As adults both women have struggled with what Lieberman refers to as a constant “undercurrent of striving to be strong and successful in life”-a trait, she says, that is common to oldest children of survivors, especially daughters. Now Weisel has set out to capture that experience in “Daughters of Absence: Transforming the Legacy of Loss.” A collection of essays by 12 women, the book confronts candidly, hauntingly, sometimes even humorously, the pressure to fill the often unspoken void in their parents’ lives.
In the opening shot of her photo essay, photographer Vera Loeffler zooms in tight on the ever sorrowful eyes of her mother and writes, “my sister and I wrestled with the need to protect her and the intolerance we felt for her limitless pain, predictably at hand on the periphery of every happy moment.” Musician Patinka Kopec writes of learning to play the violin and viola in an effort to bring joy into her parents’ lives. With wry wit comedian Deb Filler tells of driving through Poland with her father, swapping survivor tales-his of the camps, hers of being a struggling artist in New York. And Lieberman contributes a diary of her journey as part of the American delegation marking the 50th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. Weisel and Lieberman sat down with NEWSWEEK’s Lynette Clemetson in Weisel’s Georgetown art studio to talk about the project.
NEWSWEEK: Why another book about the Holocaust?
Mindy Weisel: When I had the idea for doing this book, I went to the Holocaust Museum [in Washington] and did a subject search. And there are 72 books out-about the psychiatric damage done to the survivors’ children, books written by survivors’ children about their parents. Everything is about something else. There has not been one single book, other than Art Spiegelman’s “Maus,” that addresses how we as survivors’ children feel-what it was like having families like this, what we’ve done with our lives.
The stories in the book are all more empowering than tragic. Some of them are even humorous. Was that deliberate?
Enough already with the tragedy. I mean, there will never be enough of expressing the tragedy, that goes without saying. But the reality is that we are all women in our 50s. We’ve all celebrated life in beautiful ways. We have children, we are starting to have grandchildren. We have done meaningful work in our lives. And I really wanted to leave a legacy that Hitler did not win.
What prompted you to use only the voices of women?
It was really Hadassah. After she had given me the record [of her trip] to Auschwitz, when I read it I felt, “this should be known.” All of the women in this book are only children or first-born daughters to survivors. Hadassah has a brother who is four years younger, I have a brother who is six years younger. They had us as cushions. We were the ones who had to absorb our parents’ heartache and damage. I felt very strongly that the daughters who have been carrying the burden have to be heard.
Hadassah Lieberman: Originally it was going to be called “In the Presence of Absence,” and then it developed into “Daughters of Absence.” Well, in the presence of absence, these daughters who have contributed to this book, all needed their voices to be heard. Heard in whatever it is that they’ve chosen to do. In absence there is a lot of silence, and yet none of these daughters has been silent. And it’s not only volume, but a palette of colors that has really developed at this point in time, in our middle years.
The two of you share a special bond through the story of your mothers.
Weisel: It is amazing to be in Washington, to have moved in a few doors away, and to learn that our mothers had been taken from their Passover seders on the same night.
Lieberman: The night when the Nazis took the Hungarian Jews.
Weisel: Someone asked me during the [presidential] campaign how long I had known Hadassah, and I said, “I’ve known her all my life. I just couldn’t find her.” I had heard she was the daughter of survivors, and she had heard the same about me. But when I met Hadassah it was there in an instant, looking in her eyes and just knowing.
Did you learn anything new about each other or each other’s experiences in the process of putting together this book?
Lieberman: It really hit me when I saw the book. Mindy had undertaken this adventure of putting something together to leave a mark. After all, one of the scarring experiences in all of our lives, the women in this book, is the shared background that we all have. It was most exciting and rewarding to see that take shape and to feel that it was there in writing, in print. It made me react the way [I did] when my dad did his memoirs. I was proud when I saw [my dad’s memoirs] in print, and I was proud of Mindy’s perseverance. And she was doing this at a time when I was taken away through the campaign adventure. And she persevered despite the fact that everyone who helped author this book was away on their separate adventures.
Mindy, so much of your art work focuses on your experiences as a survivor. And some of your work is very dark. Does putting together this book mark a different stage for you?
Weisel: My youngest daughter was home for Passover, and she was talking about my work, and she said, “Mom you’ve gone from the thickest darkness, and now you’re acknowledging air.” I am acknowledging air. I want air. I have been choked by the Holocaust in the sense that you fill up with so much heartache and so much anxiety and feeling for what your parents have been through and what all of these people have been through. You feel that the anxiety and the heartache is just going to come out of the top of your head and through your feet, and that there is no room for you. One of the common [threads] in this book is that each woman expresses a very strong sense of self.
Hadassah, in your piece you talk about a constant undercurrent of striving and being successful? Is that also a common thread?
Weisel: All of us are good daughters. I think that was crucial. You had to be. Who had a choice not to be good? Are you kidding?
Lieberman: They had lost so many people in their families, and you were their family, you were all the people who weren’t there. I don’t think the second children felt it as much. But I was always expected to have a good job, always to do good.
You also write about your decision to bring back a rock from Auschwitz, because a rock symbolized surviving and bearing witness. During the campaign you talked to me about your sense of determination and defiance in the face of Hitler’s atrocities. Do you see yourself as a rock?
Lieberman: I think of my dad as the rock. But I think what happens when we are in the presence of absence is that you then have to incorporate things, characteristics. You absorb things.
How does that constant sense of absence manifest itself in your daily lives?
Lieberman: You can’t be as casual. You can’t be as casual about things like family. I always envy the casualness that people have with one another.
Weisel: We never had grandparents. Our families were so limited. All of that translates into this feeling that the moment has to be full. That we have to make every moment count, fill each moment with meaning.
Lieberman: At the same time, we are challenged because we have children who don’t have that feeling. Even though we’ve transferred it, transmitted it. They have an idea of it, they are part of it. But they don’t have it the way that we have it directly.
Weisel: One day recently I was very, very upset and stressed out, and my daughter, who is now getting married, was in the kitchen. And I looked at her, and she was just going on with her life. And I said, “When my mother used to be upset, I would die, and I was so sad.” And she said, “But I don’t have to be sad for you. You have a life. You didn’t go through the camps.” To be fair, my youngest daughter wrote a college essay about what it meant to have a mother who was the daughter of survivors. And that’s the mixed baggage with the third generation. Our daughters are sensitive to it. But we wish a lighter load for them.
Are there parts of your experience that are universal?
Lieberman: Some of the kinds of feelings we have, there are other people, other immigrant societies, poor people, who relate to our stories.
And that’s very important. After the campaign we were at a Dunkin’ Donuts in Maryland, and this African-American man, a retired police officer, turns to Joe and says, “Are you Joe Lieberman? You should’ve won. Great to meet you.” And then he turns to me and says, “Hadassah, nice to meet you!” And I thought, “My God.” Growing up no one ever pronounced my name right. It was always Hadussah, Hadissa or something else wrong. But he knew my name. You know what happened? Here’s this representation on the national ticket that’s different from the norm, and so the ties with people were so profound. That’s what’s so amazing.
Weisel: Yes, many of the themes we deal with are about the universal loss and suffering that we all know. And there is a very strong universal message that beauty and strength can survive no matter what you’ve been through. It’s all about survival of the spirit.
