D E C E M B E R 14 , 2 0 0 3

S U N D AY

PERSPECTIVE

SECTION 2

CHICAGO TRIBUNE

OF HER PAST

PRISONER

Tribune photo by Zbigniew Bzdak

A collection of yellow Stars of David from the Jewish Historical Institute and Museum in Warsaw.

personal, haunting, revelatory and often disturbing.

Stories unleashed by a story H

By Howard Reich
undreds of readers responded to Prisoner of Her Past, a Tribune special report on Nov. 30, detailing the story of Sonia Reichmy mothera Holocaust survivor who, late in life, began re-enacting her war experiences. The stories they sent were The report detailed the massacres of more than 99 percent of But two years ago she fled her home, believing, again, that the she said, in a fairly nonchalant manner, That is Nathans (my fathers) first wife. I asked why she had failed to mention this fact to me for the first 36 years of my life, and she said, I thought you knew. After a few more minutes of conversation, I was also able to elicit information about a halfsibling of mine born to the woman I had never known existed. To add even more drama to the opening of this suitcase, the piece of tattered clothing below the photo was the bottom portion of my fathers concentration camp uniform. I often felt that her rationale for withholding this information was to protect me from the burden of sadness it would create. Jerry Duzenman CHICAGOMy mother, Ruth (Steiner) Price, was born in Cologne, Germany, in 1923. My grandfather and grandmother moved to Germany after WW I from their shtetl of Ulanow, which today is in Poland. My grandfather took his family and fled Germany in 1933 . . . to Palestine. At the age of 10, Ruth was uprooted from a stable, comfortable life and moved to a very different place. Five years later she moved again to Springfield, Ill., and a year later, to Chicago. My mother did not run for her life in the woods, beg for work or food, or see others killed near her, like your mother did. However, her behavior while I was growing up was remarkably similar to your description of your mother. She, too, spent an inordinate amount of time peering out the front window of our home in Rogers Park. Any slam of a car door or sound of someone walking by would arouse her suspicions and send her to look out through the drapes. She was also obsessed with making sure the door was locked at night. And as for your childhood question, Didnt other moms ask, with alarm, what was wrong whenever someone went to the bathroom in the middle of the night? the answer is yes, my mother did that often. While I never came home to a squad car in front of my house because I was late, she would track me down by phone at friends, girlfriends or wherever to be sure I was OK. I remember often wishing I could have a normal mother like the other kids. . . . What I now understand is that she was always worried that someone was coming for us. Im sure her youth was spent hearing of various relatives escapes. My guess is that cousins and uncles would get together for years later and talk about what the Nazis had done. This had to affect the way she viewed the world in a way I didnt see until now. Jim Price HOFFMAN ESTATESI worked in a nursing home about 10 years ago. A resident had daily nightmares. Most of the staff whispered that she was crazy. I listened to her story one day as she wept. She was in her early 80s when she told me this story. She said that as a very young girl in Germany she witnessed Catholic sisters being called to the front of the classroom and being shot by the soldiers. She said all the children were forced to watch this atrocity. She shook and wept as she told this story. She said no one would believe her, but she had been having nightmares for many years. Perhaps, similar to your mother, she was experiencing delayed post-traumatic stress disorder. She said that I did for her what no one else would. I just listened. I did not judge her or tell her to forget the story or [say] that it did not happen or that it was a long time ago so she should forget it. I simply listened and tenderly hugged her and told her I was so sorry. She said she needed to know that God would forgive her, because she was not able to stop the murders. The next day as a surprise I bought for her a Catholic crucifix and nailed it up on her wall, so she could see it as she lay in bed. I told her God loved her, and she was forgiven because she was a child and God did not expect her to save the sisters. She wept and told me that she finally had peace. The crucifix as a sign of faith gave her comfort. She died a couple of months after this, in peace. Judy Grace CHICAGOI too grew up in Skokie, and though I am a couple of years older than you, I am a post-WW II baby. I also am coming from an interesting perspective because my father, Al Smith, was mayor of Skokie for 24 years, including the time of the Nazi marches [in the late 1970s]. My best friends growing up The question I have been asked most often since the story was But she spoke with me at length, and warmly, at one point de-

the Jewish population of my mothers hometown, Dubno, then in Poland but now in Ukraine. Despite a childhood spent running and hiding, my mother rebuilt a life in America, raising a family in Skokie and reveling in the joy of her three grandchildren. Nazis were after her. It took months to diagnose her obscure mental condition: late-onset post-traumatic stress disorder. For its victims, past traumas often reinsert themselves into everyday reality, leaving them convinced that old terrors have re-emerged. published was how my mother reacted to it. I took a few copies to the nursing home where she has lived for nearly two years. She told me she did not want to see the piece, refusing to look at it. scribing a dream that she said has been recurring. Sometimes in my dreams, your father talks to me, she said. And he says, You are going to come out of that home and start living again and have a happy life. My mother is not alone in carrying the wounds of war. immediate family, having lost her parents and brother in the Holocaust. My birth father, alLOS ANGELESI am 53 so a survivor, passed away in years old and raised Catholic. 1956, from what his surviving My dad fought in WW II in the sibling called the delayed rav88th Division and was woundages of his war experience. ed in Italy. He is in his 80s and Although my mother does is just now willing to discuss what happened during the war. not share the exact and pronounced characteristics of As a kid, [I never heard my your mother, she certainly dad] talk about the war. His shows signs of the same disorcomment to me, when I would der. I remember [when I was] a say we won the war: Son, no child, she had an almost pathoone ever wins a war. logical fear of lice and typhus. I realize a lot of who I am is These fears, as well as a host of because of the impact of the others, remain to this day. war. Our parents endured so Perhaps the most interesting much, and I find it hard to stop is the fact that shortly before crying when I read how much pain and suffering your mother she and my stepfather moved and all the mothers and fathers from their home (to be closer to my sibling in California), she endured. In many ways, I feel handed me an old leather suitso guilty that I havent apprecase that once belonged to my ciated that they went on with birth father. As I opened up the their lives, raised their chilsuitcase, a framed picture dren and helped build this wrapped in corrugated box pacountry that I live [in] so comper fragments sat on top of fortably. Phil Schneider some old tattered clothing and personal effects. I slid the framed photo from its wrap ping to find a very old, enlarged snapshot of my father HIGHLAND PARKMy and an unknown woman in mother is an 86-year-old womwhat seemed like a wedding an who originally comes from picture. Oswiecim (Auschwitz), Poland. I immediately asked my She is the sole survivor of her mom about the woman, and

were two Jewish girls on my brother died over Italy, airblock. Ones grandparents borne, as a gunner. were survivors of the concenIn the mythology of the day, tration camps and were the she was supposed to be a winkindest, gentlest people I have nerinstead she cheered for ever met. My girlfriends and I the U.S. Army to liberate her talked about the Holocaust, and her fellow Germans, and I and I read anything I could on think she felt bitterly betrayed the subject as I was growing by her own people. By the end up. . . . of the war, her mother, father Like your parents, my and brother were dead, and all friends grandparents never she wanted to do was come to talked about that time, but it America to be free. was always there. She came to America, but the I lived out of town for the past haunted her. She became first half of my dads time as depressed and eventually was mayor, but when I returned to diagnosed as schizophrenic. I Skokie I had the privilege of have never stated this so pubmeeting many of the survivors licly before, but after years of who had become his friends. grieving with her, I need to at As you mentioned in your arti- least set myself freeeven cle, they were quiet people, though I think my mother is inbakers and tailors and shopcapable of rising from the ashkeepers who had found a safe es of her youth. home in Skokie. I remember My mother never came to very well when the talk of the terms with her past. . . . In neo-Nazis started and the latesome ways, I think the trauma night phone calls and some of of her past never allowed her to the mail, and people coming to become an adult. the house. As a young adult, I commitMy mother always tried to ted my mother to a mental intalk people out of their prejustitution, and today she lives in dices but rarely succeeded! a nursing home. The shame When my dad passed away 10 and sadness of my mothers years ago, there was a great fate have not allowed me to deal of publicity about Skokie. want to share this story with Many people came to his wake very many people, but I think to express their thanks for all it is time for those of us who he had done for the people of have been touched by this hisSkokie. When my mom passed torical period to come together. away this February, only a few As an American of German were left, but one couple made ancestry, as a Catholic, and as a a point of waiting to speak to daughter of a woman who us. They spoke in very heavily emerged quite emotionally bataccented English and wanted tered from Nazi Germany, I to meet my children to tell have had to search for some them what a brave and honorkind of healing for myself. Alable man their grandfather had though I grew up in northern been. They stayed an hour, just Illinois, I remember my own sitting there, and it was pernightmares of being chased by haps the most moving tribute Nazisand I wasnt born until we received. 1956. I never set foot in GermaWhat struck me about your ny until the early 1980s. mothers story is something I have found comfort by gothat I believe goes by the waying to synagogues during Holoside wherever there is a war: caust remembrances, and I What about the children? In even learned how to folk-dance Baghdad, Bosnia, Belfast, Koso- with a Jewish friendall part vo, Vietnam, the West Bank. of a way to try to put all of my There are children like your sadness for my mother and her mother . . . whose childhood is family into perspective and to stolen from them by politiattempt to heal a part of mycians. self. I think that I would like to Mary (Smith) Jennings see all American-Germans come to find their own rituals to acknowledge this time of history, to face their own sadness MADISONMy mother, too, and to commit to a future that is a survivor of Nazi Germany. holds no place for such unShe was born in 1930, and she speakable times. grew up in Munich. Her family Sometimes I feel so alone beserved in the German military, cause my family is not part of but she, too, suffered the indig- the Jewish experience, so to nities of wareven though she speak, but my family has expewas never sent to a concentrarienced such deep pain too. tion camp. Her mother was Linda Keegan sent to a hospital and allegedly was tortured with medical ex(To read Prisoner of Her periments. Her father died on Past, go to www.chicagotrithe Russian front, and her bune.com/sonia)