Pillar of Salt: A Daughter's Life in the Shadow of the Holocaust
192
Pillar of Salt: A Daughter's Life in the Shadow of the Holocaust
192Paperback
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Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781942134824 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Mandel Vilar Press |
| Publication date: | 05/10/2022 |
| Pages: | 192 |
| Sales rank: | 632,737 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d) |
| Age Range: | 14 - 18 Years |
About the Author
Aaron Eisen is a third-generation Jewish writer. In addition to coauthoring Pillar of Salt, he has played an important role in developing the documentary film In My Father’s Words. A graduate of the Universityof Virginia, Aaron is working on a memoir about how the legacy of the Holocaust shaped his life and how the lessons of the Holocaust can help humanity address an alarming breakdown in empathy and connection.
Read an Excerpt
My journey did not begin as I would have imagined, with a prophetic vision or a compelling call from a mysterious voice from beyond or within. There was no enchanted path that revealed itself and beckoned towards me with the promise of personal or spiritual transformation. Instead, it began with a brief and ugly argument that I had with my father. At the time I was an adult, already well into my twenties and for the first time in my life, I shouted at my father. We stood in the foyer of my childhood home and flung words at each other like knives. In those few moments, a lifetime of buried truths burst forth and surfaced. And so began my journey: a backwards, downhill tumble into the black hole that had swallowed my father’s past and left his heart scarred and broken, the Holocaust. I was visiting Washington, D.C. from my home in Texas to attend a small conference of children of Holocaust survivors. I had worked with two other children of survivors from L.A. and New York to organize a weekend meeting with others like us from around the country. We hoped that if we spent a few days together in a hotel conference room, we might help each other understand how our parents’ pasts had collectively and individually shaped our lives. Many of us came looking to find out how we could use the legacy of the Holocaust as a positive influence for our futures. Some came looking to see if they could blame their parents for their own dysfunction. All of us were hoping to experience that special connection that existed among the children of survivors. It was the 1990s and as our parents reached their golden years, they were drawn into a new era of Holocaust acceptance. Holocaust museums were rising up in major cities across the country. There was a sudden flurry of academic books and personal memoirs, survivor interview projects and films, dealing with the Holocaust. After years of silence, it was now acceptable and even in vogue to study, memorialize and speak about the terrible crimes and innocent victims of the Nazis. And as Holocaust remembrance became an honorable obligation, the responsibility to bear witness was slowly being passed down from our aging parents to us. We had grown up in Holocaust families with parents whose stories and struggles were all unique, yet we shared a special common bond. Though our parents’ paths wove through any of the 21 countries occupied by the Nazis, and each for a different number of years, they had all endured similar horrors under the Nazis’ rule. Their stories typically began with the German occupation of their hometowns and then often led them into the crowded and terrible ghettos on their way to the deadly concentration camps. Some had fled into the forests; others were lucky enough to have been hidden by righteous Gentiles. And for all came the glorious day of liberation along with the sobering reality of broken lives and uncertain futures. They had spent the first years after liberation clinging to dreams of long-awaited reunions and searching for missing relatives and when they had no choice but to accept that their loved ones had perished, they made connections with the others who had survived the same hell and they became their new family. And they married and had children and named us after their murdered parents, brothers and sisters. As children of survivors, we were heirs to a particular history and language that was born of the Holocaust. We had heard the stories enough times that we could envision the terrible transports in the crude and crowded boxcars and the lengthy and torturous roll calls and selections. This is what bound us to each other and made each of us so different from the rest of the world. Often, there was one child among the siblings in each family who became engrossed in their parents’ Holocaust past. Many of us were searching for a connection to our often emotionally distant parents and hoping that getting close to their Holocaust stories would bring us closer to them. We wanted to know the truth about the horrors they had endured and to understand the grief we had, for all of our lives, seen in their eyes. We were called the Second Generation. Not since the Biblical flood and the start of a new world with Noah had there been a second counting of generations. Our parents’ entire world had been destroyed and with us they had begun all over again. The conference had ended and I had gone to visit my parents, George and Ruth Salton, in the suburbs of Maryland before returning to Texas. It was a beautiful autumn day and as I drove to the house where I had spent my childhood, I saw that the leaves on the trees were changing into deep reds and bright golds. It was the time of year when school began and the Jewish holidays neared. As I came upon familiar streets and passed my old school, I was flooded with memories.My parents must have been waiting for me. The front door opened and they stepped out to greet me before I reached the porch. We stood about hugging and talking until my mother ushered me towards the kitchen where she had laid out a platter of bagels and tuna fish and my favorite rugelach pastries. A fresh pot of coffee was percolating on the counter. We sat together around the table and caught up on our lives. It was the first time I had come home to visit without my husband and children and it was nice to have my parents to myself. After we finished lunch, my mother began clearing the dishes and my father asked me to go outside with him just because it was such a beautiful day. As we headed towards the door, I began telling him about a Jewish genealogist that I had heard about at the conference. For a few thousand dollars, this person would travel to my father’s ancestral hometown in Poland and spend several days tracing and documenting our family roots. They would make us a videotape of how the town looked today and bring us photocopies of any of our family documents – including birth, marriage and death certificates that still might exist in the town’s municipal archives. My father stopped me at the doorway and reacted with a surprising burst of anger. “That’s ridiculous,” he said. “Why would you waste your money on some silly pieces of paper that mean nothing? Everyone is dead and everything is gone and there is nothing you can do to bring anyone or anything back. Why would we care about a town that turned on us and ran us out into the hands of the Nazis?”“Still,” I said, “I can have something with our family’s name on it, something to show that those people existed.”He suddenly looked very hurt and upset. In his eyes I saw a flash of pain. He took a deep breath before he spoke. “I am Adam!” he said in an angry voice that shook like thunder. “Nothing came before me. Everything and everyone is gone and it all starts over with me!” I felt my own pain and anger well up and rise from inside me. “You’re not Adam!” I shouted back. “You had a family! Just because you refuse to speak of them doesn’t mean that they didn’t exist. All I know about your mother, my grandmother that you named me after, is that she died in the gas chamber and that isn’t enough!” For a moment, we stood speechless, looking at each other with tears in our eyes. For the first time, I wasn’t just his little girl. I was an adult, standing there with my father, trying to find out the truth of his past. And suddenly I realized that his past was also my own. I went into the den and came back with a yellow legal pad and a pen. “Tell it to me,” I said. “I don’t know anything. Tell me the names of the people in your family. Tell me the names of the aunts and uncles and cousins who all disappeared. Tell me the names of the towns you lived in and the names of the people you knew. Tell me the names of the ten concentration camps you were in and what happened in each one. Tell me about my grandparents, not just how they died but how they lived. Tell me how it began and how it ended. For God’s sake, daddy, I need to know. Tell me what they did to you.” And so my journey began. I was determined to learn my father’s story and grasp how the Holocaust had touched my life and shaped my identity.
