Daughters of Absence: Transforming a Legacy of Loss

by Unknown

  When I started connecting World War II history with my not having grandparents, I wondered why the Americans had not rescued them. One of the few stories my mother did relate is how she believed her father, who had saved her life by obtaining false documents for her, was coming to rescue her at the end of the war. When she saw the American planes flying over the German forced labor camp, my mother figured her heroic father had joined the allied forces.

  Since we did not want Mother to relive the war years, it was an unspoken rule to shield her from movies and television shows about World War II. Instead of war movies, Mother made sure that we watched love stories. She had grown up on these classics and conveyed the joy of watching the romantic scenes to her daughter. I remember sitting by her many Sunday afternoons looking at first kisses and confessions of amour. I believe that watching those tales of love always helped mother escape the harsh reality of family losses and reminded her of happy prewar moments when she went to the movies with her girlfriends.

  My mother reminisced about how much she enjoyed watching Shirley Temple films in her youth. She herself was called “Shirley Temple” by an American friend in Detroit because of her curly locks. Years later, she delighted in meeting my brother’s next-door neighbor over the terrace divide because he was none other than Shirley Temple’s son. Mother beamed while telling him, “I grew up in Poland watching your mother on the screen.” I could not help thinking that images of that child star also helped my mother through the terrible war years.

  As a teenager, I fantasized about fighting and killing Nazis. Kill one for the dead grandparents we never knew. Kill another for our parents’ nightmarish memories and lifelong anxieties.

  I was fascinated with angst films about “the war,” searching the screen for positive Jewish characters I could identify with in my own life. Millie Perkins in The Diary of Anne Frank (1959) and Rod Steiger in The Pawnbroker (1965) were obvious favorites. While watching the 1966 Academy Awards ceremony in my college dorm, I sobbed tears of disappointment when Lee Marvin’s hilarious portrayal of a drunken cowboy in Cat Ballou beat Rod Steiger’s riveting performance as a haunted Holocaust survivor in The Pawnbroker for best actor. I felt personally betrayed.

  Watching Roots in 1977 and Holocaust in 1978, I became intrigued about my own roots. During a 1979 Thanksgiving visit to Detroit, I leafed through Lujan Dobroszycki and Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett’s Image before My Eyes, a photo essay book about Polish-Jewish life between the wars. A burning desire to explore my family’s past was kindled. After rereading Leon Uris’ Mila 18, a book on the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, I felt struck to make a film about Jewish resistance against the Nazis, a topic that became the focus of my life’s work.

  I dropped my legal-lobbying career advocating Native American treaty rights to make a movie about unknown stories of Jewish partisans. I formed a nonprofit foundation, giving it my grandparents’ name, Ciesla, to keep the memory of the family name alive. The uncle who had survived the war as Dudek Ciesla, and had become one very successful David Chase in America, provided the seed money for my “roots” film.

  My mother, who had successfully shielded us from her war stories, was horrified by my desire to explore the forbidden topic. Objecting vehemently to my career change, she claimed her hold over the painful memories. She was claiming her perfect right to control her memories as well as my knowledge of them. But I was determined that opening the Pandora’s box of those memories was exactly the path I needed to follow to grasp her pain. And, possibly, to lessen the inherited guilt of being the child of a survivor.

  My abrupt and passionate decision to make a movie about Jewish resistance was not so unusual. A pattern had emerged all over the world: artistically minded children of Holocaust survivors chose to document the Holocaust on film before the survivors died. Some, like me, never heard detailed tales about the war, while others grew up with such tales as their bedtime stories. An international group of Jewish filmmakers was motivated to document their parents’ past or an aspect of the Holocaust that ordinarily would have been ignored.

  More often than not, we had only Hollywood’s images of the war with the many stories of suicidal and dysfunctional survivors. Writers, who themselves had not experienced the Holocaust firsthand, seem to believe such horrid experiences could only produce absolute madness or the desire to commit suicide, especially in women. This ubiquitous portrayal perpetuates the literary and cinematic image of the Jew as helpless victim. While the leading female Holocaust survivors in both Sophie’s Choice (1982) and Enemies, a Love Story (1989) kill themselves rather than endure living with painful memories, in The Pawnbroker, Rod Steiger, haunted by his memories and barely functioning in the real world, remains among the living. Israeli films also reinforce this stereotype by depicting female Holocaust survivors as hopelessly meshuggeneh. In a Jewish nation, the only haven for Jews during and after the war, such a persona belittles the significant contribution survivors have made to Israel.

  Fictitious melodramas may be sensational, and perhaps commercially successful, but the more mundane stories of the Holocaust survivors who picked up the pieces of their lives after the war are the true dramas. Surely, survivors had emotional difficulty coping with their horrific experiences. There is no way to be exposed to such massive trauma without scars. But what is incredible is that thousands upon thousands of Holocaust survivors started new lives by immediately finding mates and starting families in faraway lands like America, Australia, and Israel, or among the ruins of war-torn Europe, especially Germany.

  In fact, my role model for changing careers was my own mother, who began painting colorful and life-affirming abstract expressionist works after her children went to college. She claimed, “Each stroke was for one of the six million,” in paintings containing beautiful images. My uncle, an Auschwitz survivor who became a very successful businessman and philanthropist, was another inspiring example for me.

  I also had other positive role models growing up among my parents’ European friends. Many of them were survivors who had made lives for themselves as professors, psychiatrists, businessmen, and doctors. What I saw in my own mother, my relatives, and my mother’s survivor friends were vibrant women and men with sad pasts, but a strong drive to raise their children and persevere in spite of their experiences.

  For me they were and always will remain an inspiration.

  I believe that film is the most vivid conveyor of culture and imagery in our society. In today’s world we often learn more from the visual imagery of movies and television than from the written word. That is why I am so concerned about how the Holocaust in general, and the survivors in particular, are portrayed on screen.

  This concern motivated me to make a movie about the unexplored topic of Jewish resistance against the Nazis. Impressed with Josh Waletzky’s talent in directing the film version of Image before My Eyes (1980), I asked him to direct this documentary on Jewish resistance. My original intention was to explore the unfair question, “Why didn’t Jews fight back?” Waletzky and I discovered that the real question was, “How did they resist while facing such crushing odds?” The premiere of Partisans of Vilna (1986) at the Berlin Film Festival was poetic justice—seeing the Ciesla name on the screen in the belly of the beast.

  My Ph.D.-like pursuit of knowledge about the Holocaust made me more aware of the liberties taken in popular literature and films about it. Leon Uris’ books and the mini-series, Holocaust, contributed greatly to general American awareness of World War II horrors. And although these works personally inspired exploration of my own “roots,” I am wary of most fictionalized depictions of the period because they usually contain gross inaccuracies that are mistaken for fact. Researching Partisans of Vilna, I quickly realized that the literary license Uris took in plotting Mila 18—like the “gentile” Polish woman so valiantly aiding her lover, the Jewish resistance leader—was contrary to the reality: too few non-Jews assisted the Jewish freedom fighters in Warsaw, Vilna, or anywhere else in Europe.


  Many viewers of Partisans of Vilna were moved by the aging witnesses; the partisans’ demeanor reminded audience members of their own Yiddish-speaking grandparents. Ironically, poet Abba Kovner, the leader of the Jewish resistance in the Vilna ghetto and the chief witness in Partisans of Vilna, refused at first to be filmed because he thought people would not believe such old-looking survivors had been resistance fighters. But after seeing the oral testimonies interspersed in the movie, Reds, Kovner agreed that only eyewitnesses, even forty years after the war, could tell the stories.

  The public was impressed that “everyday, regular folk,” so unlike the Rambo and Schwarzenegger types of Hollywood movies, committed heroic acts. In fact, women’s truths can be stronger than such macho fiction. There are depictions of strong-willed and courageous political women in Partisans of Vilna. During World War II, a courageous female courier, Vitka Kempner (no relation to author), led the first act of armed Jewish resistance in Eastern Europe. With two male comrades, she smuggled homemade bombs out of the Vilna ghetto and planted them on railroad tracks. When a German train was blown up, her Jewish resistance organization, worried about Nazi retaliation in the Vilna ghetto, could not acknowledge the feat. A Polish group had the chutzpa to claim responsibility and the accompanying glory. Risking their lives as couriers and partisans during the war, these female underground fighters went on to become a psychologist, an Israeli Parliament member, a shopkeeper, and a school teacher.

  The present-day emphasis on Holocaust education in schools, and the success of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, has created a climate more sensitive to less sensational and more realistic portraits of Holocaust survivors. In America we are finally able to embrace the lessons of the Holocaust and not shy away from the pain of the survivors or feel guilty about being spared their horrible experiences.

  Making movies on Holocaust subjects is not the exclusive province of the second generation born of the ashes, but it fulfills a psychological need in us to commemorate the dead. Maybe if I had heard war stories growing up I never would have chosen to examine what happened during the Holocaust. To make up for the loss of our families, we create celluloid substitutes that help fill in the gaps.

  As I was finishing this essay a familiar call came—my mother telephoning me to watch an old-time romance, this one starring Kirk Douglas, Kim Hunter, and Walter Matthau, on television. As the credits rolled, we compared notes about the movie’s sad ending. She recalled how we had often watched great Hollywood love stories together while I was growing up, and how those will always be her favorites. Kisses on the silver screen still remain the “great escape” from wartime memories. No wonder I make movies to comprehend the pain of my mother’s past.

  I, the granddaughter of Helen Ciesla, needed to unlock the dark past. And in our family, my brother, Jonathan, was given the middle name, Leon, for our murdered grandfather, just as I was given the middle name, Helen, after our maternal grandmother. And when he became a father, Jonathan gave his middle daughter, Delaney, the middle name, Ciesla, to honor our grandparents who perished without our ever having known them.

  AVIVA KEMPNER, a writer and filmmaker, produced and co-wrote Partisans of Vilna. She produced, wrote, and directed The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg, which was awarded top honors by the National Society of Film Critics, the National Board of Review, the New York Film Critics Circle, and Broadcast Film Critics Association.

  Ms. Kempner is a recipient of the 1996 Guggenheim Fellowship for filmmaking. She writes film criticism and feature articles for numerous publications, including The Boston Globe, The Forward, Washington Jewish Week, and the Washington Post.

  Chapter 8: Family Mythology by Sylvia Goldberg

  Standing: Leo Laufer, brother; Janina Laufer, mother; Sylvia Laufer Goldberg; Peter Goldberg, husband. Seated: Yoni, Uri, and Eli.

  Joseph Laufer, father

  Dedicated to

  the beloved memory of my father, Joseph Laufer,

  and in honor of my dear mother, Janina Laufer

  Sylvia Goldberg, my dear childhood friend, says so much in what she cannot allow herself to say. Her strength and courage shine through every unspoken word. –MW

  “Speech after long silence; it is right.”

  W. B. Yeats

  I had no idea why, one day last spring, I found myself visiting the Goethe Institute. I did not remember ever seeing it there, before I passed it, walking down Seventh Street in Washington, D.C., where I live. I knew, of course, what it was, having seen ads many years ago in the Times announcing German cultural events taking place at the larger New York branch. On this particular day I passed it by once before retracing my steps. There was certainly a force that drew me again to its entrance. I did not allow myself time to reject the pull. Once inside I was chilled. I felt anxious. It seemed to me that I was actually visiting Germany. What did I come for? What was I planning to find? All around me in the lobby were paintings, but it felt wrong to stop and admire them. Anywhere else I would likely have been drawn to contemplate the colors and forms. Yet, I was not in search of German culture. Not enough time it seemed could ever pass for that sort of quest.

  I would have exited then had it not been for that offer of assistance from a young woman at the information desk. She was no native Washingtonian, gauging by the unmistakable Teutonic clip to her speech. So now I cast about for a response, not wishing to appear rude by departing wordlessly. What did I really need? Nothing I knew about before the instant she asked. And then suddenly it crystallized—I could use a city map of Munich, startling myself even as I was forming the words. Secretly, I was pleased at my quick thinking. This polite request apparently was one she was eager to fulfill. She even volunteered to help me acquire all manner of useful information, for assuredly, she had me pegged as a future tourist to that capital of Bavaria. That she could not have come to a less likely conclusion struck me as wholly ironic.

  Munich was a place I had left, not one to which I was headed. Even though I asked for the map, I felt awkward being in possession of it. I shared with no one in my family any part of that encounter. As always, when flitting around the periphery of the Holocaust, I felt the need to keep it private. I did not drop the map in the nearest receptacle either, probably because of a mystical bent of mine that has me analyzing and reviewing events to determine whether they possess inherently broader significance than the ostensibly simple one we first glimpse. I set a goal then—I would use the map to locate the street where I grew up.

  I knew the name of the street. I may even have known it as a very young child when we all lived there. My Polish mother and father, my brother and I, who were born there, lived in an apartment in town. But trying to locate the street without knowing its spelling became a near hopeless venture. The unfolded glossy map was huge; it had historical references to the city’s medieval origins and contained beautiful illustrations of its outstanding features. As to its significance in the damning chapter of modern history, not a word. Its very innocuousness seemed to mock. One should not expect more of a tourist promo, I reckoned. I did, however, seize on the proud description of the rapid transit trains marked by the letter “S.” If one wished, one could ride the “S” train to the airport or to Dachau, just to visit, of course.

  Leaving my first home, almost at the age of five, gave me the advantage of actually remembering the names of parks where childhood memories hazily resurrected an idyllic scene of gazing at swans, of gathering flowers that magically transformed themselves into a crown of daisies for my head. I looked carefully at the streets in the grids near Hirschgarten Park and Nymphenburg Palace, but I could not be sure. It became important to me. I had to find a spot on a map. For me it would be like retrieving a missing snapshot in a family album.

  It occurred to me that if I could just see it spelled correctly somewhere I would certainly find it. But where to begin? This was not the first time since my father’s death that I wished I could ask him just one more thing. But I always felt his stro
ng presence in my life, and I knew if I delved into his past the answer would be clear. And it was. My father was the most organized person I have ever known, and after I thought about his files and stamps, I knew where to look.

  My late father’s enormous yellowing prayer book made the ocean voyage with us to America. It was part of his legacy that made its way into my home. As I held it in my hands I felt his essence, even in the way he preserved the fragile binding. On the inside cover, just as I had envisioned, were the bright blue stamped words: Josef, Laufer, Munchen, Isensteinstrasse. With that bit of detective work out of the way, I got out the map, located the landmarks, and uncovered the street exactly in the vicinity of those verdant parks.

  How did I feel? Incomplete. So, I had found the street, studied the town. It was enough of a trip back. What memories does a child hold? It was more the told history than the remembered account that filled my mind. How could I have known then that my parents, upon their liberation by the Russians, opted instead to seek the safe haven of the American sector of Germany. It was, of course, not the ultimate destiny in their trajectory from Poland to Germany. In due time that interlude was succeeded by the globe-stretching migration to the West Coast of the United States. It was a breathtaking transformation. A positive, life-affirming resettlement. Yet, we came with our history intact.

  There was no reticence when it came to imparting the stories of the almost unendurable suffering during the war. They were told to us so that we should have that all-important knowledge. We also did not have to wonder at our dearth of relatives; their faces were recalled in the rare photographs that survived in the possession of a more “fortunate” relative who had endured the war in the relative safety of England.