Behind the Scenes Minis: Belinfante and Chutz-POW!

It's Chutz-POW! week! Tracy and Holly discuss some of the details about Frieda Belinfante's life that didn't make it into Monday's episode, and talk about the importance of the Holocaust Center of Pittsburgh's comic book project at a time when there are fewer and fewer Holocaust survivors living to tell their stories.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hello, and welcome
to the podcast. I'm Holly Fry and I'm Tracy V.
Wilson and this is yet another one of our sort
of casual Friday minisods. Yeah, we talked this week about

(00:21):
Frieda Belinfonta, who is to me a remarkable and inspiring
woman to talk about for a number of reasons. One
of the things though, that I really really wanted to
mention in this this little minisode, is the way she
felt about her own sexual identity, because it's unusual and
wonderful in that she unlike many people. We often hear

(00:45):
stories of people who realize that they are not heterosexual,
or that they just feel different and they can't identify why,
and they go through a period of of questioning and
self doubt and trying to figure out if there is
something wrong with them, or if there is, you know,
why are they different from everyone else. Frieda never seemed
to experience this. She just accepted this is how I

(01:05):
feel about other people, this is who I've attracted to,
this is my place in the world. And she just
didn't go through that stre that you know, difficult journey
of self doubt about any of it, which is astonishing
for a woman in the early nine Yeah, when she
was living especially yeah she I mean even when there's
that documentary that I mentioned in the show, and it

(01:27):
was one of my sources called but I Was a
Girl and it's about her life, and they interview her sister,
Renee in that, and her sister is also very like,
oh yeah, everybody was in love with her, didn't matter
if they were a boy or a girl. All the
kids just flocked to her, And it seems like none
of them ever felt any sort of like oddness about
her being a lesbian. It was never something they even

(01:47):
talked about her question. They just were like, yeah, that's
freed to ye, which is really, like I said, it
was refreshing and surprising, and also I wish everyone walked
with that level of self confidence. Sure, yeah, I I
you know, I know because you were the person who
researched this episode, so like you have more of the
in depth knowledge than I do at this point. One

(02:08):
of the things that came up early in the episode
is how when she asked her father about religion, her
her dad was basically like read a lot and figure
out what makes sense to you rather than trying to
like prescribe any particular thing. And so I wonder if
that kind of mindset was colored all through their family

(02:29):
life and their upbringing, which I think would have made
it a little easier for a person to have that
level of self awareness and not as much like internal
conflict about it. Yeah, I think um. She mentioned in
in her long form interview she did late in life
a similar thing where she was talking to a woman

(02:49):
who had a different ideology from her, and they were
trying to understand each other's point of view, and she
was asking the woman questions and the woman was like, well,
I was told blah blah blah blah bla. And she
was like, no, I don't want to hear what you
were told. I want to know what you think and
feel about this subject, because to her, that was always
what guided her in life, which I think was very
much nurtured by both of her parents, but her father

(03:11):
in particular, like, you're smart enough, you can make your
way in the world. How do you think or feel
that's perfectly valid, which is just again it's a little
bit mind blowing. We don't meet many people in history
that have this level of complete comfort with their their
sexual identity so early on when it is counter to
what society would tell you as normal. Also, ma'am, she

(03:35):
was a cool lady I think about. She also mentioned
at one point, Um, it was another thing that didn't
make it into the episode, that she recognized that she
had a certain level of like addiction to danger, uh,
and that was sort of what drove her. And she
was like, I never wanted to like do illegal things

(03:55):
for the sake of being a criminal, but I did
want I was perfectly comfortable doing illegal things if I
thought I was doing something for what's right, And like
that was part of what drew her to the resistance,
was she was like, great, I can get all of
the adrenaline rush, and I also feel like I am
working for a very worthy cause. Cool. And she talked
about how music was sort of her one outlet that

(04:18):
didn't require her to kind of brush up against danger
to feel very um alive and emotional, because to her,
music could convey everything a human could possibly feel and
elevate it in a way that was really almost spiritual. Um.
But that she did recognize she had this tendency to
just be drawn to difficulty, almost like a moth to flame,

(04:39):
which is also interesting. Yeah, she's fascinating. She's the best. Um. Yeah,
when I got to that whole thing where she's talking
about their mission to set fire to the records office, Uh,
this goes back to what I was saying initially that
you know, she one of the other co conspirators involved
in that was a gay man and he did not

(05:02):
clearly grow up with the level of comfort with his
identity that she had, and she was like, he was
so capable and smart and he just needed somebody to
tell him, you're as good as anybody else to become
somebody really amazing. And it was interesting to me that
not only did she grow up with that like completely yep,
I am who I am, I know who I am,
and I'm good with it attitude, but she recognized when

(05:23):
other people were lacking it and needed her help, which
is sort of beautiful anyway. She's spectacular. Yeh, frieda forever Tracy.
I really really loved talking to the Hot Fou team
this week because I, as I mentioned in those interviews,
I am so charmed by Free, de bel and Fonta
and it's just lovely to get to talk to other

(05:45):
people similarly charmed by her story, and also people who
are working on a project that I think is so
important and such an important part of how we can
teach history, especially considering we have reached that sort of
critical moment related to the Holocaust when there are not
that many survivors left. Enough years have passed that the

(06:06):
people that made it through and lived very full and
wonderful lives have have passed on from old age and
in many cases so it's really really lovely, I think,
to have such a unique way to commemorate their lives
and to be able to share that story, especially with
kids who you know, do not have the benefit of,

(06:29):
you know, perhaps meeting with and speaking with survivors in person,
which will shift your perception of that whole thing in
a big way. For sure. If if anybody out there
has known anyone who has has been through that, it
made it made it so much more real for me.
The first time I met a survivor, and the way
that happened was very random, and it was when I

(06:52):
was working in a salon and we had um We
had a number of clients that we I worked in
the salon here in the South where we had a
clientele that consisted a lot of mature women who would
come in every week and get their shampoo set and
get their hair done, and that was just part of
their weekly ritual. And there was this one woman that

(07:13):
I had known for, you know, at that point, like
probably a year and a half, two years, and I
saw her every week, and one day she was paying
for her service, and her as she handed over her
I don't remember if it was cash or a card
or whatever, but her sleeve wrote up and I saw
her number, and it was just it sounds so silly,

(07:33):
but I had never met anyone who had been a
survivor up to that point. I was in my early
twenties still, but it really was very sobering. And then
she and I talked a lot, and she also had
a sister in law that also came to the salon
who had also been through it. It It turned out I
did not know that there were several women in that
group that came every single week and got their hair done,
that we're all survivors, and they all kind of had

(07:56):
their own little community here in Atlanta, So it was
I did not ever press them on it, but on
occasion we would discuss some of it as we got
to know each other better and became closer. UM, and
two of them ended up coming to my wedding. But
it really did sort of uh to me. That's one
of those touchstone moments in my life where I realized
that history is a real thing, Like you know it intellectually,

(08:17):
but to know it kind of in your soul is
a little bit of a different thing. Yeah. So that's
one of the many reasons that I want to champion
this project that the Holocaust Center of Pittsburgh does because
it's so again amazing and important, but also like we
we cannot afford to lose that history, oh for sure.
For sure. I think most of my experiences were in

(08:39):
a more formal setting, so it's like somebody coming to
our school to speak. UM. And then when I was
in college, I had a class that I think I've
talked about and maybe a behind the scenes before that
was half honored students and half people who were from
the Center for Creative Retirement at my university UM. And
so the the class was specifically talking about one specific

(09:03):
year post World War two, and so it was these
students who were in college mostly traditionally aged college students
in the class with uh, with people who had lived
through this history, and we're now taking some classes as
in the in their retirement, and so that was a
much smaller group. And somebody came to speak to the

(09:23):
class which was only like twenty of us instead of
us all being an all in a big auditorium. Um
So that was like a bit of a more personal experience. Yeah,
it's like I said, I it saddens me that we
are losing that oral history being readily accessible from survivors
as we age past it. But I'm I'm glad and

(09:44):
very thankful for the survivors who have taken time to
speak with us. Also, I feel like we should shout
out to Michael Bernstein, who was on the show at
one point after he wrote his book about um his
experience in Auschwitz as a child. I can't imagine what
it is to live through that and then you tell it. Uh,
that's got to have its own weight and gravity and

(10:05):
and pain and difficulty, because even most survivors lost a
great deal. Uh. So I'm so thankful, and I love
how passionate Marcel and Jackie and Bertie were about making
sure that these stories are not just told, but told
in a way that is new and fresh and engaging. Um,
we were lucky enough to get a rough of Freeda's

(10:25):
story as they were working on it, and it's told
in such an interesting way in terms of juxtaposing the
language of music with a visual narrative, and I cannot
wait for people to see it. So I hope everyone
orders it and enjoys it, because I also just love
comic books and comic book art, and I like any
time that it's used in a really interesting way. So again,

(10:46):
we're going to thank them a million times over. And
I hope that you guys enjoyed those interviews. Stuff you
missed in History Class is a production of I Heart
Radio is How Stuff Works. For more podcasts For my
heart Radio, visit the heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or
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