the
Wake of Madness, My Families Escapefrom the Nazis, Betty Denny, is
here on news radio eleven ten kfaband Betty, it's great to have you
here with me. Scott, thanksfor having me. You are coming here
to Omaha for a book signing.We'll tell you all the details about that
(00:20):
in just a moment. But wheredo you come from? Oh my,
I come from New York City,where my parents landed when they escaped from
Nazi occupied Europe. A familiar refrain. Yes, and you know, not
only I mean, it's crazy thedynamic here. You had so many people
escape the Third Reich coming here toAmerica, seeing the Statue of Liberty being
(00:44):
welcomed into New York, and NewYork is one of the biggest hotbeds today
of this campus strife that a lotof people look at and say, you
got Jewish students fleeing campuses, threatenedand afraid. This is not what could
have been a imagined well page,you know, Scott, it wasn't Cinderella
Landa when they arrived either. Youknow, people have misconceptions about that,
(01:10):
and I think One of the thingsthat I learned from my historical research from
this book was how ubiquitous anti Semitismwas even at that time. And you
know, you have to remember thatif the Japanese hadn't bombed Pearl Harbor,
there's a good chance we wouldn't haveentered the war because there was a lot
of anti Semitic sentiment in the UnitedStates. And one of the images that
(01:34):
made a lasting impression on me whenI was doing my research is when I
came across this picture from a rallyat Madison Square Garden where members of the
German American Bund were bunt Bund andit was, you know, sort of
the Nazi Party basically in the UnitedStates, and they were having a rally
(01:56):
that filled Madison Square Garden people andup in the stage is this huge manner
of George Washington flanked you know,by swatstikas. It's just crazy making.
But I guess what I'm saying iswhen my parents came to the city,
they quickly learned that there was stillanti Semitism there and a lot of people,
(02:20):
especially who didn't want to enter thewar. When you look at some
of the students right now, youknow, whatever their message or whatever they
think their message is. Yeah,these are not people who were alive in
this timeframe that you're talking about.Their parents weren't alive in this timeframe.
You're talking about, where does thiscome from today? Well, I don't
(02:45):
know that I can answer that.I think it comes from a lot of
things. Unfortunately. I think thatanti Semitism is something that is always just
below the surface, and so whenyou have you know, when at the
start of the Israeli Gozl war,that that obviously just kind of brought it
(03:06):
bubbled it up. But I thinkthere's a lot of other things that work
here. Recently, just this morning, I heard that they've done some research
and have found that some of thepro Hamas people have actually started gathering materials
(03:28):
for these kind of protests the dayafter October seventh attack, you know.
So, I mean it's hard toit's hard to say exactly what's behind it,
but I think that I'm kind ofwith President Biden in this. I
really think that protests or what Americais about. When I was going to
(03:49):
school in the late sixties, Iwas involved in protests too. I think
there's nothing the matter with that,But people need to be able to talk.
We learn nothing from each other,and right now that isn't happening in
many parts of America on all kindsof different levels. Yeah, there's one
thing to protest. There's another thing. When we've got students here at George
(04:12):
Washington University calling for beheadings of schooladministrators if they don't divest from Israel and
whatever else. Some of these protestersare asking about that, that's obviously very
very different. And you're right interms of people just coming together and talking
about this, you know, someof that conversation, that debate, that
(04:33):
robust discussion is lost when you havethings like this and you got police coming
in there and encampments. I thinkthe problem is that too often we just
look at these things like it's ateam sport, you know, and you
get on one side or the other, and there's no nuance. And reality
isn't like that, you know,And and I am I don't think there's
(05:00):
anything the matter with criticizing an Israelipolicy. I think that's very different than
saying Israel shouldn't exist, you know, I mean those are two and completely
different things. There are Israelis whodon't necessarily agree with Netanyahu's policies. There
are Americans who don't necessarily agree withBiden or with Trump or whoever happens to
(05:21):
be president. That doesn't make youless, you know, of an American,
or less of an Israeli. Butbeing Jewish, you know, I
mean, should be a separate thingand is and obviously there are attachments because
there's a reason that Israel is anation today. I was amazed when I
(05:45):
did the research that the Evian Conferencethat I just barely remembered from my history
books in nineteen thirty eight, PresidentRoosevelt brought together thirty two nations from around
the world to tackle the Jewish refugeeproblem so that they could hopefully land in
other places. And time after time, country after country, they would say
(06:10):
things like, oh, we don'thave a Jewish problem, we don't want
to import one, or oh wehave enough of those people, or we
don't want intellectuals or bankers, Imean, and these were statements that were
made like out loud and formally.FDR didn't even come, he didn't send
his vice president. So basically,during that conference, out of the thirty
(06:33):
two nations, one nation stood up, and that was the Dominican Republic,
And to give you an example howcrazy the world is, the Dominican Republic
did that only because the year beforethey had had something called the Parsley Massacre.
They massacred a bunch of patients,including women and children, and they
(06:56):
had a very bad reputation in theworld stage, and this was one of
the ways to kind of seem morebenevolent. And they also thought this is
just so crazy. But they alsothought that happening Jews there would eventually intermarry
and help whiten the population. So, you know, this is the sort
of granular history than when you reallystart digging, you just realize how crazy
(07:19):
it is. Did you say widenwhiten? Thought? I thought you said
whiten make the population more white,right, That's well, that's I mean,
you know that's a plan. Isthat? Yeah? It was.
It was crazy, But the realityis they you know, they said that
they would take up to one hundredthousand refugees. They ended up I think
(07:39):
issuing something like five thousand visus.But my parents were among those that got
them, and I grew up alwayswondering how did a Dominican Republic passport help
save them? You know that madeno sense to me. I want to
ask you about your upbringing and whatyou learned from your parents and grandparents.
You know, this is what thisbook is about. The Wake of Madness.
(08:00):
My Family's Escaped from the Nazis.Betty Denny is with us and she
will be at the Bookworm right offninetieth and Center this Saturday from two to
four o'clock at the Bookworm for abook signing. And is there a presentation
involved with this? Yeah, I'mgoing to explain a little bit about the
genesis of this book, because honestly, my journey was pretty miraculous in and
(08:24):
of itself. Well, I'm goingto have you read your book in its
entirety. Next, Don Kenny,Well, well, we'll talk about some
of the themes and your experiences herein this book. Next. Scott Fordies
News Radio eleven ten Kate fa ourguest in the studio is Betty Denny and
her book in the Wake of Madness. My Family's Escaped from the Nazis is
(08:48):
out now and there's a book signingthis Saturday at the the Legendary Bookworm near
ninetieth and Center from two to fouro'clock this Saturday. And Betty. I
mean your book title, My FamiliesEscaped from the Nazis, How old were
you when you learned what your parentswent through? Well, believe it or
(09:11):
not, I was about forty fouryears old. I do believe it,
you know, I mean from thatgeneration. Yes, I mean, I
think, like many immigrants anytime,they really wanted to put the pass behind
them and focus on the future.I was born only four years after the
end of World War Two, soobviously I was conscious of the broad strokes.
(09:33):
I mean, I knew that theNazi had killed millions. I knew
that my parents had escaped. Iconsidered them the lucky ones. For many,
many years, I never considered themsurvivors of the Holocaust, because I
thought that was a term that youreserved for people who were in the death
camps, of the labor camps,people who have the blue numbers tattooed on
(09:58):
their arm. But as I Igot older, and especially as my mom
got older, and I realized thatI would lose these stories if I didn't
start asking more questions, I beganto realize how much their lives had just
been upended, how my dad's livelhoodwas taking away their citizenship stripped from them.
(10:20):
My mother's family dispersed all over theworld, heartache that I honestly had
never fully understood. I had anopportunity. I was on the radio for
eight years in Kansas City, andthey asked members of the media to come
over to the Truman Library in Independence, and our job throughout a few days
(10:41):
time would be to sit there andjust interview for posterity these veterans who had
been through World War Two, andoftentimes there would be a family member with
them, and I would start talkingto this total stranger, and within half
an hour's time, we're both intears. And I'd always look over at
this family member whose jaw was onthe floor, and afterwards had no idea.
(11:05):
Right we'd walk out of there,and you know, this son or
granddaughter whoever would say, I havenever heard this individual share stories like this.
They just didn't talk about it.So when you say, you know,
I knew my parents had something todo with it, but it wasn't,
(11:26):
you know, like every single dayyou know, in my in my
upbringing, it wasn't something that waspart of my childhood. So when you
say I was forty four and Istarted asking these questions. I absolutely believe
that, But how did you Itwas actually decades after that that I actually
sat down and did something. Sure, how did you start that conversation and
(11:46):
how was it received? Well,you know, my dad had died and
so my mom was eighty eight atthe time. She had me when she
was forty four, so it wasexactly half for age, and I think
I just started to ask her abouther childhood and we literally just I just
did an interview with her a littlebit every day and tried to start piecing
(12:11):
the stories together. It wasn't veryformal, and much to my surprise,
the stories started tumbling out. Shewasn't at all resistant, and I think
in part at that time it wasbecause it was a way to bring my
dad back, you know, totalk about their time together, even if
it was sometimes painful. But Ididn't have any way to corroborate her stories.
(12:35):
So for a long time, whenI thought about writing them, I
thought I'd have to write about themisfiction, because you know, I just
couldn't quite tell what was actually true. So I put them away for a
couple of decades until I had moretime to actually do historical research, and
I began to really see the historythat was unfolding around them. And God
(12:58):
blessed the Internet. You know,things changed a lot from that time I
got those stories to today today youcan get primary sources of all kinds.
I mean I looked at diaries,I looked at newspapers of the particular day,
a weather report, if I knewthere were someplace in a particular time.
So it really let me have afull understanding. And that's when I
(13:22):
really got to to appreciate what theywent through, and you know, honestly,
what all Jews went through. Andconsidering how crazy the times are today,
I always wondered why didn't people leave? You know, that was something
that I just couldn't quite understand.My grandfather, for example, had a
(13:48):
brother who had served as he hadin World War One. You know,
they fought for their country, forGermany, and he was proud of his
service and he didn't believe that,you know, the country would turn on
him in that way, and hestayed, you know, and no doubt
we know what happened to him,But it was it was kind of going
(14:13):
through that process, seeing how itwas sort of this slow process of taking
away this right or doing this thingyou know, limiting your movements. Oh
you can't do this, but youcan still do that. Oh no,
you can't do that anymore. Andit was it just the kind of thing
(14:33):
that people could talk themselves into believingcouldn't be permanent. You know, it
can't possibly get any worse. People, somebody will assassinate Hitler something, you
know, but the people will riseup and they will see the error of
their ways because it was so ridiculous. I mean, Jews in many in
(14:54):
most parts of Germany, Jews atthat point in time had really a similar
you know. I mean, theywere just part of the fabric. They
were doctors and lawyers and movie starsand you know, you name it.
So they didn't feel the oppression ofthe centuries before. They were really in
a good place. So it wasreally shocking. And you know, now
(15:18):
I sometimes have to ask myself,well, what would it take for me
to say I have to move,I have to leave my home? You
know, I mean it's really Ithink, just I don't know, more
intense than most people realize for immigrantsanywhere, because just to upbroog yourself like
(15:39):
that is not an easy thing todo. Before I tell you this,
you should realize that my son,who's fourteen years old in an eighth grader,
is an absolute ignoramus, just likehis father. But I think that
the sentiment that he spouted forth acouple of weeks ago that I quickly tried
to say, whoa, well,well let's talk about this. I think
that it is pretty rampant among youngerpeople right now, part of what we're
(16:00):
seeing here with these college protests.And he was just talking about his history
class, you know, his gradein history lagged a little bit. And
I said, what's going on?He goes, well, I don't know
why we got to know this stuff. This stuff happened years ago, sometimes
hundreds of years ago. Who cares? And I said, all right,
let's sit down here and talk aboutthis. I think that a lot of
(16:22):
what you see here is ignorance onparade among young people because and on this
one, I can almost hold handswith him. You try and conceive of
what happened under Hitler's Germany, andyou think there's no possible way that could
happen today. Well, the realityis things like that happen all over the
globe all the time. But lookingspecifically at this, there's no possible way
(16:45):
that could happen today. I'll askyou, do you think that we could
get to a point where there'd bea leader and followers that say, yeah,
this sounds perfectly reasonable to do somethinglike this. And why do I
not want to answer that question?I mean, I don't want my head
(17:06):
to go there, to be honestwith you, Sure, I don't think
it's you know, you would hopenot. You know, we're right.
I mean my parents wouldn't have thoughtso either, So I mean I'm mindful
of that. One of the thingsthat that disturbs me is, you know,
the way the people of Germany weresort of groomed over the course of
(17:30):
about twelve years, you know,so because Hitler began in nineteen thirty three,
he was burning books actually starting Maytenth and so two days from now
in ninth grade anniversary. Thanks youreally, So it was slow, but
over time people began to believe it, you know. And I worry because
(17:53):
the way things are today with socialmedia and the internet and how quickly things
can disseminate, you know, thatkind of that kind of propaganda can intensify
in a hurry. So it's it'shard to know. I believe that the
(18:15):
right kind of leadership can keep ittamped down, because I think that any
any kind of anti Semitism is kindof like the canary in the coal mine.
It's often the first thing that bubblesup, but it's usually not the
last. Once you get into amindset of othering people, you know,
(18:40):
then there's as was in Hitler's Germany, there was LGBTQ, plus you know,
there were the disabled. You know, there were a whole bunch of
people, Communists, Catholics, youknow, other people who started coming under
that same umbrella. So I youjust hate to see a country so divide,
(19:03):
right, Well, as you saidearlier, like we always got to
retreat to our own encampments. Butwhat's interesting to me is that you'll have
people retreat to their encampment and think, all right, I'm surrounded by like
minded people, and then they'll starttrying to divide up each other, like,
well, you and I agree onprobably ninety six percent of things,
but boy, there's a few percentagepoints here that are probably not even very
important. But let's find about thatfor a little bit and start dividing up
(19:26):
even further. I mean, wegot to find We've got to find ways
to make enemies out of potential friends, and I don't like seeing it.
We've seen in history what this kindof thing leads to, which leads me
to the last question here, Betty. Then I'll let you get back here
towards preparing for this event on Saturday. There are so many books about this
(19:48):
period in history, family perspectives andso forth. Why did you write this
one? Why does the world needthis one? Well, one of the
reasons that I think it's important isbecause, believe it or not, but
there aren't many Holocaust memoirs that dealwith the lucky survivors. Most of them
are about people who unfortunately had theirexperiences or survived the death camps or the
(20:11):
labor camp, or the labor camps, or from the perspectives of the soldiers
who liberated those camps. But myparents' story is really about not just their
escape because they're about halfway, you'reabout halfway through the book when they land
in New York. So it's alsoabout the immigration experience, the effects of
(20:33):
the diaspora, and I think allof those stories are very pertinent today.
The book is called In the Wakeof Madness, perfect title. In the
Wake of Madness My Families Escaped fromthe Nazis. The author of Betty Denny,
will be doing a presentation as wellas a book signing this Saturday afternoon
from two to four o'clock at theBookworm at ninetieth and Center. Betty,
(20:56):
it's great to have you back herein Omaha, and thank you very much
for spending time with us here today
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