Spirits of the Past: Laura Zelle and Susie Greenberg

May 29, 2015

Laura Zelle grew up in a Jewish family whose experience of the Holocaust was not often a subject of family discussion. In this conversation, Zelle joins friend Susie Greenberg to reflect on her efforts to keep alive her family history for younger generations by conducting interviews with relatives who lived through the Holocaust.

This story was produced by David Dault at Sandburg Media, LLC.

This story is a part of the American Pilgrimage Project, a conversation series that invites Americans of diverse backgrounds to sit together and talk to each other one-to-one about the role their religious beliefs play at crucial moments in their lives. The interview was recorded by StoryCorps, a national nonprofit whose mission is to preserve and share humanity’s stories in order to build connections between people and create a more just and compassionate world.

Laura Zelle: I knew from an early age that in this world, somewhere in Europe, that there was a society that rose up that targeted Jewish people because they were Jewish, and that my grandfather and relatives were gassed, were killed because of being Jewish, and so I feel that I have really spent a good part of my life trying to understand that. I did not grow up in a house that talked about the Holocaust, and it wasn't until I was later in high school, learning about it in classes that I began to ask questions. And it was through that questioning that stories started to come out, and my mom always talked about her mom and dad because she loved them so much and wanted me to know them, but it wasn't until I really sat down with my cousin and we started to interview my mom, his mom, my two other aunts, and my uncle that we started to get stories out of them.

Susie Greenberg: My grandparents, who I was lucky enough to know up until my adult life, at least one set came from Eastern Europe, very observant, very spiritually guided. And my bubbe, my grandmother, would speak with her deceased parents, her deceased mother, all the time. She would make the blessings over the candles Friday night, and talk to her. So, I grew up knowing the importance of descendants and family and connection and how religion and the spirituality and faith came into play in so much of that, and that was a big influencing factor I think, for me, is the importance of that, and as I said, we had Friday night dinner with them every Friday night, and still we have Friday night dinner as a family with my parents.

Laura Zelle: So, one of the stories that I was really focused on was the day that the Nazis rounded up the Jews right outside the synagogue in Athens, and I wanted to know details. What time was it? How did it happen? Where was my grandfather in the line? Was there roll call that day? Where was my grandma? Where was my mom?

And, because she was a child, she didn't have those details, so we had to piece the story together from a collective memory of everybody, and we did come to find out that it was Greek Independence Day. It was Shabbat, and that the Jews had to go to the synagogue in Athens and have a roll call every Shabbat, and that they just closed the doors and didn't let anybody come and speak with their relative, and so my grandmother is at home with the kids and my grandfather's locked in the synagogue. I remember thinking to myself, well, what was she thinking? And what she was thinking, what we come to find out was that she actually took a kid to the neighbors to watch my kids, and she came down to the synagogue to try and find my grandfather, which was probably the most dangerous thing she could have done.

She gets there, and I only know this through my Uncle Sam, who was about 15 at the time and would sell cigarettes to the Nazis to make money, or the Germans to make money. So, he was around the commotion, and he tells the story that she saw him, and he said to her, he motioned her away, "Go home, go take care of the kids, and go back into hiding." So, once you have those kernels of human relations and what happened between people, I mean, I hold onto those because I think about my own relationship with my husband and what would we do in those circumstances? And after interviewing my uncle and my aunts, I realized that if I didn't do something with these stories, that my kids would really have it piecemeal, and so I made a film about my family's story.

Susie Greenberg: So, I guess, I felt spirits of the past, creeping into my current existence, and I think that's again, this sort of little thread we have running through this whole conversation, is what we are bringing from the past, into the present, going into the future. I think that has been a conscious and purposeful element, I think for both of us, Laura-

Laura Zelle: I agree.

Susie Greenberg: ... and for our families, and amongst many thousands and millions of other people that do the same thing, but to watch it and to see how our kids have embraced it has been meaningful.