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SECOND GENERATION
L O S A N G E LES
Sons and Daughters of Jewish Holocaust Survivors
email: 2ndGen@imeg.com
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G2 Newsletter
Volume, 15, Number 1
Kislev 5758
December 1997
PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE
"... How many of you grew up learning of choices, impossible choices, which our parents or grandparents had to make, and their repercussions. And how many of you are willing to admit that... in your own lives you were stricken by fear, even disproportionate fear?"
Now comes the time for a few sleepless nights. Although the end of the secular year is not usually the time for self-reflection, Heshbon HaNefesh being reserved for Rosh HaShana, most of us living in a secular culture do view the turning of the year as a time to review what the past year has been for us, and where the next year will take us. At the very least, we need to get our finances in order for the accountant!
Personally, I can say good bye to 1997 knowing that the year was a difficult one, perhaps a significant one, in that I was forced to begin the confrontation of issues of career, home, and family which I had put aside for a long time. Maybe, being still in my thirties, it’s too early for a mid-life crisis, maybe too late! The elements of character, the strengths and weaknesses derived from our youth, consist of a potential energy, the raw material from which we make a life. And at various times in that life, having made choices, we contemplate the ways in which that potential has been made into reality. Each choice represents an opportunity in one direction, and the end of an opportunity in the other. Few significant decisions permit us to go back, to start over, and to do things differently. Even indecisiveness constitutes a decision of sorts.
How much more difficult if one considers that significant decisions may cast long shadows. No doubt, the knowledge that today’s choice will impact tomorrow, and the day after tomorrow, is something of which members of Second Generation are quite aware. How many of you grew up learning of choices, impossible choices, which our parents or grandparents had to make, and their repercussions. And how many of you are willing to admit that, when facing important decisions in your own lives, you were stricken, however briefly, by fear, even disproportionate fear?
Certainly none of these conflicts are new, and are, most likely, tangential to the Shoah. However, one recalls that outstanding book, Children of the Holocaust, by Helen Epstein, which was the first to report, without extensive analysis, the early life-choices of sons and daughters of Survivors. In a true reporter’s style, Ms. Epstein told the stories of individuals, very different individuals, connected by their parents’ histories. By no means did all the people in the book attribute their decisions in life to the Shoah, nor did they all feel the long shadow cast by the experiences of their families. But several did, and that made all the difference.
To a large community of Second Generation, the sons and daughters of Jewish Holocaust Survivors born from 1945 to about 1970, the insights and observations made in Ms. Epstein’s first book, however dated they may seem today, have had a tremendous impact. The development of this organization, and organizations like it all over the world, can trace its history to the stories of seemingly average young people, a housewife in Israel, a Vietnam veteran in the U.S., and many others whose stories were told by a world-travelling reporter, a young woman trying to free her spirit but fascinated by her past.
Ms. Epstein is older now, and has accepted her intense interest in her past. In her current book, Where She Came From, she tells the stories of four generations of women in her family. The tales begin in the Bohemian-Moravian village of Brtnice (amazingly close to where my family comes from), and follow these women to the “big” cities of Vienna and Prague, as society progresses from the security of the last century to the dynamism, opportunity, and tragic end of this one.
What a pleasure it will be for us to listen to Ms. Epstein when she comes to speak to Second Generation on Sunday March 8, at 2P.M. at Wilshire Boulevard Temple. I can assure you that the opportunity to hear this fine author will not come soon again. I know that the members of this organization do feel some sense of community, that’s why you are on our mailing list, so show that sense of community and meet the woman who started a process of awareness. For me, confronting this shared history will be an enlightening experience.
-Gary Schiller, M.D.
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