All About Change - Eleanor Reissa - My Life is Revenge for The Holocaust

Episode Date: February 6, 2023

Eleanor Reissa is a Broadway/television actress, director, prize-winning playwright, author, and host of the Yale University/Fortunoff Video Archive podcast: Those Who Were There: Voices from the Holocaust. A Brooklyn-born native and daughter of what she now calls Holocaust fighters, Eleanor embraced her Jewish identity and channeled that into her artistic expression. When her mother died at 64 in 1986, her father having died 10 years earlier, she discovered 56 letters written to her mother from her father in the years after the war and between his move to America. Unable to read them, she kept them for many years until she decided to have them translated. What she discovered changed her whole perception of her family’s life and began a journey to uncover her parents' past, which she turned into her memoir, THE LETTERS PROJECT: A Daughter’s Journey.  In conversation with Jay, she talks about her life growing up in Brooklyn, the many discoveries that she made while researching her family, and how studying the anti-semitism of the past can help counteract the growing antisemitism and identity-based intolerance that we're facing today. Please find a transcription of this episode: https://allaboutchangepodcast.com/podcast-episode/eleanor-reissa/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Soll sein, als ich bei in der Luft meine Schlösser. Soll sein, als mein Gott ist im Ganzen nicht da. Im Träum' ist mir heller, im Träum' ist mir besser. Im Cholen der Himmel ist blauer von blau. Hi, I'm Jay Rudiman, and welcome to All About Change, a podcast showcasing individuals who leverage the hardships that have been thrown at them to better other people's lives. This is all wrong. I say put mental health first because if you don't... This generation of Americans has already had enough.

I stand before you not as an expert, but as a concerned citizen. Because activism is the mission of the Ruderman Family Foundation. Today on our show, Ellen Arisa. I thought I was the daughter of that guy, the guy with the false teeth and the number who didn't belong here. Ellen Arisa is a prize-winning actress, director, playwright, and author. She's also the daughter of two Holocaust survivors, though she doesn't like that term, and we'll get into why. I learned that he was the only guy on his transport to Auschwitz to come out alive. After her mother's death, she discovered a private treasure, 56 letters written from her father to her mother.

They were penned in German directly after the war and before his move to America. Both an emotional and language barrier caused her to shelve the letters, storing them for safekeeping and basically forgetting about them. Many years later, she finally decided to have them translated. What she found out blew her mind. My parents engaged in a world that was trying to beat them to a pulp and kill them. This set her off on a personal quest to uncover her parents' past. This set her off on a personal quest to uncover her parents' past, a quest that would turn into a fascinating memoir, The Letters Project, A Daughter's Journey. In the cattle cars, up the chimneys, in the attics, tunnels, sewers, they fought for their lives, for our lives, for my life.

I am not the child of Holocaust survivors, no. I reject that passive, minimizing, head-bowing term. My father never bowed down his head, he said. Well, why should I? Why should we? Words count. I, Eleanor Risa Schlisselberg, am the daughter of Holocaust fighters. Eleanor, it's a pleasure to speak with you and welcome to All About Change. Thank you. You have a fascinating story that's contained in your book, The Letters Project. And maybe you could tell us from the beginning how it started about finding some letters in your mother's lingerie drawer? When my mother died in 1986, in her lingerie drawer, when I was cleaning out her apartment, I found this beautiful purse. And inside the purse was

this baggie, a plastic baggie of letters. I opened up the baggie and there were a bunch. At that time, letters. I opened up the baggie and there were a bunch at that time. I didn't even count them. I didn't count them. I looked at them and they were dated 1949 and they were addressed to her in what I thought was Yiddish. They were addressed to my mother and they were signed by the guy who was my father. My father, I knew, was in Auschwitz, but that's kind of all I knew about him. And my mother, during the war, had spent her—they were both married to other people and both had children with other people. And she had spent the war years in Uzbekistan with her parents and her one son. My father, after the war, went back to Stuttgart, which was where he had been living since 1918. You grew up in Brooklyn, in East New York. Yes.

Did you know a lot about your parents when you grew up? a lot about your parents when you grew up? First of all, I intuited many things. But in terms of what I factually knew, my father had a number. He was tattooed when he entered Auschwitz. And I knew that my mother and her family were in Tashkent. and I knew they were later in a displaced persons camp in Ulm in Germany. And I knew my mother had typhus, but I didn't know anything hardly. I knew mainly things from photographs, Jay. It was like all these black and white photographs, and it would be like, well, that person, you know, cousin so-and-so, tante, aunt, so-and-so, uncle, so-and-so, gone, gone, gone, gone, dead, unknown, on Jewish holidays. It was mostly crying.

It was like you'd wish someone a happy holiday, and it would be with crying because there was some sense of A who was missing and B a kind of fear of who knows when we shall see each other again. There was so much I didn't know and hadn't bothered to find out. When my family was alive I accepted whatever incomplete slivers of explanations they provided. I didn't press them, although on more thoughtful reflection, I definitely had inquired, but their responses were fractured, scattershot. Speaking of the past was clearly painful. shot. Speaking of the past was clearly painful. I was intuitively aware of that for as long as I could remember, and I didn't want to contribute to any additional heartache. Could you tell as a child that they were broken by the Holocaust?

My father was very clearly broken. So they divorced or separated when I was like six or seven, and I would only see my father on Sundays for lunch. like that he was 57 till 70 when he died, he was a man who didn't have much of a life here. He worked in a sweatshop. He made me lunch. He went to shul. I don't think he had friends. I mean, I didn't really know how broken he was until this book. I mean, I didn't really know how broken he was until this book.

And in terms of my mother, who was 20 years his junior and was in her 30s, you know, 30s, 40s when I was young, she was pretty and bright, but also other, worked in a sweatshop also. It just wasn't like Dick and Jane and Spot and Puff. It was not like Father Knows Best or some American family. There was clearly something off, but I didn't know it was Holocaust related, oddly. I mean, I didn't, you know, normal, you know, however weird your family is, it's the only one you have. And you think everybody's like that. Your parents were really refugees. And despite the common view that Jews are wealthy and elite, this was not your experience growing up at all in Brooklyn.

No, not at all. We lived in a neighborhood with black and Hispanic people. And the white people that lived in the neighborhood were all immigrants. They were all from somewhere else. I don't think there was one white, waspy, all-American family that lived anywhere nearby or that was in school, public school, with me. I would say we were from the lower economic class of New York. But I understand from listening to interviews that you've done that you yourself as a child had a very happy childhood in in brooklyn i would say i had a happy childhood i had a happy childhood with sad parents but they were aware of the joys of life and they appreciated life and they were grateful for little things like something that tasted delicious or a fantastic meal or a flower or a plant. My grandparents, who also lived through the war in Tashkent with my mother,

they were broken, but they were full of life and full of love and baked and made things, And it was a simple life, but gosh, it was rich. I mean, they were poor, but it was a rich life. Your father dies in 1976. Right. And your mother dies in 1986. Yeah. You find letters that your mother had hidden, that your father had written. And then 2018 comes around and you start to have these letters translated. Right. And what happens at that time?

At that time, I was working on a show called Indecent on Broadway. And so I was making some good money. I felt somehow privileged to be in this show with these, a Tony winner, a Pulitzer Prize winner, who had spent like 10 years pursuing this dream of this play. I thought, well, maybe I should pursue my things of interest. And so I found, but it turns out there were 56 letters in that plastic bag, in that purse. And it turns out that those letters were like, you know, July 24th, 1949, July 26th, 1940. You know, they were some separated by a day or two, others separated by a week. And they were on legal size paper.

And every letter was on both sides written and on every corner, and there was not hardly a piece of paper that was not covered in words. I didn't know where or how to begin. I wasn't even sure in what language the letters were written. It looked like German, but that didn't make any sense to me. Why would my father write to my mother in German? I didn't think my mother spoke German. I knew she spoke Polish and Russian and Yiddish and probably Ukrainian, but not German. I thought, who can I get to translate this? I found a young woman who was the girlfriend

of a Yiddish performer who lived in Berlin. In an email, a few days later, I received her translation. She sent it as an attached document that looked like this. C.H. Schlisselberg, Stuttgart. Import from Schudenfruchten, Obst, Gemüse, Ehe und Geflügel. Elisabethenstrasse 5, telephone number 69437. Bank account, Bankhaus, Anselm & Company, Stuttgart. 24th July, 1949. My very dearest Ruchale, please don't cry. It has to be this way. I'm longing these several weeks now to talk to you so that I can find some peace. I was happy about your detailed letter and I hurried to answer you so that you would have a sign of life in front of you, my love, as you begin your big journey.

Yesterday I had a boring Sabbath, except for the letter from you. It was very, very empty here. Write to me often, my beloved Ruchala, as only this one joy remains for me, and we don't want to lose this. Please, keep this last fragment of our lives safe. I don't want to overwhelm you with big letters, but they serve as a reminder that I am alive and that you are my only light. Send my warmest regards to your beloved parents and Shamaleh. I am sending you greetings and kisses with all my heart from your loving Haskel Schlisselberg. I read the letter again and again.

I felt like the ground had opened up and my father, who had been silent for over 40 years, was now speaking. Poetic words of love, no less. His voice was unrecognizable to me. And this woman, Yeva, Yeva Lapsker, who was the first one that dealt with the letters, lived in Berlin. And I had a singing gig in Berlin in November of 2018. She had begun translating, I think, in September of 2018. And we were going to meet. We had went to have coffee. And when we were sitting there, she said to me, my brother lives in

Stuttgart. And that's where all the letters are, the stationary from my father had an address from Stuttgart. And she said, yeah, my brother lives in Stuttgart. And I said, well, that's nice. You know, good for you. Good for him. And I'll be going there in January. I said, well, you know, great. Have a good time. And she said, the address is around the corner from where your father had his stationery. And if you want to come with me, I'll leave early and we can spend a few days there and go to Ulm as well, where the displaced person's camp was, which is nearby. And I thought, what? What? I mean, go there? For what? Isn't everybody dead? What's going to be there? A friend of mine, a writer in Israel who had this

hotel, and he called me as I was trying to figure out if I should go to Germany or not. And he said, I'm going to shut the hotel down for two weeks and bring in writers. Are you working on anything? And the date of those two weeks was two days after I would be finished with Yeva in Germany. And I just thought, okay, okay, forget it. I'm going to go. I mean, everything is telling me to go. I'll go to Germany for a week, and then I'll go to Israel for two, and we'll see what happens. And so you go to Germany, and it is, to say the least, an intensive visit in Germany. Yeah, I was only there for four days, but it turned out to feel like a lifetime, really. Germany has great archives, and if you want to feel like a lifetime, really. Germany has great archives. And if you

want to know anything about anybody who was ever in Germany, they have paperwork on it. And in this one particular archive, there were stacks and stacks about my father. There was, in particular, one of the more devastating pieces of paper where my father had applied for a Widergutmachung, which means it's restitution. To make good again is literally what it means. And so when you apply for restitution, you have to prove somehow that the Nazis ruined your life, that they took your money, that they killed your wife, that they made you wear a yellow star. For how many days and can you prove it? And how many suits did you have? And how much money did you have? How did it hurt you? How did it hurt you psychologically? All of these things that you had to give testimony to. And Yeva, my translator, found in one of these archives 30 pages of my father's testimony

where he speaks about his parents, who I knew little about, his first wife, his first daughter, who I knew nothing about, and speaks about the train to Auschwitz, about the beginning of the Nuremberg Laws, where Jews were forbidden to hold jobs and to have anything, you know, if you had money, good for you, but too bad because you couldn't buy anything with it because as a Jew you weren't allowed to shop here or there or there or there. And all my life I've looked at those photos of the Jews in the ghetto, of the Jews with the yellow star, of the Jews in the cattle cars in Auschwitz. I mean, I've seen every photo of the guys laying down in their striped, horrible, thin-out uniforms,

looking gaunt with their sunken eyes. And I've looked always for my father in those photos. Oh, is that him? Is that him? And at a certain point, I stopped looking because I didn't think I would find him. These 30 pages is his story of when he wore the yellow star, when he took the cattle car, when he landed in Auschwitz, when he was beaten, when, you know, he had false teeth when I knew him. And I always wondered, I assumed, I didn't wonder anything. I just assumed that he hadn't taken good care of his teeth. That's what I thought. But in fact, you know, he'd been slugged in the face with a rifle butt by a Nazi. So now he has false teeth.

So I found all these documents. And there were some documents from the 60s, 1960s, because he was something with reparations. And this was later, after the trip to Germany, because it took a while to get all these papers together. And then I discover that I'm in these papers. And I'm woven into this history legitimately, not just because I'm neurotic or something, you know, but I am in this history, even though I didn't live through that time. You know, I knew him the last third of his life. Two thirds had been spent before I knew him and I didn't meet him been spent before I knew him, and I didn't meet him until he was, as you say, broken. And so I thought I was the daughter of that guy, the guy with the false teeth and the number who didn't

belong here. Maybe I don't belong here. He works in a factory. Is he smart? Yeah, he lived through the Holocaust, but I guess he was just lucky. I learned that he was the only guy on his transport to Auschwitz to come out alive from Stuttgart. I mean, that's who he was. That's who I'm the daughter of. I'm the daughter of that guy. I'm reeling from the story. There is so much here. And I imagine that when you went to Germany and you read his testimony, this must have hit you like a sledgehammer. of death, and my sarcasm and greed and empathy, all of these things and more, come directly from

the womb in which I was born. My genes contain the chromosomes of memory, their memory, my parents' memory, inherited trauma. My chromosomes remember the years of starvation The years of freezing The years of beatings The constant flinching, waiting for the next blow Preparing for the pain The trauma of being whipped on the buck The hiding and the smoking and the clipping of hair

And sleeping on the wooden shoes And the being secretive, and being wily, and being scared to death, and scared of death. My radar is locked onto the stink of anti-Semitism and racism, as well as the cruel arbitrariness of extermination. A simple turn to the right or the left can hasten the end or can equal the end. How can you ever be careful enough? For me, learning the specifics of what happened to my father from the testimony that I read were the most powerful things that I had ever experienced. In other words, like hearing, because these were his words, these were the words he himself said about being pushed into the cattle car and about how he was saved from a transport earlier

because he was a good worker and they pulled him out of that particular transport that wound up transporting his soon-to-be-murdered wife and soon-to-be-murdered six-year-old daughter. That my father felt that I was the reincarnation of his first daughter, Frida, saddened and surprised me. And yet I felt that too, that I had been given her life, that all of her bits and pieces had magically, karmically, recombined to become me. That the cosmos would not permit her

to die forever because her life was stolen. The crime was corrected. I am the correction. I am Frida's justice. Frida's revenge. My life is revenge. I went to Auschwitz very reluctantly. I didn't want to be there. I was there with a bunch of people. We were shooting a movie about a woman who lived through the Holocaust, Eva Lubitsky. And so we were there from morning till sunset. And the sky was about as beautiful a sunset as I had ever seen. It hadn't occurred to me, really, that they did have sky. You know, when I think about was there any kind of real life or real joy, and I don't mean joy, but real existence. And there's a big sky in Auschwitz. And I thought to myself, at least they had sky, at least some days, as awful as it was, perhaps there was some relief in a sunset or a sunrise. I had always

thought the sky was smoke. You know, I had always thought of an Auschwitz sky as the smell of death and smoke, but it moved me that there was maybe sky for some of those people on some of those days. You described your parents as Holocaust fighters, not survivors. Can you explain what you mean by that? Yeah. So what I learned from my father's testimony, from the way he managed to stay alive, and how he spent his days in Auschwitz by looking forward and not back, and the death march, which was inhuman, horrifying, and he speaks about that, and the particulars about that, and of the freezing, and the starving, and the hiding, and the beating, and all of that. And it occurred to me,

finally, that my father fought like hell to live. He didn't survive. Somehow surviving has always seemed sort of a passive verb, and being a survivor seemed to be a passive noun. I will repeat these words again and again until the very end of my days. My father and the others who lived and died during that time, in that place, were not survivors. No, I reject that term. Those people did not survive. Dogs survive. Cows survive. What those people did, all of them, not just the ones in the ghettos or the forests or the basements or the camps was fight. They were fighters. Whether they lived or were killed, they fought. With every molecule of their breath and brain

and brawn, they fought to live. With all their might and their heart and prayers and selflessness and selfishness and guns and books and pens and bread. They were Holocaust fighters, not survivors. In the cattle cars, up the chimneys, in the attics and tunnels and sewers. They fought for their lives, for our lives, for my life. I am not the child of Holocaust survivors. Fuck that. Fuck that passive, minimizing, head-bowing term. My father never bowed down his said. Well, why should I? Why should we? Words count. I, Eleanor Risa Schlisselberg, am the daughter of Holocaust fighters, courageous humans who fought the devil like hell for life to the death. Can you imagine if the world had called them Holocaust fighters? To have been the daughter of fighters rather than the daughter of survivors?

I would have been Supergirl, for goodness sake. Strong and proud rather than an ashamed hidden light. To me, every one of those six million plus, the ones who were killed and the ones who lived, they fought them. The mother who spit into the mouth of their daughter so that she should feel some moisture. The Hasidic guy who prayed on his way to the gas chamber. Everybody, whatever they did, they fought like hell. They fought like hell. Just some of them were not successful. And as a child of survivors, people who survived,

I spent my life thinking that I was not particularly entitled to anything, that my parents didn't have much, and they made do, and I can make do, too. I spent my life as an embarrassed child of an other, of a man I perceived as a powerless victim with false teeth and a funny accent who accidentally had some good, horrible luck and lived. Sheep? No way. Tenacious, instinctual, smart, brave, greedy to live. That is where I come from, who I come from, who so many Jews come from. Can this new perspective impact my

life so late in the game? The thought of it makes me chuckle as I weep. What is the daughter of a survivor entitled to? Nothing, not a thing. Whatever I had was more than I needed and way more than they had. It was all gravy. My life was gravy and that was enough. But the daughter of a fighter? What is the daughter of a fighter entitled to? Everything. a fighter entitled to everything. My parents were fighters. My parents engaged in a world that was trying to beat them to a pulp and kill them. The daughter of such people is entitled.

The daughter of people like that is entitled to have a rich life, a meaningful life, because my parents fought. They fought for a meaningful life for me. It's been interesting, people who've read the book, some children of Holocaust people, I can't call them survivors anymore. And so they write me and they thank me because they hadn't thought of it that way. You know, first of all, that's beautiful. Do you still believe that teaching about the Holocaust has any ability to counteract the growing anti-Semitism that we're facing today? that we're facing today? The short answer is yes, but I think it's a complex question and issue, and I think you have to really teach it. It's not like some surface schmear on a bagel that you can just kind of say a couple of numbers and say six million blah, blah, blah, and expect people to understand the depth of what happened. It's like, how did it happen is probably as important as what happened. Like a medical test.

I mean, if you're coughing and sneezing and you take your temperature, well, maybe you have the flu. and sneezing, and you take your temperature, well, maybe you have the flu. If laws become meaningless or are changed to hurt certain kinds of citizens, I mean, there's a description and a prescription you could probably look at, a list of what leads to fascism. I think that's the thing to teach more than anything. How do you get to that place? And I think there were German citizens who were very nice people, and maybe they weren't Nazis the first month or week or year, but they became Nazis. And what happens in a society that takes people who are, they don't want no trouble, they don't want no problem, they just want to live. And then they turn into beasts. And I think that is the thing to teach. Thank you for sharing that. I think that that's profound.

Eleanor, I want to end with Yiddish because you've devoted your life to being a Yiddish performer and the love of the language, of how it's spoken. And I'm wondering, you know, if you could share a little Yiddish with us. There's a little song and it's called Zolzain,

which means let it be. I'll translate it first so that you know. And he says, let it be that I build my castles in the air. Let it be that my God is not even there. My dreams are better. My dreams are bluer than blue. Let it be that my ship never comes to shore. Let it be that I never achieve my goals. What matters in this life is that we walk along a sunny path. It goes Soll sein, als ich bei in der Luft meine Schlösser.

Soll sein, als mein Gott ist im Ganzen nicht da. Im Träum' ist mir heller, im Träum' ist mir besser. Im Cholm' der Himmel ist blauer von blau. Im Träum' ist mir heller, im Traum ist mir besser. In allem der Himmel ist Bläue von Blau. Soll sein, als ich will keinmal zum Ziel

nicht erlangen. Soll sein, als mein Schiff wird nicht kommen zum Bregg. Mir geht nicht in dem, mir soll huben der Gang gehen. Mir geht noch in Gang

auf versunigten Weg. Mir geht nicht in dem, mir soll huben der Gang gehen. Mir geht noch in Gang auf versunigten Weg. Oben der Gangen, mir geht noch ein Gang, auf der Sonnenweg.

Beautiful. I could listen to you for hours. Oh, God, thank you, Jay. Thank you. Eleanor, it was a pleasure having you as a guest on All About Change. Thank you for your activism on behalf of children, of people who have experienced the Holocaust, of those who have gone through the Holocaust. And thank you for bringing our culture to life.

Thank you. I wish they could have seen it, lived it. Their lives were so hard, too hard, and yet so driven, so strong and relentless and determined so that I could have this moment. All About Change is a production of the Ruderman Family Foundation. This show is produced by Yochai Meital,

Mijan Zulu, and Rachel Donner. As always, be sure to come back in two weeks for another inspiring story. In the meantime, you can go check out all of our previous content live on our feed and linked on our new website, allaboutchangepodcast.com. I'm Jay Ruderman, and I'll catch you next time on All About Change. In Träumen ist mir heller, in Träumen ist mir besser.

In Cholim der Himmel noch blauer von blau. In Träumen ist mir heller, in Träumen ist mir besser. אין טרוים איז מיר חלר אין טרוים איז מיר בסר אין חולים דר הימל נוך בלואה פון בלוא Soll es sein, als fällt kein Mond zum Ziel, nicht der Langen? Soll es sein, als mein Schiff wird nicht kommen zum Berg Mir geht nicht in dem, ich soll haben der Gang gehen Mir geht nur der Gang auf a sunnigen Weg. Mir geht nicht in den, ich soll hoffen, der Gang gehen, mir geht nur der Gang auf a sunnigen Weg.