Survey Answers

Answers to a Survey on 3rd Generation Holocaust Survivors that I'm currently filling out for a book being written on the subject.


Full name of grandparent 1: What did/do you call them? Maternal or paternal? Alive or deceased? Did they live near you when you were growing up? 

Arthur Grishman (changed at Ellis Island - originally Grischmann)

I called him Grampa. He was my paternal grandfather, and he and my gramma lived on the Upper West Side in New York, so we saw them very frequently when I was little. He was a cardiologist at Mount Sinai Medical Center. He passed away in 2002.

I'm not completely sure I count as a 3G or a 4G - my grampa's parents along with my grampa and gramma escaped Germany in 1939, but my gramma's parents were deported to Theresienstadt in 1943. They were liberated aboard the "Freiheitstransport" or Freedom Transport, a single train of ransomed Jews sent from Theresienstadt to Switzerland in 1945, and from there emigrated to the US and lived out their lives with my grandparents. I consider myself 3G in terms of the "Holocaust trauma" that I read about because my great-grandparents were as much a part of raising my dad as my grandparents were.

Full name of grandparent 2: What did/do you call them? Maternal or paternal? Alive or deceased? Did they live near you when you were growing up? 

Edith Grishman (changed at Ellis Island - originally Grischmann, maiden name Peltesohn)

I called her Gramma. She was my paternal grandmother, and she and my grampa lived on the Upper West Side in New York, so we saw them very frequently when I was little. She was a nephritic pathologist at Mount Sinai Medical Center. She passed away in 2007.

I'm not completely sure I count as a 3G or a 4G - my grampa's parents along with my grampa and gramma escaped Germany in 1939, but my gramma's parents were deported to Theresienstadt in 1943. They were liberated aboard the "Freiheitstransport" or Freedom Transport, a single train of ransomed Jews sent from Theresienstadt to Switzerland in 1945, and from there emigrated to the US and lived out their lives with my grandparents. I consider myself 3G in terms of the "Holocaust trauma" that I read about because my great-grandparents were as much a part of raising my dad as my grandparents were.

Was the Holocaust and your grandparents’ story discussed openly when you were growing up? Please explain.

Not really. My Irish Catholic mom was insistent on including Jewish traditions into our home and our outside lives, such as having a Passover Seder for the CCD group she taught, making Hamentaschen for school events, lighting the Menorah at Hanukkah, and making Matzo Ball Soup, but my dad really just went along because my mom wanted my brother and I to know about our Jewish heritage.

I can only really describe my dad as being alexithymic - that is, not in touch with emotions. So while I was always Daddy's Little Girl and hugged teddy bears with him and built robotics kits with him and traveled around the world with him on conferences, I cannot in any way say that I have a warm emotional bond with him. He will answer any question I have about family members and experiences, but he only gives basic facts - I'm not sure it has ever occurred to him to give a narrative. I know basic facts, but not stories.

Do you remember the first time you knew that your grandparent(s) were Holocaust survivors? Was there a particular story you heard or something specific you remember? Please share.

I do not. There was never a specific time that my parents sat me down and said "The Holocaust was $foo and your grandparents did $bar and your great-grandparents were in $baz." I think I just put pieces together as I got older. I know as I very young child I was very, very impressed that my dad's people had escaped Pharaoh and crossed the desert while plagues were inflicted on Egypt, and that most of my friends had more cousins than I did because something bad happened and most of my family had died, but was never told outright "This is what happened."

Have you learned more about them/their story now that you are an adult? If so, please explain.

I've learned almost everything I know about their story as an adult using the powers of the mighty Internets. Up until earlier this year, what I knew in terms of their story was a set of interesting anecdotes on how they acquired certain possessions, were denied medical licenses in Berlin but got them here, and accomplishments after they emigrated.

I did a Genealogy project in high school, but while I got a couple of interesting stories about my dad's side, I never really understood the true gravity of what had happened. Even now, the genealogical records kept by many of my older extended relatives have listed the names and birth dates of many, many extended family members, but never a mention of Auschwitz, Theresienstadt, Warsaw Ghetto, Trawniki, Riga, or Majdanek. (And those places I only know about through my dad's mother's father's line - I still don't know much of anything about the lines of my other three great-grandparents.)

It's only this past year, at the age of 32 and too disabled to work, that I've actually sat down to explode information about my family, and it's become an obsession in part because of my shock that I never knew about any of this. My great-grampa is mentioned in a book that I knew existed but didn't actually know the story despite my dad contributing most of the information. I didn't know about the Freiheitstransport or even that my great-grandparents had been in Theresienstadt until I Googled my great-grampa's name and found a memorial plaque to him (part of the Stohlpersteine in Berlin).

I guess to summarize, I've learned pretty much *all* I know about their story in my adulthood.

Do you feel that your grandparents’ story played a significant role in your upbringing? Please explain as fully as possible. Consider your childhood experience as well as your current adult perspective.

It's tragic that had I been asked this even six months ago I may have been unsure, but now I can give a very definitive answer of "Yes."

I think the biggest example I can give is that, while my dad never said anything along these lines, my mom told me starting as a young age not to kvetch (complain), and that my dad's side of the family didn't complain, because many of our family had been killed in Shoah and, compared to what they went through, nothing I experienced could possibly be worth complaining about. According to my mom, this complete lack of expressing negative emotions and not complaining about anything lead to my uncle's death when I was 10 because he didn't want to complain about chest pains during a meeting and then fell over dead in his seat because of a massive heart attack. I don't know if that was exactly what happened, but the story I was told had an extremely significant impact on my life.

In reading now some of the articles on 3G Holocaust survivors, I'm definitely beginning to understand a lot of my relationship with my dad, both because of his direct actions and because of my mom misunderstanding the root causes and passing on incorrect impressions. I do know that throughout my entire life, when I've ever had an emotional need I've gone to my mom and when I've had a concrete, specific, need that could be explained with logic and PowerPoint slides - not in a sense of the typical gender role disparity of women are emotional / men are macho and don't emote, but because my dad is emotionally retarded to an extreme and doesn't even understand them let alone want to deal with them.

Please consider how your grandparents’ story and history may have affected your life in areas such as: • Attitude • Perspective/approach to life and living • Religion/spirituality • Role/importance of family • Food • Attachment to “things” and stuff” Please be as detailed as you can be.

I'm not sure, given that I didn't know most of their story until my 30's. The only one I can really define is "Religion/spirituality." I don't know about my grampa's parents, but my gramma's parents did not really consider themselves Jewish and in fact had a Christmas tree because that's what Germans did. My grandparents themselves wore their Jewishness in a very secular, ironical sense, and today most of my stories that I can come up with on short notice are humorous examples of how Jewish they *aren't* - how we always gave them a surf-and-turf steak-and-lobster dinner as a holiday gift, my dad's love of softshell crab and scallops, that one time when my Catholic mom came home and jokingly scolded my Jewish dad for making pork tenderloin on Rosh Hashanah, and while my mom made a better matzo ball soup but my German dad made a *hell* of a corned beef and cabbage, a dish my Irish mom shockingly does not like.

I do use food as a comfort tool - something I've recognized and begun to deal with as an adult, but I can unequivocally say that that comes from my mom.

I think the stereotypes of Jewish families come from, if you'll pardon me for sounding incredibly pretentious, much lower-class families than mine was. You hear about the close-knit families where the Bubbi cooks huge dinners and feeds people comfort foods and there's a community of other Jewish friends and relatives around them, but my grandparents were well-educated (both medical doctors) and from wealthy families. Our social dynamics were all very "proper" and "refined" and, in my opinion, emotionally detached. Celebrating Hanukkah at my gramma and grampa's place involved a sit-down dinner that a housekeeper would help cook and serve, as my gramma had no sense of taste (as in she lacked the physical sense, not that I'm calling her gauche), where we had polite, quiet conversations around the table able about what family members were doing with their careers and education before gathering in the sitting room for after-dinner mints and coffee. Conversely, for Easter we gathered at my aunt's (on my mom's side) house for a loud, boisterous pot-luck dinner, with arguments about politics, people getting up for seconds, kids allowed to leave the table and play outside as soon as they finished, and people dozing off on the couch or sitting in the hot tub afterwards.

I can't really speak on attachment to things and stuff, as I'm Buddhist and strive to not have attachments. I know my mom harps on my dad to go through papers and journals because there's a lot of them in their house, but I'm absolutely certain that my dad's reluctance to do so is because he has other higher-priority things to work on (he's a professor) rather than a desire to hoard them.

In your personal family history, what else of significance do you see as far as the Holocaust and the role it played or continues to play in your life? Think about beliefs, family dynamics, mental issues, your worldview and anything else you feel is relevant.

This is going to be a strange answer, but I often feel that my dad's side of the family's lack of strong religious beliefs, quiet family dynamics, and lack of emotional expression may be why I connect so well to my Jewish heritage, though not for the reasons one might expect without having met me.

I am gregarious and open and love making friends with people on the bus and in the supermarket and speaking up for people and making my opinion known. I love being the center of positive attention.

My mom's side of the family in general is also like that. Between being a loud, boisterous person in a room full of loud, boisterous people is fun but can be incredibly overwhelming, especially because everyone is scrabbling to express themselves so as a kid you spend more time developing your abilities to get your point across than to listen to others. I really sat and listened to my grandparents both because they were so different from my mom's side and because they knew how to listen.

I just noticed that I'm getting slightly off-track with my above answer, but I think it's important enough that I won't rewrite it. I will instead just add in that... The Holocaust happened for many, many reasons, among which were intolerance of difference and an unwillingness of people to change their opinions based on new information. I feel that because of this my dad developed an attitude of not caring about things like ethnicity, sexuality, religion, gender, and religion, and I in turn inherited that from him with a further passion for challenging stereotypes and making people understand why being closed-minded is so dangerous.