In the Midst of Darkness: Interview With Author Rob Don

In honor of Yom HaShoah, Rabbi Lizzi spoke with author and Mishkanite Rob Don about his book In the Midst of Darkness, a memoir exploring intergenerational trauma, Holocaust survival, racism, and mental health.

https://inthemidstofdarkness.com/

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Transcript

Transcript

00;00;00;05 - 00;00;02;29
Unknown
The cloud.

00;00;03;01 - 00;00;08;09
Unknown
All right. Welcome, everybody.

00;00;08;11 - 00;00;30;12
Unknown
At the risk of beginning in a dramatic place, the liberation of Auschwitz was 81 years ago. After the dust of the Second World War settled and it became clear that the Nazis killed over 11 million people deliberately. That's not the number of people who were killed in World War II. Generally, that is, the number of people the Nazis deliberately exterminated.

00;00;30;15 - 00;01;01;21
Unknown
Overwhelmingly Jews, but also disabled people, the Roma people, gay and lesbian people, political dissidents and others. This happened close to a century ago, and there are still survivors who can remember you know, who were there, who can remember the sights and smells and sounds and the horrors of Nazi Europe. And, you know, the the sort of the pinnacle or paradigm of human cruelty, which were the death camps themselves.

00;01;01;24 - 00;01;38;14
Unknown
But there are more people now who did not experience that firsthand. They experienced it indirectly through their parents. And this generation is called 2G. They do not all share the same experience, but the impacts of the Holocaust through the 2G story is one that we do not often hear about. And so I'm really, really grateful this morning because a long time Michigan night, Rob Dunn is here with us this morning to share about his new book, which is called In the Midst of Darkness, newly published.

00;01;38;15 - 00;02;01;26
Unknown
It is in stores and online, and it is the story of a Schindler's List survivor confronting inherited trauma. I think this was a very brave book, Rob, to research and to write. And I'm very grateful that you're here with us this morning to talk about it as part of our commemoration of Yom Hashoah this year. So thank you, Rob, for being here.

00;02;01;28 - 00;02;33;02
Unknown
Thank you. Thank you. Very honored to be here. Honored to be here. Have this space. And, I think it's an obviously important, especially now in the world that we're living, that I see has never been more divided than since the Holocaust. Well, so many Holocaust stories have been told, and you recognize this in your book, but it seems like, actually, there haven't really been that many stories about what happens to the children of survivors.

00;02;33;05 - 00;02;50;04
Unknown
So I wonder what made you feel like now was the right time to write this story? You've you've had this story knocking around in your own experience for a long time. What changed that? You know, you put your life on hold, you quit your job and you, you know, turned your exclusive focus to researching and writing this book.

00;02;50;07 - 00;02;53;12
Unknown
Why?

00;02;53;14 - 00;03;18;21
Unknown
I think the most important thing is that over the past 25 years, the, Holocaust survivor population has abated. I mean, we have probably 100,000 less survivors that are left. So if you think about it, who is really left to tell their stories except their children? I think that's where we start with this. The other thing about this is that the numbers for generational trauma continue to grow.

00;03;18;22 - 00;03;39;13
Unknown
I think I might have mentioned this to you, but it's on my website. So I've done a little research and math. I might not be completely accurate, but what I believe is that the numbers of people that are that suffer from some form of generational trauma, and it might be minor, it might be more significant, may surpass over 10 million people.

00;03;39;13 - 00;04;04;27
Unknown
When you just think about the number of people that survived the Holocaust, and if they each had one or 2 or 2 children. I think the more staggering number is we relate to synagogues or to Judaism is the fact that of which 7 to 8 million people could be Jewish. That represents 50% of the world's Jewish population. Total Jews across the across the world.

00;04;05;04 - 00;04;28;20
Unknown
Maybe you're 16. 17 million. Maybe. I think that number might be a little bit lower than that. But let's say it's still a staggering number when you think about it. So I guess, why shouldn't I be writing about this story? Just considering the impact, considering the impact on the Jewish people that like basically half of the Jewish people alive today suffer from some kind of inherited trauma from the Holocaust?

00;04;28;21 - 00;04;53;15
Unknown
You're saying and directly I mean, you know. Yeah. And you're saying, you know, if you just think that might not be in the United States, think across the world because there's a lot more survivors in countries like, you know, Australia, England, you know, all all across Europe, Africa, South Africa, from what I've heard, there's a lot of, you know, survivors that went to other places other than the US.

00;04;53;16 - 00;05;15;26
Unknown
That's why I think the number is much more staggering than we might think, because you could easily say, well, I'm not the survivor of a, you know, I'm not the child of a Holocaust survivor, but across the world, that number can drastically change. Rob, could you, you know, obviously we want everybody to get your book in to read it themselves, but could you tell us your story?

00;05;15;28 - 00;05;47;00
Unknown
You know, could you kind of give us a try? Thank you. I'll try to summarize it. So I think what's most important for me, actually being Jewish or not being Jewish, is I defer to the to the back of the book. And the reason why I defer to that back of the book so heavily is in the way I decide to design it is I wanted my mother's picture, a goddess that whatever it was, tablet to tell that quick story on a, Yom Kippur day in 1993.

00;05;47;02 - 00;06;13;27
Unknown
I was sitting there with my father and my stepmother. My mother had been dead for five years. My father looks over at me. The rabbi sermon that day just happened to be the story of, some of the life of Oskar Schindler, because the fact that, the movie would debut Schindler's List in the next six weeks. My father leaned over to me after the rabbi sermon, and I was sitting there listening to the sermon, and I was kind of like, you know, this is a long sermon.

00;06;14;00 - 00;06;30;03
Unknown
I probably even fell asleep for a few minutes during the sermon. You know how it goes on Yom Kippur day. You're kind of weary. You haven't eaten. You're standing. You're you know, the rabbis got you up every ten minutes doing what you're doing, and you know, so my stamina was kind of low, but then I just couldn't stop listening to what he was saying.

00;06;30;03 - 00;07;01;05
Unknown
I said, what could a man like this be doing? And the other thing that I talk about in page 180 is the fact that that day, 40% of the congregation and Ezra Israel in West Rogers Park just happened to be survivors. And the first major story they're hearing about the Holocaust. There have been a lot of stories, but one that was much more commercialized, one that brought the Holocaust to, you know, to the minds of the public consciousness in ways that we had never even began to understand was a story about this man.

00;07;01;08 - 00;07;17;05
Unknown
And, you know, after the rabbi, after the rabbi sermon, my father linked over me. I was kind of almost getting up to walk, maybe go to the washroom or something. And I just remember he said, wait a minute. And he stopped me and he said, you know, I don't know if your mother ever told you this. And he said six words.

00;07;17;05 - 00;07;40;25
Unknown
I would never forget. He said, your mother was on that list. So I defer back to that because of the fact that, you know, I grew up with, in the family where, you know, my parents were divorced when I was maybe eight months old. I mean, my father left my mother, which I talked about in the book, when she was seven months pregnant with me for a German woman in.

00;07;40;25 - 00;08;12;04
Unknown
And we were living in Albany Park, one of the largest communities in, Jewish communities in Chicago. Just the impact of that, you know, had to be pretty devastating, let alone everything she went through. So what I'm getting at with all this is that and there's another part that's the real reconciliation that happens before that. But imagine finding this out of 26 years of hatred between you, your brother, your mother, you, your brother, that your mother instilled in you towards Germans.

00;08;12;04 - 00;08;31;12
Unknown
And yet you find out your your mother's life was saved by a Nazi German. And it had this type of, you know, I would say broad vision because now this was going to be turned into a major movie. And, you know, everybody knows the impact is Schindler's List. And this was all happening on Yom Kippur day.

00;08;31;14 - 00;08;55;14
Unknown
And I can let you fill in the blanks for what Yom Kippur day means in terms of reconciliation, forgiveness, purifying the soul that whole type of thing. So that meaning in and of itself just means everything. So when you look at this part of the book and you see that back, I'd like readers to first look at this and spend a little time on that and realize that, you know, maybe it was best year that this happens on Yom Kippur day.

00;08;55;16 - 00;09;12;27
Unknown
My wife's, sister in law once told me when I started to begin to tell her story, she goes, that's just shared that this all happened on Yom Kippur day, that you found this out. The one little fact that I might and needed to change everything happened on Yom Kippur day. So sorry for dawning on it. So, dwelling on it so long.

00;09;12;27 - 00;09;36;20
Unknown
But I think the importance, you know, sitting in a synagogue, and, you know, being with you and telling you the story is the importance from Judaism, from just a whole cultural impact, that this happens on the holiest day of the year. So anyways, the story begins with finding out from my mother that, that, you know, she was a Holocaust survivor.

00;09;36;20 - 00;10;00;29
Unknown
I used to hear stories of of the camps and everything that she went through. You know how she lost her four sisters and a brother in the Belcher camp? When Operation Reinhard started in 1941. And then she lost, her remaining brother in Auschwitz. And I always knew about the horror of what was going on. And that got instilled in us when the stories began.

00;10;00;29 - 00;10;26;27
Unknown
When I was like five years old with my brother, he was actually closer to 12 or 13. There was a ten year age gap between us, and I talk a lot in the first chapter about the background, trying to bring out the whole idea regarding why the trauma was as devastating as it was, because I wanted people to focus on, you know, how what you learn as a child from an authority figure may never leave you, especially when it begins at five.

00;10;26;27 - 00;10;49;00
Unknown
And to this degree, did you want to stop me? I, I wanted to I wanted to ask kind of how that was communicated. Was it communicated implicitly, explicitly? Both. You know, how did you learn? Yeah. I'll, I'll give you a, give you a example. So you might have read the story about me being on a bike one day and, having stitches.

00;10;49;02 - 00;11;13;25
Unknown
So I was five years old and I was on a bike and I was riding with a friend of mine, and I crashed into a concrete step next to an apartment building. Or, you know, that was kind of the foray, the apartment building. I hit my head and I had had to have 15 stitches my obviously, before that, my parents came, my dad was over and my father came running over with my mother.

00;11;13;28 - 00;11;34;18
Unknown
My mother looked at me just lying in a pool of blood. She looked over at my father and the only thing she said to him was, she said, Maurice, she said, you bought him a German bike on his fifth birthday. She said, how in the world could you buy him a German bike on his fifth birthday? You and your shiksa date are nothing to me.

00;11;34;18 - 00;11;54;09
Unknown
And she just kept saying, you are not his father. She goes, you know what I went through in the Holocaust? You know how much I suffered. And your gift to your son and his fifth birthday was a German bike. She goes. And she just kept reiterating, you are not his father. The stories just continued from there, from the standpoint of just.

00;11;54;15 - 00;12;26;21
Unknown
And it took on more of a, of, important I wouldn't say importance, but significance towards my step mother. Basically, there were times that the only thing I knew was the fact that, you know, she was somebody that you would never talk to. I would I'll give you an example of something else that happened. Whenever I would go to my father's office and I would go see him and we'd go out and have a lunch if she was there, even if I had a glimpse of her, what I would do is I would see her not acknowledge, or my father would even try to let me meet her.

00;12;26;26 - 00;12;44;23
Unknown
And because of all that hatred that my mother instilled in me towards her, I would leave, run, hop on a bus, and run as fast as I could to get home. I couldn't get within miles of her. And the ironic thing about this is the fact that, and what's important, and why the story even takes on more significance.

00;12;44;23 - 00;13;03;23
Unknown
I don't know if you read about what happened to her father to to Cathy's, to your mother's. Okay, why don't you tell tell the group so everybody knows I got the book, but this group has not read the book. So actually, if you're going to refer to a story, go ahead and tell it. Yeah, you're right, because I'm thinking that, you were going to ask me a question.

00;13;03;23 - 00;13;29;00
Unknown
But anyway, so when I was about 19 years old and they included this in the beginning because I wanted it to take on the importance of how this Irish, how this all was playing out in my head later in life, and just the whole idea regarding hatred towards this person, because the fact that my mother kind of aligned her with me or my my stepmother's family with being a Nazi, and that could have been couldn't have been anything further from the truth.

00;13;29;00 - 00;13;51;19
Unknown
And I'll tell you why. So I was sitting there one day with my stepmother. I was about 19 already. I was already developing relationship with her. And, she looked over at me and she goes, I don't know if you ever heard about what. Really? About what happened to my father. She goes, I know that your mother had told you probably stories about my parents, that they were involved in the Holocaust.

00;13;51;19 - 00;14;17;27
Unknown
They were the perpetrators. They were probably conscripted. They were Nazis. They were, you know, complicit with what was going on. And she goes, let me tell you a story. And she was one day my father was sitting there at the, dinner at the dinner table. And, he couldn't stand. Actually, she told me what was going on against Jews during the Holocaust.

00;14;18;04 - 00;14;40;23
Unknown
And he tried to instill that in his children. And he was very, very opposed to everything that was happening, so much so that sometimes it even got him into a little bit of trouble. So anyways, she goes on to say that two men came knocking at the door. They weren't both Nazis. It was a Sunday dinner. They basically looked at her father, they being the two Nazis.

00;14;40;26 - 00;15;04;12
Unknown
The family was kind of scared because the fact that, you know, what are two Nazis doing here on Sunday night, even though they were all German? So they stood kind of far away from the door. Again, they had just finished, Sunday dinner, and the two Nazis looked at my, stepmother's father. They basically, you know, saluted him.

00;15;04;14 - 00;15;23;22
Unknown
Hi, Hitler. The father her father didn't salute back. They stood there for a second. The two Nazi officers, they grabbed him by the coattails of his shirt. They dragged him out into the street. They sat him in a chair that they had in their truck. They pulled out one of those long pistols that you see. The family was standing by the window.

00;15;23;29 - 00;15;45;20
Unknown
They didn't want. They couldn't do anything because they were so fearful for their own lives and from five feet away that they shot him in the back of the head. He died within seconds. This was everything that was going on that couldn't be further from the truth. And this irony, I mean, a matter of fact, I in two ironies, one, my mother being saved by a ship by a Nazi German.

00;15;45;27 - 00;16;09;02
Unknown
Secondly, all this hatred that I was imploring towards my stepmother and the collateral damage was, you know, was, you know, unconscionable for my brother because of what happened to him, which I'll get into in a second. But here was this thing that I was growing up with all this hatred into my eyes, towards not only my stepmother, but every other German.

00;16;09;04 - 00;16;28;13
Unknown
And yet the two people in front of me that I was being implicated against were exactly the opposite. Exactly the opposite. Here was a man that was fighting to give for Jews, for lack of a better word, couldn't stand what was going on. And he was murdered, fighting for what he believed in. And he and tried to instill that in children.

00;16;28;16 - 00;16;53;04
Unknown
I don't think she was a huge advocate for everything that, you know, Jews were going through. But she definitely didn't want to see what was happening. She wasn't a Nazi sympathizer. Neither was any of her family. But yet I was learned to believe the alternatives. Do you want to share with us? Do you want to share with us about kind of your brother, who is ten years older than you, and how this inherited trauma really affected him?

00;16;53;07 - 00;17;23;22
Unknown
Yeah, it effected a much worse because the fact that I think that he was subject to a bad marriage growing up, that probably left a lot of impressions on him. But whatever hatred was going on, it was me was paled in comparison to what happened to him. And I get into it in the third or fourth chapter about a couple incidents that happened where he actually physically attacked my, my, stepmother a couple of times.

00;17;23;24 - 00;17;50;12
Unknown
And I believe that was maybe not directly done by my mother, but probably somehow he believed he needed to send her. But anyways, what ended up happening is that when I was 13 years old, my brother was 23 and he was starting to have some problems. He was studying to be a teacher, and he was in his senior year of college and I came home one day and my mother was gone.

00;17;50;12 - 00;18;07;05
Unknown
I couldn't find her anywhere. And I was really worried. I was, you know, where is my mother? And I was always pretty attached to my mother also because of the fact that she way overprotected me, which I talk about, which a lot of survivors did with their children, too. And I just couldn't find my my mother all day long.

00;18;07;05 - 00;18;23;23
Unknown
I was freaking out, I was crying, my father finally came over. He came over actually with my stepmother, which was not something I wanted to happen for the reasons that I'm talking about. So anyways, I come to find out a day later that basically, you know, when I started to ask, where is my brother Harry? Where is he?

00;18;23;23 - 00;18;37;10
Unknown
I don't know what's going on. And I think it was my mother that actually told me the story. She said, your your brother's in the hospital. And I said, well, what happened to him? I don't know what happened to him. She goes, he broke both his legs. I said, how did he break his legs? She said, he was.

00;18;37;10 - 00;19;00;09
Unknown
And in East Rogers Park in an apartment building, he was on the second floor. He heard some voices. He has this disease called schizophrenia. And he jumped out the window. That was his first of two suicide attempts. He had one more when I was 3 or 4 years older, and by the time he was, maybe I would say 26 or 27, he recovered for a while.

00;19;00;09 - 00;19;28;25
Unknown
Then he relapsed. He recovered. He relapsed. He was never right anymore, and he was institutionalized. And I believe there was probably comorbidity going on with other things. My father affected him, too, but I believe largely in part, it was due to all the hatred that my mother had left inside him. She made him leave, a, public school to go to a Hebrew parochial school against his will, because of the fact that that's how she grew up as an Orthodox Jew.

00;19;29;00 - 00;20;10;01
Unknown
She wanted him to have that. But I don't think it was that. I think it was all the just pent up hatred. And just like in her acting on behalf of my mother towards, you know, her feelings, her being my mother, towards my stepmother, and that was far more, far more grave than what happened to me. So, I mean, and the story takes on a more important though, too, though, because the fact the other thing that's very important is when I, when I as I started to grow older, I started to develop a relationship with my stepmother, although conflicted because I needed to have a relationship with her, because I, I talk about this often.

00;20;10;01 - 00;20;37;06
Unknown
I could have been my brother easily. My mother's paranoia was getting worse and worse due to some other things. She basically believed also to that, friends. Hers were part of the Gestapo that were going to tell the Nazi, and she was part of that. She was one of the spot that her friends were some of the spies, for the Gestapo, that we're going to tell the, Gestapo where she was hiding so she could be deported to a concentration camp.

00;20;37;06 - 00;20;56;25
Unknown
That's what she believed in. Real time. And eventually that became one of my friends. And when that happened, one day, I left home. And I didn't return for another seven years. But it was really my stepmother that helped let me find a path and develop a little bit. And still I hated her guts. And I hated her guts because of how I grew up as a child.

00;20;56;28 - 00;21;15;04
Unknown
And eventually this woman helped me and got me to a point where I had a functional life. Because I say over and over and over again in the book, I don't know what would have happened otherwise, because I had two people that were spiraling, my mother and my and my and my and my brother was pretty much already gone.

00;21;15;06 - 00;21;55;06
Unknown
Ram, can you describe the process of realizing that the stories and the paranoia and the trauma that you inherited from your mom, you know, had become yours, and yet you were carrying trauma that wasn't yours? You know, you just began to to describe how Kathy really helped you kind of make a transition. But can you talk about, you know, the shift from kind of the paradigm in which you had grown up to the one that now allows you to see that all so much more clearly?

00;21;55;09 - 00;22;24;23
Unknown
I almost don't want to give this away, but I will, because I think it's important for readers to understand I my feelings towards my stepmother never really change that much until one day they actually started to. But as you proceed through the book, you'll realize that by the time I was 25, I hadn't seen my mother for seven years, and the only reason why I went back to see her is because she had lost about 45 to 50 pounds and about a month, and a half, so I knew she was sick.

00;22;24;23 - 00;22;49;23
Unknown
And it was my stepmother that kept telling me, even though I didn't want to go see her, that I had to go see her and, you know, fulfill my responsibilities to start taking care of her, even as I was seeing her as she was sick. Because of that, I felt what she did to me and wanting to stay away from everything to fight for my survival, I basically still hadn't changed my feelings towards my stepmother until one day.

00;22;49;25 - 00;23;12;05
Unknown
Eventually, what ended up happening? It wasn't me that was taking care of my mother while she was dying. Because she was eventually diagnosed with terminal colon cancer, she had three months to live. It eventually became my stepmother. My stepmother was washing her. She was bathing her. She was massaging there. She was bringing her food. I didn't even know what the heck was going on.

00;23;12;08 - 00;23;35;19
Unknown
I basically sat there and looked over at my mother and my stepmother and started to develop some feelings. But there still wasn't a part of me that was able to leave all the trauma of the hatred that I had until one day. And that is very, very, very important for readers. For one thing, we were sitting there, we being my, Kathy, my mother, she was on pretty much her deathbed.

00;23;35;19 - 00;24;05;04
Unknown
She was so frail. I mean, she had jaundice on her hands or, you know, her whole the color of her was all yellow, which is what people develop a lot of times with terminal cancer. Very frail, just bones. I mean, I go on and on and on with the graphics in the book because the fact I wanted people to really feel what was happening in the moment, and we're going over basically how we, all of us are going over, you know, how our affairs are going to be handled.

00;24;05;07 - 00;24;28;14
Unknown
You know, she wanted and Cathy really, it's amazing, was taking over for planning a Jewish funeral for my mother with the rabbi that she wanted, actually, from Bernie, proving my Hebrew name is Ruane. I'm sure you're familiar with Bernie Rubin. So where I, where I went to where I went to Hebrew school and was buried mitzvot. And it was this person that was German that hated my mother, that was planning all these arrangements.

00;24;28;16 - 00;24;48;04
Unknown
So finally she looks over at us, she being my mother, she sat up. She was so frail she could barely sit up. And, you know, she was going to die probably in six weeks. I think she died in seven weeks. And she looked over at me and she looked over at my stepmother. And, you know, my stepmother is doing all this for her.

00;24;48;06 - 00;25;06;29
Unknown
You know, planning the funeral, the getting the rabbi all the arrangements exactly the way she would have wanted it. You know, the traditional Jewish funeral. Like the way she would like, the way she was told to have one. By the way, she was raised by Orthodox Jews before the Holocaust. And she looks over at Kathy and very convincing words.

00;25;06;29 - 00;25;27;27
Unknown
And I was kind of glancing over and she said, Kathy, she said, I have something to tell you. I should have made shimmers with you years ago in Seamus in Yiddish means peace. That moment I basically could never forget. And that was the turning point. I needed her affirmation to change the way my perceptions about the way I felt.

00;25;27;29 - 00;25;55;08
Unknown
And that's what I'm getting at with the real learning of this story is that we can go through our whole lives and wood gets planted in, you know, imposed in you when you're that young, may never leave you and may never can. And that's what I deal with. What I hear when I go on these countless stories about how people can't even hear these stories of trauma because what they went through, I never had the agency to change the way I felt until that day, and it wasn't even my agency that I had.

00;25;55;08 - 00;26;25;14
Unknown
I talk about this, that why didn't I need her affirmation in order to be able to change my perceptions? But that's what actually really changed. And I was 26 by that time, and that's what started to change. Looking at her, looking at Kathy, not as the way my mother saw her, but as a person. Wow. So there were these kind of two transformational moments that happened for you.

00;26;25;17 - 00;26;46;24
Unknown
You say toward the end of the book, these two blessings from God. One is the shims that your mom was able to make with Kathy. And the other was Schindler. Was Oskar Schindler in in both cases, like two German people who saved your mom in different in different ways, and that you were able to recognize that.

00;26;46;26 - 00;27;09;11
Unknown
Right. And actually like absorb, absorb and recognize those as blessings. What was the result like, how did that change your consciousness or the way that, you know, how did that change the way you thought about the world? You know, you would you would been raised to believe all Germans were evil. And now, like, here are two people, you know, who had a direct impact on your life.

00;27;09;12 - 00;27;35;25
Unknown
Like these were these blessings. How did how did those blessings change you? Well, first of all, I was able to finally and I talk about this a lot about, you know, all the things that she did for me, helping me change my career to find a career with the real growth I was in 20 different majors at 20, I would say I changed my major four times in college, didn't really know what I wanted to do, and she was the one that said, why don't you pursue finance?

00;27;35;25 - 00;28;05;07
Unknown
You know, just given my skill set and, you know, talking to me, thinking there was better opportunities, never could thank her for that. Never could thank her for what she was doing for my mother. I finally took in the kindness, first of all, that she did and all that she did for me, all that she did for my mother and all that she tried to do for my brother, too, even despite the assaults that happened to her at the hands of my brother, she tried to reconcile with them two years later and gave them a Jewish Star of David.

00;28;05;13 - 00;28;18;28
Unknown
And you know what happened when my my brother got home after he got that Jewish star of David, my mother forced him to take off the Jewish Star of David and told him that if he ever wore that in the house again, he would never be able to come back.

00;28;19;00 - 00;28;39;15
Unknown
So what I'm telling you is, at first I was able to take on everything that she did. Secondly, I think that it opened me up to all cultures, all religions, and not to live with the, you know, the divide, the you know, the the things that you stress sometimes so often that people are just people. And that really changed the way.

00;28;39;15 - 00;29;18;13
Unknown
And I talk about that, you know, relentlessly throughout the book, because that's where I think as a result of the Holocaust, we need to be and definitely where we need to be, where we need to go right now. Can you say a little bit more about that? Because I feel like, you know, you and I have had many conversations starting with, I guess it was two years ago when I did a trip that took me through Germany, and I came back and I spoke about a moment of connecting with my high school German exchange student, and we had a conversation about, you know, my family and that obviously fled Germany, her family, that she

00;29;18;13 - 00;29;49;29
Unknown
was not Jewish, her grandparents, as far as she is aware, were Nazis. They, you know, did things she doesn't want to think about, but but has to think about and wants to confront. And we have that conversation over a glass of wine. And I came back and I spoke about it on a Friday night, and you and you came up to me afterwards and you said, like, I, I'm really I'm jealous that you were able to, like, go and have like a conversation, a normal conversation between people, you know, with somebody your age over in Germany, like I was never given the gift of being able to just see people as people, Germans as people,

00;29;50;01 - 00;30;16;07
Unknown
any kind of person who's labeled a perpetrator or a, you know, like that is all that I want. And that was two years ago. And you've really gone on this journey of self-exploration, exploration of trauma. Can you say like, what is the lesson that you really like, want people to take from your story and kind of the the trauma that you lived through, but also what you have learned from this experience.

00;30;16;10 - 00;30;39;01
Unknown
When you mean experience, can you kind of like, expand upon that just a little? Yeah, yeah. Like the the experience of realizing as it sounds like you, you realized and you've said many times people are people and you were infected, you were handed a trauma that wasn't actually yours. And and you carry it with you. It remains part of you, but you have a consciousness about it.

00;30;39;01 - 00;31;10;03
Unknown
Now. You have a self-awareness that this wasn't actually your trauma. What you want is to know and believe the truth, which is people are people. Oskar Schindler was German, Kathy's dad was German. The Nazis were also German. And that a nationality, a race, a label doesn't, you know, a an ethnic label does not necessarily determine morality. But I'm wondering if you can, like, share in your own words kind of the realization that you've had.

00;31;10;05 - 00;31;41;12
Unknown
You know, just the fact that I walk around every day and I see the divide that happens, you know, and I just wonder where where we as a world need to need to go. And I just, you know, when I fight for that, cause I'm this book is basically my mission to find to in to to, you know, strive for racial equity, to strive for racial parity, to strive for basically that we get back to a standard that I feel is left us.

00;31;41;13 - 00;32;13;25
Unknown
So for the last at least 5 to 10 years, for reasons I won't go into, but you might allude to that we are we that bring me back to the time. So my mission is to basically, you know, I think more than anything else, what I want to do with this and the awareness that I've created is that the other thing about this that's important, and I know I'm talking in circles all, but it is that Oskar Schindler was a very, very flawed human being.

00;32;13;27 - 00;32;38;10
Unknown
I'm bringing out Schindler's List from a totally different perspective. You know, he exploited Jews. He took over their property. That factory that my mother was in was because of the, the Nazi decrees, probably from the Nuremberg Laws, that that came into play where Jewish people could own property, was paying them nothing. Schindler's list, I wouldn't say, is completely true, but a lot of it is pretty, pretty close to what actually happened.

00;32;38;10 - 00;32;56;17
Unknown
There's another book that was published, but it's all this idea about the fact that we can be so different and be so flawed and be so, you know, far across the spectrum in terms of our views. And in the end, we can do the right thing. And that's what happened here is what happened with Oskar Schindler. That's what happened with my stepmother.

00;32;56;22 - 00;33;16;02
Unknown
My I question constantly whether or not somebody could even do that. A person that had such hatred between the two of them, the other woman seeing this woman dying on a deathbed in Melbourne. And people would have forgiven her if she did nothing. I've asked before, could you do the same thing? And some people say no, but yet she did.

00;33;16;05 - 00;33;36;17
Unknown
You know, there was a rabbi that was in, Landover, Maryland. And he was preaching, he was giving a sermon. He really didn't give a sermon in 1938. It was right around the New Deal came into play. And Landover, Maryland is maybe, I would say, I don't know, maybe 70, 80 miles from the capital. And that day basically didn't give a sermon.

00;33;36;17 - 00;33;57;18
Unknown
He talked to his congregation on a Friday night, and all he said to them was basically, you have to go, right, order and march at the Capitol and protest everything that is happening in Eastern Europe and what is going on to Jews there, what is going on to the world there? It was during the middle of, it was when Kristallnacht had just started.

00;33;57;21 - 00;34;23;11
Unknown
And that rabbi knew one thing. I don't think I ever told you the story. I watched it on the documentary of American the Holocaust. The next day, on a Shabbat, the board of directors contacted the rabbi. You know what they did? They fired him. They fired him. And you know why they. In the end, the rabbi knew that he was probably going to get fired because the sentiment against Jews was so prevailing at that time that, you know, they just didn't want him to make any noise.

00;34;23;11 - 00;34;41;24
Unknown
They didn't want to do anything. They had jobs. These people were broke. They didn't have a dime in their names. The rap. How was the rabbi going to find another congregation? Maybe. Especially given that maybe people wouldn't be. But in the end, in the end, just like Schindler, just like my stepmother, they did the right thing. And that's what I want to know.

00;34;41;28 - 00;34;56;00
Unknown
That is what I want people to know, that we can be so different, so disparate, so far across the spectrum. In the end, no matter what happens, we can find a way to do the right thing.

00;34;56;03 - 00;35;20;16
Unknown
Beautiful. I don't know if you can see rabbit Ricky's over there snapping in front of his computer in support of what you just said, and you got Jodie over here on another screen applauding. You know, I'm very. I'm. I want to make sure that I don't think you saw some of the comments of people, you know, before they ducked out, but, you know, people really thanked you for bringing forth your story.

00;35;20;18 - 00;35;44;15
Unknown
You know, you move people to tears. People feel really grateful for what I think this is bringing up in their story. You know? I mean, everybody, when you began at the beginning, Rob, saying, you know, I've done some calculations and I've, determined the rough estimate of people with inherited trauma is around 10 million. I was like people, oh, my God, it's got to be more like, you know, billions.

00;35;44;22 - 00;36;04;17
Unknown
But you were you were just talking about Jews. But everyone has a story. You know, something that to me, I was talking about survivor trauma as it relates to this. And I mean, you know, the interesting thing about this is the fact that, you know, you're going to look at it from what happens. You know, you think about this and you think about kids that are, you know, being adopted and stuff like that.

00;36;04;17 - 00;36;47;08
Unknown
Nobody knows the biological parent. You wonder whether or not they have inherited trauma because there's something called endo genetics that they've tested in. You know, something is monumental, the Holocaust. And it's just genetically how trauma gets passed on from there. And I would say even emotionally something is monumental, the Holocaust, how can it not be right? And I guess the, the what I, what I was, what I was, saying is just as you share your personal story, you know, your focus for the past many years and I think even like the really like the, the lens through which your entire life has been lived has been through a lens colored by the Holocaust.

00;36;47;10 - 00;37;14;08
Unknown
From the way your mom raised you, the community in which you grew up, the trauma that you've had to work through and that's your story. And in you sharing your story so authentically and kind of probing it so deeply, it actually is a portal for people who do not share Holocaust trauma, you know, who have completely different stories and completely different relationships to something having happened to a parent or grandparent or to their people, whoever their people are.

00;37;14;08 - 00;37;40;01
Unknown
People hear that story and it becomes their story as well, or it wakes up in them. Some kind of truth about precisely the dynamics that you're talking about. Because at the end of the day, these are human dynamics. You know, it's the Jewish version of a of a human story. You know, so, Mary a moment ago wrote here, I'm just going to read this out loud, Mary, because we've got, you know, folks who who will be listening later.

00;37;40;03 - 00;38;07;17
Unknown
That listening to this gets you thinking about, you know, your own, your own story and marinating on something that's come up for you, which is frequently the need to smooth out the imperfections of our heroes and then kind of mark up the stories of the villains, because we think people might not sort of take our side if we don't kind of make the heroes perfect and make the villains even worse.

00;38;07;20 - 00;38;38;10
Unknown
When in actuality, the best writing spares no one. And she says, I wonder how this showed up in your process and your, story. Rob, the sort of like the fact of our hero is actually being complicated, morally complicated, and the villains also being morally complicated. I mean, I think it showed up from the standpoint of just dwelling that on that a lot and trying to bring it to real time as far as what we go through.

00;38;38;10 - 00;38;43;18
Unknown
I wanted to focus heavily on the fact that, you know.

00;38;43;20 - 00;39;04;27
Unknown
Despite our differences, you know, we can come together. I have a really good line that I can think of in the book about how we come together despite our differences, and I, I quoted it directly. I have to get back to you on that. But it's such a well, I think it's a very, very appropriate line, especially for the times I see that that happens.

00;39;04;27 - 00;39;25;14
Unknown
Everything that happens today, as far as what we're going through, and I want to relate to that because I just can't. I hate living this way. I hate living the way. The fact that we can't find a way to come together, that's what the line is. What brings us apart can overcome what what what, brings us together.

00;39;25;14 - 00;39;45;20
Unknown
Can overcome what else is apart. That was the line. Thank you. I like that a couple times in the book, and I reiterate it because the fact that I think the meaning of it can't be more relevant than now, at the risk of.

00;39;45;22 - 00;40;11;09
Unknown
You know, restating something you've said in a few places, I actually would love if you could be more direct. What brings us together is more powerful than what drives us apart, what brings us together, what should bring us together. Humanity. Humanity. My mother was dying on a deathbed. I and I talk about this several times. I was 25 years old.

00;40;11;11 - 00;40;31;07
Unknown
I never dealt with death, let alone a mother. I didn't know what to do. I didn't know what to do at all. I didn't know how to take care of her. I didn't know what to do. My father wasn't going to get involved, because I don't think he ever got over the hatred that he had from my stepmother and my mother because of their marriage, because of everything that happened.

00;40;31;07 - 00;40;53;21
Unknown
I define that a little bit, maybe more so why? Because they were so different. I believe that my mother forced him to things. My father was no angel. Trust me, and I talk about that. He was definitely no angel, but it was somebody that was just, you know, when we see somebody basically defenseless with nothing else to do, just like Oskar Schindler did, despite the fact that he.

00;40;53;27 - 00;41;12;28
Unknown
And I'll get to this in one second, despite the fact that, you know, he had probably had Nazi, you know, ideology penetrated in news brain, despite the fact that everything my stepmother had gone through with my mother, how much, you know, she had been assaulted by my brother a couple times. She knew how much my mother hated her.

00;41;13;01 - 00;41;34;24
Unknown
She knew that they had never actually, you know, talked. Really, even other than seeing each other once or twice, a wall, a car window. And yet, when she was dying, she was the one that was taking care of her and Oskar Schindler when, you know, he had made over $20 million during the Holocaust and every single or that went to protect Jews.

00;41;34;24 - 00;41;54;26
Unknown
Now, granted, that money came initially from taking, you know, he he basically didn't invest his own capital. He did that. But all the every, every bit of it. And for him, that was always kind of a bust and a heavy drinker. Not that that means anything, but somebody that never had any money would thought that would. It meant more to him just to give it all up to protect Jews.

00;41;54;29 - 00;42;17;21
Unknown
So in the end, you know, we sit there and we what brings us together is humanity. What brings us together is people suffering, what brings us together is is the need to do the right thing, just like that Rabbi did, despite what it could cost him. That's what brings us together. I think that's what needs to bring us together now.

00;42;17;23 - 00;42;39;10
Unknown
I think that's a really beautiful place to close. Rob, thank you so much for. Thank you. Thank you for having me. And I hope to be able to share this with readers. Whether or not the reading my story or see me in person, because this word needs to be told and told to as many people as I can find that.

00;42;39;10 - 00;43;05;07
Unknown
Want to hear it? I posted the link for your website down at the bottom in the chat here, and, I hope the website is just to let you know even look better. I don't think it's good enough, but we'll look better. Okay. Good to know you, Rabbi. Yes, you and I will see you probably before Pesach.

00;43;05;09 - 00;43;22;11
Unknown
All right. Beautiful. Sending lots of love to everybody. And, see you all soon. Take care. Thank you so much. Thank you Rabbi. Thank you. Bob, that was beautiful. Thank you so much. Thank you Rabbi. Thank you Ram.