EVA METZGER BROWN ORAL HISTORY

SANDRA RUBIN:This is the Wexler Oral History Project, which seeks to document, through personal stories, Jewish culture and identity through the generations. If there is a focus on Yiddish, we will go into that. [BREAK IN RECORDING] I did read the answers to your questionnaire, and I saw that you were born in Germany and that your family escaped the Holocaust. Would you just tell me a little bit about your family background -- about your parents, where they came from, what they did?

EVA METZGER BROWN:Um-hm. My family was in Germany for many generations. And we 1:00lived in Nuremberg. They were well-to-do. They were educated. My mother is the fourth of five children of my maternal grandparents. My father, who was somewhat older than she was, was an afterthought child -- he was considered to be an afterthought -- he was born seventeen years after and nineteen years after his older sisters, but considered to be the apple of his mother's eye. He was very successful in Germany. When he married my mother, he was in the international toy business, which he entered again when we came to the States. And when Hitler took power -- first in '33 -- and then in '35 the Nuremberg Laws were passed, 2:00and parts of my mother's family began to leave. 'Cause they lost jobs -- one was a banker, and you couldn't be employed in Germany by the government in some fashion at that time. So I believe that we were the last to leave. Because my father was an international businessman, he had a passport. So he was used to a lot of freedom in Europe. And when that was curtailed -- and he almost couldn't get my mother a passport -- well, he did get her one. But let me just say that Kristallnacht happened November 9th, 1938; I had been born July 13th, 1938, so I was four months old. And as you know, German thugs basically -- as I'm told -- 3:00came to the house with clubs and broke everything in sight, including the crystal and crystal chandeliers, and hence Kristallnacht got its name. My father insisted that he get a passport then for my mother, and two days later we left for Paris, France. My father was picked up by the French as a foreign alien, as were any refugees who came into France at that time, and put in a detention camp. It was not a concentration camp, as I was told, but, you know, he slept on the floor, on straw, and they were separated. And my parents thought it would be safer to leave Paris, which was such a metropolis, and go to a small town. And we moved to Angers, France, near a railroad station. And not much later, the 4:00Germans began bombing Angers. And in one of those bombing attacks, my mother and I were walking on the street with a friend of my mother's and her little boy. And the woman died on the street. My mother was wounded and hospitalized -- she lost a leg in that bombing. And I was hit in the head, and years later learned that I have some shrapnel in my brain -- that's the bad luck. The good luck, as you can see, is that it didn't cause noticeable injury to me -- up to now, anyway. But we were separated. I was, I'm gonna say, two. And I was hidden in a Catholic orphanage for four months. And at one point, the French opened the detention camps. And my father, who was a very smart man, immediately contacted 5:00the International Red Cross to locate us. 'Cause he was in Toulouse by that time, in France, and we were -- my mother was in a hospital in Angers and I was in a Catholic orphanage. So the International Red Cross reunited us.

SR:Wow.

EMB:It was really a miracle.

SR:Yeah.

EMB:And we headed down to Marseilles to try to get a boat out of Europe. Meanwhile, my mother's -- one of my mother's brother and her sister were in the States, and they were able to get us visas to come to the States. My mother had a brother already in Palestine, and he got us a visa to go to Palestine -- now Israel. But my parents chose the States. And we got a boat, which was stopped in Casablanca -- oh, stopped and then sent to Casablanca, where my father 6:00contracted malaria. So that by the time we re-boarded another boat and came to Martinique -- the island of Martinique, which was kind of a -- evaluation center for getting into the States -- my father was ill. And so my mother was concerned that they wouldn't let us into the country. And that's how she tells it to me. So when it came their turn to be inspected, she had a temper tantrum of some kind -- yelling and screaming and all kinds of things -- and they looked at her -- don't forget, at that time, she had a peg leg, I was very little, and they said, Go. And we got into the States.

SR:Wow.

EMB:It's amazing. Yeah. It's quite amazing. When we got here, of course -- with 7:00nothing -- my father was still ill. So because the sister and brother was in the States, we got hooked up with a doctor and things like this. And my parents spoke German and French. And at home, we spoke German. My father was always very resourceful, and when he got well, he wanted to work, and he immediately went into the toy business. And to make a long story short, there was somebody I think he may have known from Nuremberg who had a toy business, and he joined him, and they expanded. And he traveled to Japan and Canada and South America, getting merchandise and selling merchandise -- and became very successful again, 8:00which was something that was very important to him. My mother took a while to recover. And, you know, I was very young. The good news of that is that you have a lot of time to integrate into the new country. And I was -- I guess I was kind of friendly. And, um, you know, though I had been wounded myself and hidden and -- I attribute to the nuns' excellent care of me, because I think just a separation at that age from the only people I knew could have had a more negative effect than it appeared to have. The main effect that was evident for me as I got older and became aware of it was that my family didn't talk about 9:00the Holocaust and I didn't talk about the Holocaust. I took German lessons with my grandmother, who lived, eventually, near us -- she had gone to Palestine and then came to the States, but nothing was mentioned about the Holocaust. You know, I knew where we had come from. All my family spoke with accents. My parents gave me English lessons -- hence, you hear how I speak. And I liked school. I had certainly got the message not to cause any problems. And I wasn't that kind of child, so I didn't cause problems, I don't think. (laughs) In any case, I --

SR:Were you an only child?

EMB:I am an only child. My parents didn't have any more children. Yeah. To -- go 10:00fast-forward to where I have three children. (laughs) I made a different life decision. I had different opportunities, also.

SR:Right.

EMB:A more peaceful time, as well. I would say that I went through school all the way through to a PhD in clinical psych, where when I -- oh, let me add -- I also entered psychotherapy. And when I entered psychotherapy, I learned about both feelings I had had and the fact that I knew so little of my background. And there's a three-word phrase --- "I broke my silence." And actually, as I mentioned earlier before the tape started, I switched my specialty as a clinical psychologist -- I was a trauma specialist to begin with -- from the area of 11:00divorce -- I'm not divorced, but I was in that area -- I switched it to intergenerational healing and Holocaust families. And I called a meeting at my house at this time and invited all the second generation in the Amherst-Northampton general area. A lot of people came. Forty-five people came.

SR:I was gonna ask you about that, because I didn't realize there was such a second generation community in Amherst.

EMB:Well, it probably --

SR:I would think --

EMB:-- was Amherst, Northampton -- a little bit broader than Amherst --

SR:Yeah.

EMB:-- but you're absolutely right. I was like, Wow. (laughs)

SR:Yeah.

EMB: And some of them wanted a social group, some of them wanted to meet each other. I was interested in bringing together basically a therapy group. That 12:00therapy group lasted eight years and taught me a great deal. They taught me, in talking about themselves in the context of a Holocaust family with one or two parents Holocaust survivors -- who spoke in the family, who didn't speak in the family, how they learned what, who had traveled back to Europe, what they had found. And I wrote -- I write about my work, and published it. But what I found with this second generation, I could also tell it in myself, because I'm a survivor, but I'm also second generation to my parents. What I found was that -- to make a generalization, which one should never do -- they were a very care-taking group. Now the fact is that one or both of their parents were 13:00greatly injured by the war -- often also not talking -- so it was kind of picked up. And many of them were in the social services as professions. I'm in the social services. It's just interesting. I won't make more about it than that.

SR:Um-hm.

EMB:To go back to my own growing up, I was extremely committed to understanding what went on amongst people. And I took violin lessons forever. I never got past scratching on the violin, but my teacher was a student in clinical psych. So about twelve, I decided that's what I wanted to be. And I actually then 14:00consistently worked toward that, and became that. And when I found out -- when I broke my own silence, I actually then used it in the field to help others either break their silence or connect with people who had had similar experiences. So I started to speak nationally.

SR:Did you ever get your parents to break the silence? Were you able to talk to them?

EMB:Well, my father died before I had broken mine. I believe that's the case. And my father was failing before that. So I don't think I was working yet in that area. With my mother, I told her what I was doing. She wasn't that happy 15:00about it. Though I must say that before she began to fail -- she's still alive at ninety-five -- she wrote a memoir. So that my own children -- one in particular, who went back to Germany, was able to go to the streets she identified as having lived. Now in terms of passing the story down, which is part of this project, also -- in our family, there was the Holocaust story down -- and plus, some of the story of my father's -- my husband's side and his father and mother, which was very different. I don't think my in-laws had ever met a survivor until they met me.

SR:Were they survivors or -- were they -- they were --

EMB:No. One --

SR:-- American --

EMB:They were American-born, and I think some of their parents were American-born.

SR:Oh.

EMB:But they were all Jewish. My husband's paternal branch was from Hungary, but his grandfather had come over, like, at seventeen. So he was here for a while. And the way it was then, they sent to the Old Country for their spouses. I have stories from that side, too, which are very fascinating.

SR:Yeah.

EMB:And my mother-in-law's family came from Poland. But I think it's possible that her parents were actually born in this country, too. So I can't be sure of that. I met my husband fairly young. Should I just continue going on like this?

SR:Yes, please.

EMB:We were counselors in camp -- we were teenagers -- older teenagers.

SR:Had you gone to the camp as a child? Or --

EMB:Not this camp.

SR:No.

EMB:But I went to camp -- since I was about four years old, every year.

SR:Was it a Jewish camp?

EMB:Y camps were very popular.

SR:Oh, yeah.

EMB:Not necessarily a Jewish camp, no. My parents also -- let me go back there -- my parents also were not observant during my growing up. My mother -- as I said, my -- I think my mother -- it took a long while for my mother to recover. But when she did, she became very active in an organization called Hadassah, became a leader in Hadassah, gave talks also -- and don't forget, English was really her second, third, or fourth language. It was quite remarkable. And, you 18:00know, they went to Israel a number of times. And -- yeah.

SR:So there was a strong Jewish identity at home, but not a religious one -- more cultural --

EMB:Right.

SR:-- historic?

MB:Right, right. You know, thinking back, I would say -- though I wouldn't have thought so at the time -- I think the uniting force amongst my mother's family, all of whom survived -- my father's mother died in a camp -- the describing factor was the Holocaust. And people had to sort of, say recover, to get back on their feet, in order to start, like, the kind of living where people are telling family stories and --

SR:Right.

EMB:-- and things like that. I mean, my parents -- we celebrated Hanukkah. We celebrated all of the Jewish holidays. I went to Sunday school a little bit when 19:00I was, I don't know, young. (laughs) But for a short time. Actually, when I became fifty, I celebrated my bat mitzvah here in Amherst.

SR:That's so nice.

EMB:So you could almost see it as part of a long recovery -- to have the security -- financial and emotional -- and the support also of your spouse -- and how you have sorted out what's happened to you, in my case. First of all, no one took me as Jewish -- because I was -- well, now I'm white, but I was blonde 20:00-- from my father, I was blonde. So it's been a long story. I know my parents wanted me to marry Jewish, though I dated a number of people from different faiths and nationalities. But as I mentioned, I met my husband early. We both went to college then in different places, and then we came back together again. And this part is part of the easy part of my life. I think that the early part made me a very thoughtful child -- didn't understand things, didn't ask questions -- as is -- was not atypical for child survivors. There is a child survivor organization now called the World Federation of Jewish Child Survivors, which I attend every year. It's held all over the world. And there are workshops 21:00and speakers. And I facilitate some workshops. So I kind of found myself at about fifty in terms of the Holocaust piece of my life. I was a fairly well-Americanized young person -- though you would see parts of my history as bilingual and things like this that don't come in families necessarily who have American family trees. But I think for me, breaking my silence was a major turning point for me. And I had always wanted to make a difference. And I feel that I was able to.

SR:What were the circumstances under which you broke the silence?

EMB:Well, I went into psychotherapy myself. And I learned -- I went into psychotherapy twice. The first time I went with the idea that -- I wanted to become an analyst, then I should be analyzed. And whether it was the therapist I saw or whether it was the wrong method for me -- whatever it was -- and other factors -- I broke down. I had a breakdown. And I took a while -- since I was in the field already -- it took a while to figure out what went wrong. And I think now that one of the things that my therapist underestimated, and I had kind of no idea about, was that -- that early history and that anxiety -- and that -- 23:00whatever you want to -- the anxiety, the tension, was grossly underestimated. I looked like a typical American person, and I think that many people did not realize, didn't -- weren't interested in backgrounds. I mean, as children, we didn't say, Where'd you come from? (laughs) You know, we played. So I -- I would think that some of my -- I think I spoke at my -- one of my high school or college reunions, and someone came up to me and they said, "I didn't know you were Jewish. I didn't know you came from Europe. I had no idea." So you can understand that there had been an effort to Americanize me, and I had bought it. When I broke my silence at fifty, I was already an old lady. I became intensely 24:00interested in that kind of trauma and trauma work. And that all happened when I was in treatment with my second therapist. I was a bit older then. And I began exploring outside of treatment. I began going back to Nuremberg, went back to Paris. I went back to Angers. And everywhere I went, I met people, and I wrote about it. So I have a website with my Holocaust papers -- both biographical narratives, but also professional papers. And that might be of interest, to give 25:00you the address -- should I give you the address of it?

SR:Yes, please.

EMB:Okay. It's www.evametzgerbrown.org. And there, you will find some of what I'm telling you right now in different essays. But I went kind of professional with my interests -- you know, I wedded the history, which took a long time to come out, to the strong education I had gotten on the way of growing up in this country. And I would say that it's been very helpful to me. I feel I've been helpful to others, but it's been helpful to me. And it's helpful to me with my children, and with -- I have grandchildren. My kids always read all my stuff. And, you know, the whole silence -- I didn't just break my silence; I broke the 26:00whole family's silence. So -- you know, and they could talk to their grandmother still about things -- you know, I [clearly could they speak?] to her. With difficulty, she could speak about it.

SR:Um-hm.

EMB:So that's a tremendous gift to them.

SR:It is.

EMB:And that's what I would encourage people to do if they've had trauma, is -- and if they you know, heal somewhat from it, to pass on the benefits of that to their next generations, who are going, one day, to be very interested in their family story -- and history of their parents. So I have children who are now in their mid and late forties. I have grandchildren from eleven to twenty-one. And when all is added up, I feel very lucky. (laughs)

SR:I should think so.

EMB:Yeah.

SR:Yeah. Okay. Tell me about your -- a little bit about your educational 27:00background. And did you have a mentor or someone -- you seem to have known what you wanted to do before you started, but tell me how you came to it.

EMB:Well, one of the advantages my parents provided me was the money to go for higher education. As I said, I decided fairly early what I thought I wanted to do. And it really wasn't clear that much what that all meant, but it was what that teacher had done -- my violin teacher -- and it seemed like a way, I think, to understand others, but ultimately, to understand myself better. So I went through public school, I went to Cornell University, I went to Columbia 28:00University -- kind of one after the other. I was very committed by that time. And I knew enough about my times to know there would be an advantage for a woman to have a strong degree. The women's movement -- it was just beginning. Betty Friedan's book came out in '63; I got my PhD in '67. And I always worked. I worked in schools -- to fit with my family life -- I worked part-time for a long time. And then in Amherst -- when we moved to Amherst -- I worked at the Chicopee-Holyoke Mental Health Center, and the psychiatrist there, when he went into private practice, offered me some space in his office. So he wasn't a 29:00mentor in a true sense, but he was a helper. And so that's how I began. That was all in Amherst. And then I went out on my own. I taught a little at UMass, I taught a little at Hampshire College. And the career took more of my time as my children grew up and left home. And, you know, you kind of find yourself along the way. You find your professional self along the way, too.

SR:Yeah, it's true.

EMB:So, I guess that's about the story.

SR:What brought you to Amherst?

EMB:Well, we had our education -- our graduate education -- in New York. My husband's a physician. And he was drafted for the Vietnam War and sent to the 30:00Air Force base in Chicopee Falls. Well, I got the letter. I called him up -- he was at work -- and I said, "Oh my God, (UNCLEAR), we're going to Chicopee Falls." He said, "What state is that in?" I said, "Massachusetts." He said, "How bad can that be?"

SR:(laughs)

EMB:And we lived on the Air Force base for two years. And then we looked around here. I think we thought, Not so far from New York, where our families were. I think my husband had some of the interests of Amherst folk -- gardening, physical activity. (laughs) And I knew that I could do my work anywhere. And that's how we came here. Kind of the Air Force brought us to the area, (laughs) 31:00and we looked around and stayed.

SR:That's nice. Lucky.

EMB:Yeah. It worked out well.

SR:And what would you say was the Jewish environment that your children grew up in?

EMB:That's interesting. Well, to just give a sentence, all my children were -- I have two boys and a girl -- were bar and bat mitzvahed. One -- we joined a small core of Jewish people here in Amherst who met together, renting rooms at the university, wherever there was space, to have services. And I think we bought the building -- the Jewish Community of Amherst building -- in the '70s somewhere. We came to Amherst in '72. It may have been -- well, in any case, I think maybe the late '70s. I'm not sure about that. So I can't say we were 32:00observant like -- we lit candles, but not regularly. But we were Jewish-identified. I mean, I was very Jewish-identified in my life. You know, I learned at one point that if I went into a Jewish circle of people, I had to say that I was Jewish, you know? And I was willing to do that. Because otherwise, many people would assume that I wasn't -- which struck me as, in the beginning, very odd, because I had had so much of a Jewish history -- and had been persecuted for it, you know? And my children therefore knew we were Jewish. By this time my mother was observant, so when they visited their grandparents, she was observant. She lit candles. She learned -- both of my parents learned Hebrew, both of my parents traveled to Israel quite a few times. I had been to Israel. So we weren't frum [observant], as they say, but they knew they were Jewish.

SR:Um-hm.

EMB:But they were American, you know? So -- I had to become American. They were American.

SR:Yeah. And your grandchildren?

EMB:I have seven grandchildren. They're all being raised Jewish. Not all my children married Jewish people, but they all are raising their children Jewish. So we've had quite a few bar and bat mitzvahs, 'cause some of them are older. And it's a -- it's a happiness for me. And I'm grateful to my daughter-in-laws, that they support this -- and very, very positively. So, yes, we are Jewish. (laughs)

SR:And your career. So did you always see patients -- do you see patients -- or 34:00did you see patients privately? You mentioned you were in some sort of a clinic situation?

EMB:Yeah. I began -- in '67 I got my degree. Then I began working part-time in a school system in Queens, New York. When we went to the Air Force, I worked in some postdoctoral work at Austen Riggs Center --

SR:In Stockbridge.

EMB:-- in Stockbridge. Then we moved to Amherst. And I worked, as I mentioned, at the Chicopee-Holyoke Mental Health Center. And then I entered private practice -- and slowly left that job and went into full-time practice. But full-time practice, since I had the children, meant half-time work for me. For me, it was -- my work was all practice at that point, but I worked half-time. 35:00There didn't exist as many avenues for taking care of children as they do now. And also, women weren't working in my time -- most of them weren't working. That was the nice thing about Amherst, is you did have some women -- you know, more than some -- working part-time or full-time at the university.

SR:Um-hm. So you mentioned when you started this support group where you got the people together -- can you tell me a little bit more about that? How did you find them and how did --

EMB:Oh, I put an ad in the paper.

SR:You put an ad in the -- yeah.

EMB:For second generation to meet at my house. And I was really blown away by the numbers who came. I think my feeling was at the time that they might have 36:00wondered about themselves already a little bit, and maybe had felt more isolated in a town like Amherst, Northampton, the area, and that coming together was a good thing for them. So I just put an ad in. And as I said, forty-plus people came to -- I think three groups began. One was a social group -- didn't need me, really -- that I -- we started. Another was -- I can't recall what I would name it. And then there was this -- what I'd call more therapy group. And it was all, you know, volunteer. And in the second generation group that I facilitated, the goal for me in my mind was, I thought, to provide a space where people could 37:00begin to talk about things like I had experienced that they might not have talked about with everybody or they wouldn't know who to talk about these things with. Because people -- I guess the feeling was, people wouldn't understand -- you know, to have parents who have an accent, parents who -- some of them married late in life -- 'cause all these parents had interrupted lives. And then there were people from Poland and people from Hungary and people from Germany -- you know, and people didn't -- their parents didn't necessarily feel unified with all these different backgrounds. They very often grew up within a family like mine, but not a community that was survivors. And then one or two did. And they used the group in part, if they still had parents, to go back and talk to 38:00parents -- or to video their parents. And some of their parents were quite amazed that they would be so interested. So I saw my own story a little bit replicated in what I was hearing. (pauses) And it took its course.

SR:Um-hm. That's interesting, 'cause it created a sense of community --

EMB:Yes.

SR:-- among those people. When you were growing up in Queens, did your parents have a community of people that spoke German, had been survivors? Did they have friends with similar backgrounds?

EMB:Well, when we first came here, they were really quite, um -- devastated, let's put it that way. I was so young, I can't really say -- do an analysis 39:00here, but just in growing up in the family, my mother -- when she recovered, really, had a lot of energy, a lot of commitment, a lot of message to be shared. It wasn't that she talked about her story necessarily, but she was very committed, as I said, in Hadassah, and rose in those ranks. That took a while, though. That was not immediate. I think that the period of recovery was real for them. As a child, you really -- if I have to look back, I think you integrate quicker. You know, I usually went outside of my -- we lived in an apartment house, and I went outside and played with the kids. And, you know, I was so 40:00young that I can't recall ever thinking, I don't understand the language. I just learned it. And -- my parents had took longer -- but then my mother became active, and her community was always Jewish -- predominantly Jewish -- and committed to raising money for this cause or that cause -- I would say. My father was totally immersed in his work. I think perhaps that he might have blamed himself for not seeing this coming in Europe. He was not challenged professionally -- you now, vocationally -- there, 'cause he was an independent businessman.

SR:In Europe?

EMB:In Europe. So, you know, he didn't lose a job or lose money. And he didn't -- till Kristallnacht, he didn't really, it seems, put together that -- with the 41:00family leaving, we should be leaving, too. I think he blamed himself a little bit for that. My father got his social life through my mother. He would always say -- my mother's name was Doris -- is Doris -- he would say, "I'm Doris's husband." (laughter) His focus was to provide for the family -- my mother, myself. And he did that very well. He had a sense of humor. He did not speak about his family. His father died when he was three years old. And his mother died in Theresienstadt, as I mentioned.

SR:Yeah. And did he have brothers or sisters?

EMB:Two much older sisters.

SR:Oh, much -- oh, that's right. You said he was --

EMB:Yeah. And there was a rift in the family. I don't understand what that was about exactly. But I met one of the sisters before she passed on -- very nice woman.

SR:Were they in this country, or in Europe?

EMB:The oldest sister, I don't know what her history is. Yes, her sister -- his sister, (pronounces in standard German) Ida in German, (pronounces in standard English) Ida in English -- settled in the Midwest with her husband. And they raised a family there. So some years ago, Ida's grandchildren contacted me -- one of them contacted me. And, you know, we shared some family stories. And she lives in this state. And we meet once a year for lunch. You know (pauses) -- so 43:00my mother definitely had a social circle, but my father --

SR:Did your mother have other family here? You said that some of them --

EMB:Yes.

SR:-- had settled here.

EMB:Yes.

SR:And so were they close? Was it a close family?

EMB:Well, we moved out from New York City, where we arrived, to Kew Gardens. And she had a sister and a brother not far, and a brother then in Pennsylvania. So there was family -- predominantly her sister. I could walk to her sister's house. It was an apartment house. And I think that was a bedrock of security for her -- for my mother and probably for my aunt, too.

SR:Um-hm.

EMB:Yeah, and I'm close to this aunt's children.

SR:Um-hm. So when you -- you started out working with divorce trauma. And how long did you do that, and where did you do that?

EMB:Oh, I can't tell you how long. (laughs) It's a hundred years ago.

SR:Oh. (laughs)

EMB:Let me see. I did that for a number of years. But I think the significant thing about that is that I was intuitively interested in trauma.

SR:Trauma.

EMB:And, you know, till you recognize your own story, you don't know you've had in a real way a lot of trauma yourself -- you do and you don't realize it. 'Cause the focus was to become Americanized in my household --

SR:Right.

EMB:-- and not to be a European transplanted in America. So I can't tell you the number of years. When I broke my silence at fifty, I slowly changed my focus.

SR:Um-hm. And there were enough people with that particular background -- with being second generation survivors to keep you busy, keep you in a practice?

EMB:Well, I had a general practice. Wait, let me just say --

SR:Oh.

EMB:-- I had a general practice. My whole practice wasn't Holocaust --

SR:Oh.

EMB:-- but I had a specialty in Holocaust.

SR:I see.

EMB: I claimed a specialty in Holocaust generations.

SR:Um-hm. Okay. So when you became a bat mitzvah at the age of fifty, did you go through the training and learning the language and so forth? And how long did it take, and what did it feel like?

EMB:I think I studied for a year. It felt like filling a gap in my background. I wrote a chapter of a book on this -- on bar and bat mitzvahs. Because for me -- I entitled the piece "One Step Along My Way" -- I think it was "One Step Along 46:00My Way" -- you know, if you see it all as recovery, it's one step along a long, long road. All lives can be described that way, but mine was coming back to my faith, my Judaism, in a way of contributing to -- making myself more knowledgeable about it. So -- I mean, I had gone through the three children and, you know, helped them put together a booklet. You know, we were kind of independent, so we didn't really use a prayer book; I made a bar mitzvah booklet for them to have their bat mitzvah from -- bar and bat mitzvah. And it took a lot from the prayer book, but it was also unique -- it was theirs. And after you -- at least in my case, after you do for your children this, this, and this, you 47:00-- you have a little breather and you look at your own life in that way. And I felt I didn't know enough, so I studied with the rabbi at that time -- at the JCA -- Jewish Community of Amherst -- Sheila Weinberg -- Rabbi Sheila Weinberg. I was the first -- I believe I was the first adult bat mitzvah in the community.

SR:Oh.

EMB:I think -- or an early one, let me put it that way. And, you know, I'm a student type, so (laughs) --

SR:Yeah.

EMB:-- so I studied.

SR:Yeah. What kind of an impact did it have going forward? Do you go to synagogue? Do you read the prayers? I mean, what was the meaning -- the actual meaning of it for you? Or impact?

EMB:It was personal.

SR:Personal?

EMB:It was personal. (pauses) I wanted to know more. It did not make me more 48:00observant -- except I know what I'm doing, as opposed to just following what other people are doing. I can read Hebrew, but the longer I don't read it sufficiently, I'm going to lose it. Which is a feeling I had at the time -- that, how can you just educate your children and not know enough yourself? And since I'm kind of a student type -- I can't give it more reason than that, except it was part of my own healing identity. I like to go to services. My husband is not really observant -- though he likes to go to services. But we tend to have dinner with -- all our children live in Massachusetts -- we're very fortunate about that, so we tend to see our family. So we're not observant in a 49:00traditional sense. We belong to -- have always belonged to a synagogue. We go for the High Holidays. We -- might go a little bit more. We certainly donate. But it didn't make me more religious in the traditional sense.

SR:Do you belong to any other Jewish organizations?

EMB:I'm a life member of Hadassah. But I'm not active in Hadassah. This is more the tradition of my mother and respect for her efforts. And it's a worthwhile organization. But otherwise -- I belong to the World Federation of Jewish Child Survivors. What other organizations are there? I think that's what I belong to.

SR:Tell me about the JCA. Is it a community center? Or --

EMB:No, it's a synagogue that has a name --

SR:Oh, it's a synagogue.

EMB:-- like, it sounds like a community center. (laughs)

SR:Is it Conservative, Reform?

EMB:It's Reconstructionist.

SR:Oh, Reconstructionist.

EMB:But we're the only synagogue in Amherst, and so I daresay we have a range of people from different parts of the Jewish faith. I don't think we have Orthodox, but you could find some Conservative Jews there -- and some doing it only for their children -- you know, for a certain period of time. We kind of believe one should support the Jewish community and have a Jewish presence. And I've held positions in the Jewish community. But it's really like our synagogue, though we call it a community center. And it's grown substantially. We have a new rabbi, 51:00Rabbi Ben Weiner. And people like what he presents and how he talks and the ideals he stands for. So I think the community is growing again. And I'm chair of one committee; I'm on another.

SR:What committees are you on?

EMB:I'm chair on a committee called the Beit Shalom -- House of Peace -- committee. When there are conflicts among members or among committees, or among the leadership and members, they can come to us for -- both to air their differences and to hope to repair them. And the committee is five people -- a fairly new committee -- not new anymore, maybe, 'cause we've gotten old, but 52:00relatively new. It's like a mediation committee. And I think it has contributed to lowering the temperature of arguments in the community. I'm also trained as a mediator -- professionally. So, kind of wove together. And then I'm on a community called Chesed, which means "loving-kindness." And that committee helps people in need in the community -- with rides or meals or visits. And I don't cook a lot, but I cook a mean pot roast --

SR:(laughs)

EMB:-- and I always siphon off a meal from this big pot roast. So for people who eat meat and are not kosher and they need a meal, I can bring them a meal -- you know, a --

SR:Yeah.

EMB:-- more complete meal than that.

SR:Very nice. Okay. If you have any photographs or documents that you'd like to have on file here, just ask -- call the Center. Ask for Christa -- she runs this program.

EMB:Let me just say, I'm still attached to mine --

SR:Okay.

EMB:-- and I think my children are.

SR:Okay.

EMB:So we were very fortunate in that I have about two or three albums that actually came out of Europe --

SR:Really.

EMB:-- in my aunt's trunk -- big steamer trunk. Because my father's sisters left sooner. So -- this I can't do without --

SR:Yeah. Yeah.

EMB:-- the powwowing with my family.

SR:No, sure. I understand. Is there anything else you'd like to add to the talk to have in the archives that we didn't touch on?

EMB:No, you've been very thorough. (pauses) I think that you've really learned from me a lot of where I am now. And just to keep in mind that I didn't have words for my story for a very long time. I've just written a chapter for a book about a lesson I've learned from the Holocaust. And I think if I would put that in this interview, I think predominantly for me is the importance of breaking silence around trauma -- that bad things happen to a lot of people, and very often, they keep it in. And for me, anyway, it's been very healing to let it out 55:00-- to find people to talk with, to find a group who can identify with similar kinds of trauma, and to break that silence and that feeling, let us say, of difference. So that's what I would say.

SR:Yeah.

EMB:Yeah.

SR:Well, thank you very much. This has been really interesting. I've enjoyed hearing your story.

EMB:Thank you.

SR:And it's a fascinating story. And I think that's it.

EMB:Okay.

SR:So, thank you so much.

EMB:You're welcome. Thank you.

[END OF INTERVIEW]