HAZEL FRANKEL ORAL HISTORY

CHRISTA WHITNEY: This is Christa Whitney and today is December 19th, 2016. I am here in San Diego, California at the Association for Jewish Studies conference with Hazel Frankel and we are going to record an interview as part of the Yiddish Book Center's Wexler Oral History Project. Do I have your permission to record?

HAZEL FRANKEL:You do.

CW:Thank you. And just to start, can you tell me about what you know about your family before they came to South Africa?

HF:So, my four grandparents were all from Lithuania, each from a different shtetl [small Eastern European village with a Jewish community]: Jonikis, Rokikis, Kupikis, and Koshan. And my maternal grandparents lived with us and 1:00they spoke Yiddish to my parents, my mother. My mother was born in South Africa. However, she was fluent in Yiddish, as was my father, also born in South Africa. And although they didn't speak to me in Yiddish, I have an aural memory of it, and that has remained with me. And so, their voices are still with me in their language.

CW:And do you have a sense of what life was like for your grandparents in Lithuania?

HF:They didn't speak much. The only thing my zeyde [grandfather] told me was that the reason why he left was because they had nothing to eat except -- not even the herring, just the salty brine at the bottom of the barrel, and potatoes. Otherwise he didn't speak of it. His wife, my bobe [grandmother], I never saw her write. So, I presume that she was illiterate, as most of the girls 2:00were. However, she was bent on my having an education. And so, I continue to perpetuate that message of hers.

CW:And at what -- around when did they come --

HF:So, my grandfathers came at the turn of the twentieth century. My grandmothers followed, the one with three children in tow, the other before she was married. And so, my paternal grandmother came with three children and then had five more children, of which my father was one, in South Africa. And my mother's parents had her in South Africa.

CW:And do you know the professions in the family?

HF:My paternal grandfather was a teacher, very well esteemed -- and that they -- the family valued that education. So, although he had no money, that was really 3:00something very important and it remained so in the family and continues so. My mother's father didn't have the luxury of an education, but he was a businessman and he was a good businessman, and always exploring ways to support his family.

CW:And what did they do when they came to South Africa?

HF:So, my father's father continued to teach. He was attached to the synagogue and the bar mitzvah lessons and some -- being the shames [sexton of the synagogue] in the shul, that was his role. My mother's father, he was a jack-of-all-trades. So, he was a butcher, he had a garage. He worked in a company called Johannesburg Trunk where they made suitcases and carryalls. And 4:00neither of my grandmothers worked.

CW:And why South Africa?

HF:I think it's part of what they call a chain of immigration. So, my mother's father came to join a brother. He didn't come directly to Johannesburg. He was in a place called Weenen, where his brother was and had a general store. And in -- they left there and came to Johannesburg. So, that was the story of the Lithuanian Jewish immigration trail, and it was motivated by economics, by wanting to escape the military, and, as I say, to join family, better opportunities, and hope, I suppose. (laughs)

CW:And would you be able to describe the home that you grew up in?

HF:Look, I think I was very fortunate. I had a lovely home life. The grandparents were very prominent in my life. We celebrated all the festivals together. The singing and the communal spirit was really a very warm part of my growing up.

CW:And to -- just curious: what did the actual house look like?

HF:So, that's an interesting question that you ask. I mean, I grew up in a very, very beautiful home, which is now part of a heritage site. So, it still stands, constructed. It was designed by an architect, Sir Herbert Baker, who also designed the Union Buildings, which is where Parliament sits. And so, it's a 6:00stone house on top of a hill. And I rode my bike around there, there were lawns, there was tarmac, and there was plenty of space to read and sit in the jacaranda branches on my own, dream my dreams, write my poems, watch the sky, watch the birds.

CW:And who lived in that house?

HF:So, it was my parents and me and then my brother and then my grandparents lived with us.

CW:Growing up, did you have a favorite yontev [holiday]?

HF:Oh, I love Pesach. We all celebrated together. I have had a young cousin who I was very close to, so we always sat at the bottom of the table and we toasted the matzah on the yontev candles, much to my uncle's horror. We got into trouble every yontev, it was fun. We got -- sorry.

CW:That's okay.

HF:For stealing the afikomen. If he was getting a small motor car, a dinky car, so was I. And it was every yontev the same. But what we loved most was the singing at the end, 'cause we all sang together. And my children now still love those songs, so --

CW:What would you sing?

HF:"Chad gadya [Hebrew: The little goat]." Who knows? I'm just trying to think. Sorry.

CW:That's fine. What language was the seder in?

HF:We did it in Hebrew. My cousins protested, because we couldn't understand anything but we had to sit through it. And the songs were the songs that they 8:00sang in der heym [at home] and we continue to sing them.

CW:And what was Friday night like growing up?

HF:Always together, always special. Very special times. And celebrated as they always celebrated: light the candles, make kiddush, go to shul on Shabbat. Be together, mainly.

CW:And what was the shul like that you grew up in?

HF:So, I had a shul journey. When I was young, we went to the shul -- okay, so my father's father was no longer alive but we continued to go to that old shul where the family was still very prominent in that community.

CW:What was it called?

HF:It was called Wondrous View Hebrew Congregation and it was in Braamfontein. Then, we moved. It was very far to walk, so we moved to one that was nearer. 9:00But, by then, I think we were driving on Shabbos. And so, we just drove. But, I mean, I've got fond memories of walking to shul with my dad on Shabbos. And even though it was far, it was time that I spent with him. And in those days, I was allowed to sit next to him even though I was a girl. And I remember always being under his tallis and being part of this men's enclave. And I've written poems about that, too. And they were very special times. So, I enjoyed the walking because I could be with him. Once we were -- we went to different shuls and we drove. It wasn't the same.

CW:And what was the food that you grew up with?

HF:Oh, so very traditional food. Soup and pirogn [(meat) pies], soup and kreplach [meat-filled dumpling], roast beef, roast chicken. Same dinner every single Friday night, as I did with my children, until they said, Ma, can't we 10:00have something different for a change? (laughs) And I didn't. It was very traditional and that is how it was and that is how it still is. So, just trying to think. I remember my mother always presented my dad with the salad ingredients at the table and he made the salad at the table. So, that was his task. But he didn't do anything else to do with the food. And we always enjoyed the repeated flavors, knowing what was coming. The bentshing [saying a blessing after a meal] afterwards. It was always -- so, the singing was a very -- a force that brought us all together. And on Sunday nights, my mother used to play the piano and we stood and sang around her. Hebrew songs, Yiddish songs, English songs, opera songs. She could play, we could sing, my dad turned the pages. Best memories.

CW:And what were the languages that you grew up around?

HF:So, I heard the Yiddish in the family. That was when my grandparents were with us. That was what they spoke. When we -- I was with my father's mother. She was widowed quite -- long before I was born. She only spoke Yiddish, so we heard it. But in South Africa, being bilingual meant you spoke English and Afrikaans. So, once I started school, you had to do Afrikaans. It wasn't optional and we heard it all around us. We also heard the black languages, depending on who the domestic help or the gardener was -- were -- but we didn't speak it. Now, it's compulsory in schools to learn a black language. But then, it was English and Afrikaans.

CW:And what was the neighborhood like that you were in?

HF:So, I grew up in a very privileged neighborhood. I mean, it was a home with a very big garden and next door, on the other side, were very big homes. The downside of that, I think, is that there's not really neighborliness. It was quite difficult to be close to your neighbors. However, I grew up very close to my cousins and I did have good friends. But you had to go there by car. Wasn't close by.

CW:Was it a particularly Jewish neighborhood?

HF:I don't think so, no.

CW:And what were the -- in terms of the music, I'm curious, is -- are there any favorite songs from -- Yiddish songs that you remember singing?

HF:No, I don't remember the Yiddish songs from that. I only remember the rollicking songs that my father used to sing, that always had some humorous 13:00quirk which he remembered, which he passed on. But if you're going to ask me now, it's going to be blank. So, the songs that he knew were the songs that we sang. I mean, my mother liked to play the piano but she didn't like to sing. Well, she actually had a lovely voice. She very seldom used it. Yeah, so I think English traditional songs, which were obviously songs that appealed to him when he went to the government school.

CW:And what was your educational journey?

HF:So, it's very secular education. The local primary school, the local high school, but a very serious Hebrew education, which obviously then had to be out of school. So, it was always an extramural, it was Sunday mornings, it was bat mitzvah lessons. It was very committed to reading Hebrew, but I don't have a 14:00good understanding of Hebrew or Hebrew speaking.

CW:And what was your, looking back, feeling about Judaism, about being Jewish when you were growing up?

HF:We were very committed to being Jewish. We -- I did have some non-Jewish friends because I went to the local school -- and who have remained my friends -- but mainly time spent with family and, I suppose, Jewish friends. Not that there was ever a comment passed. It was just how it was.

CW:And at home or at school or community, at what point did you learn about the war and the Holocaust?

HF:Okay, so very lately in my education, when I went to university, one of my majors was history. We did the Second World War in detail; the Holocaust was never mentioned. So, I had read "The Diary of Anne Frank," but I didn't have a context. And I actually only began to explore the context when I began to study Yiddish, which is not that long ago, considering the rest of my education. And what I'm realizing is that when I first started at university, Jewish Studies wasn't on offer. You could do Classical Life and Thought, which would have been something I would have never considered. But there was not Jewish Studies, there was not -- I could have done Hebrew, which wouldn't have appealed to me. There was certainly no Yiddish. And, as I say, when I started to study Yiddish seriously and started to explore the possibilities, then the Holocaust suddenly became something I had to confront full force. But my parents never spoke about 16:00it. It was never a topic. Whether they protected me, I don't know. They might have spoken about it when I wasn't there, but it certainly wasn't a family discussion.

CW:And do you know now whether the Holocaust touched your family?

HF:As far as I know, it didn't, except with relation to distant cousins who I discovered lately. But it hasn't stopped me being really interested and having that as a focus of my own Yiddish research, and reading the writings of people who lived through it.

CW:So, just to back up a little bit, the -- can you explain who constitutes most of the Jewish community in South Africa?

HF:So, the Lithuanian contingent was the biggest contingent of Yiddish speakers 17:00and Jewish community. However, when they came, there was also a contingent of Anglo-German Jewry who, of course, looked down on the Litvaks, as they always did. And that also -- and you realize afterwards -- I mean, it was never made a thing of in my presence. But reading about it now, I can see what the differences were. I mean, they were highly educated. The Lithuanian lot were not. And there were big differences in how they dressed and how they conducted themselves and which shul they went to, and those differences remain.

CW:And when was the big period when -- I mean, what is -- when your grandparents came, is that when most of --

HF:So, I think between 1882 and 1950, that was the immigration period. When my 18:00grandparents came -- between 1900 and, say, 1920, a lot of them came. By 1930, South Africa's doors were closing. In the early 1930s, they took very, very few -- unless it was maybe on a family reunion, if you were lucky. And so, I think that anti-Semitism, anti-Eastern European Jewry was already a very serious issue in a very racist society. So, that was part of it.

CW:And did you experience -- how did you experience that growing up?

HF:Nothing. Totally unaware of it. Totally unaware of it. So, now I ask myself, as I say, Was I just overprotected? Was I just oblivious? Was I naïve? But I 19:00don't think those questions were bandied about then. And even though it was a family of intellects, these discussions never took place, or they never took place in front of the children. Or we were playing outside. I don't know. I mean, I had these very adventurous boy cousins and I was part of their gang, and so maybe we were just outside. Maybe the serious talk did go on and I knew nothing about it. And it's not like I didn't read, that I wasn't interested. I didn't even have the questions.

CW:Was politics something you talked about at home?

HF:Politics is a tricky question, and it's a good question. My father's firm was the firm that gave Nelson Mandela his first clerkship. So, they really were leaders in that. And he was very happy to do that. But when I started 20:00university, he told me to keep my head down and get on with my work, and he was very angry with me when I stood with placards on the pavement, protesting anything. So, I think there's an ambivalence, and it wasn't something you could discuss with him. He didn't want to hear my opinion about it. It was what he said, so it was a very patriarchal family, which I think is why it worked, actually. My mother accepted what he said and for the most part, so did I, but not on that issue. So, I didn't contend with him outwardly.

CW:Do you want to share a little bit about that, about what you were --

HF:It puzzles me now because he had -- he gave such a good example of equal opportunity to someone who wouldn't have had the opportunity. And yet, when I 21:00wanted to talk about it or act in the same way -- whether it was because I was a girl, whether because he was afraid on my behalf of what would happen, I'm not really sure. The conversation never took place. I do know that my contemporary cousin who had the same feelings as me -- his parents were very angry about it and he then left for political reasons. He'd been fingerprinted because of demonstrating, he was arrested, he was taken to Hillbrow Police Station. It's scary stuff. So, I can understand my parents not wanting me to do it. However, I think it could have been a discussion.

CW:I'm curious, what did you do in the summers? What did you do for fun growing up?

HF:We were lucky, we managed summer holidays. We went to the Kruger National Park or we went to the coast. We went as a family. We drove, we slept over. We 22:00had a bag of cold water that was attached to the front bumper of the motorcar, so you had to stop if you wanted to drink anything. It was this canvas bag. The water was always deliciously cold. And those were our annual holidays. And the weather is one thing that you can say that South Africa has a really good view of. So, the weather was never a problem. It was warm when it was supposed to be warm. We knew when winter was coming. We knew where we were going. Was good.

CW:And in terms of the activism that you were involved in personally, what motivated you, looking back, to get involved with --

HF:I think, for me -- I don't know. Firstly, I had my nanny, let's say, who I absolutely adored. And so, we had just a natural, easygoing, wonderful connection. And for me, it just came out of that, just compassion for your fellow man and wishing that they could experience what you were experiencing. But I think it's also, looking back, a lack of understanding of what the system was and that to bring about change, which is what we're experiencing now, is not that simple. In my mind, it was simple. Why couldn't we give and share and be generous? But one can see it doesn't necessarily spin out like that, so --

CW:So, to just shift gears a little bit, so how did you come to Yiddish academically?

HF:So, when my mother was still alive, I asked her a few times to speak to me in Yiddish. But I really struggled to get it right, and she lost patience with me or else maybe I just felt it was too much for her. By the time I asked her, perhaps she wasn't that well. When she passed away, I was determined that I was going to perpetuate that part of my heritage. I mean, I kept thinking of my bobe and my bobe's voice and how she'd spoken and what she'd said and the way she said my name and those intonations. And I wanted it just so badly. And just as my mother passed away, I discovered that a class was starting near me, and a very few classes, actually. And so, I started learning Yiddish as that class began and it was just the right kind of class for me, because I didn't realize 25:00until I went to it that actually, because I could read Hebrew, I would be able to read Yiddish. So, that was a big barrier that was already taken away. And we started to read these amazing stories and the culture is invested in the stories. So, a lot of what I would have liked to have asked them was actually in the -- embedded in the stories. We started reading local stories: Morris Hoffman, [Hyman Ehrlich?], who wrote about the early immigrants, what they suffered, those that left their families behind. Some of the men could afford to bring their wife out and their children. Some couldn't, so those families were never reunited. And as I read, I just became more and more fascinated and more and more determined to find out. And then, because my grandmother was illiterate, she couldn't have written herself. But my intrigue was, what would 26:00she have written if she could have written anything? So, I started to look for such a writer and that was how I came to the essence of my research, which is Dovid Fram, David Fram, who was a poet who, although he was slightly younger than they were, had the same trajectory. He came from Panevys to South Africa. He never stopped writing in Yiddish, and all the issues then emerged from that poetry. So, I started translating the poetry and repeating the poetry to myself and thinking it was only about that. But then, lo and behold, I found that also in the poetry is all the topical issues that everyone discusses now: exile, migration, diaspora, rootlessness, Holocaust. Everything's in there. So, I've been on a mission to translate his works, and that's what I've been doing. 27:00So, that's my fascination with it. So, it's the words, it's the culture, it's the song in them, it's the background. It's my background.

CW:Where was that class?

HF:So, the class was actually at the synagogue near me where they had a wonderful cultural center. And we started with about twenty students, which -- and it's really diminished because I was the youngest in the class then. And it was a privilege to be with a lot of those students because they -- it was their mame-loshn [mother tongue], Yiddish, and they had come either during the Holocaust or just after, as little children. So, although their reading wasn't so good, they had the stories and the culture and the understanding because that was their home. So, they shared those stories with us. Some of them are no 28:00longer alive, some of them can no longer come. But they set a foundation for us. And so, what remains are the -- what can I say? The younger people who -- it's not their mame-loshn and we talk a lot in Yiddish -- in English. Too much in English. But it's inevitable, I suppose.

CW:Did you have any particular mentors or influences as you started this journey with Yiddish?

HF:So, my Yiddish teacher helped me to do the translations, which then formed the basis of my PhD, and without him, I couldn't have managed. I mean, I translate with a dictionary, but I wouldn't understand the connotations of the expressions. I'd miss the implications. And he painstakingly translated with me. Once I started studying Dovid Fram, then I found Joseph Sherman, who was a 29:00Yiddishist and who translated "Shadows on the Hudson," Bashevis Singer. He had actually started to research Fram, and there are a few articles written by him which really guided and helped me, 'cause he'd done the basic work and he also knew Fram. So, he'd met him in his flat in Hillbrow, and he'd had literary conversations with him and supported him and helped him to get his second collection published. And he was very driven. Unfortunately, he also died too soon. He was intending to write a book about Fram but he never got to it. And so, those have been my guiding lights. And then, also, my supervisor for my MA in Creative Writing, he supported me in wanting to go further. And he just understood that it was very important to me -- and just having the support of 30:00these people to do something which actually was so personally important that I didn't think it would have any other ramification, but it's just opened so many worlds to me. I mean, I started translating a poem, "Ikh benk," "I long," that was what Fram wrote. "Ikh benk azoy mid," "I long -- I'm so filled with longing for my home." And that was the source of all my studies. And they supported me, and it's opened out so many possibilities for me, for my research, for talking to people about what's important to me. In May, I was on a conference in Philadelphia, which was the Association for Baltic Studies, which was Lithuania, Estonia, and Latvia. Not a Jewish conference. I think if there were six Jewish presenters there of the three hundred, that was a lot. They were so interested 31:00in what I had to say because for them, it was a completely different vantage point from what they'd experienced under Soviet rule, the invasion by Soviet Russia, and then by the Germans. And then, they got to hear a different story and they were really open to hearing about it. So that, for me, was just amazing. And then, I've also -- I've spoken at Holocaust conferences, migration conferences. Here I am in San Diego. It's just been amazing. And so, my grandmother, my bobe, continues to influence me still.

CW:So, just personally, what has it been like to -- this work?

HF:So, I'm a schoolteacher at heart. It's been my career profession all my adult life. In fact, even all my childhood life, I only ever wanted to be a teacher. 32:00But I realize, also, that the research and the studies are what drive me. So, the learning and the reading and the finding out and the -- trying to put all the pieces together, which clearly I will never be able to do, is still what drives me and is still my passion. The fact that Fram is my poet -- so, that's one element. But he's been a stepping stone to finding out about all sorts of other things and meeting people who are researching different reas which sort of dovetail with what I'm doing, but also extend my thinking, my way of looking at life, realizing that they are the people in the world who suffer, who have compassion, who don't, who are interested, who aren't. It's amazing.

CW:And what has been the effect, if at all, on your own identity as a South 33:00African Jewish woman?

HF:So, various aspects, whereas growing up, we were observant in a religious way. The Lithuanian immigrants were not necessarily religiously inclined. Fram was completely secular. He writes poems about giving up his tefillin, giving up his going to shul. I find that, in my family now, it's very difficult for me to maintain a religious Orthodox outlook. My children don't necessarily perpetuate it. Whereas we had a kosher home, this generation -- either they don't want to or they find it too difficult. I found that I'm letting it go myself, so that's 34:00had an impact. I think that the main impact on me has been that these studies are important to me. And, yes, I'm a mom and yes, I'm a gran, but I'm also a person that has needs to fulfill. And so, whereas my father felt that I should go and do a three-month course and be a legal secretary, here I am still wanting to educate myself. So, I'm still having that argument with him and he passed away a long time ago. But that's what fulfills me the most. So, given the choice of making the pirogn or writing up an essay, we know the answer to what I commit to. (laughs)

CW:When did you first get interested in poetry?

HF:I've always loved poetry, since I was a little girl. I think that that's part of the singing. My dad used to recite poems to me, I used to learn them off by heart. I still have those words in my head. My initial studies were English literature, and I was always immersed in Keats and Wordsworth and Dylan Thomas and Cummings. And modern poetry, Auden. The Yiddish, obviously, is more difficult because I have to translate it before I can access it. But I love the process, too, the different words. Is it a rhyming poem? Why doesn't it rhyme? Should it rhyme? Is it some disconcertingly tortured -- if you try and rhyme it in English? Should you rhyme it in English just because it's rhyming in Yiddish? So, these are all issues with translation. So, those are other issues which I've 36:00never thought about before. And then, whose poem is it? Is it Dovid Fram's or is it mine? So, I love those questions to which there are no answers.

CW:Practically, how do you go about it if you -- how do you start the process and --

HF:So, I started off with a hopeless dictionary, which only had phonetic translations. Have progressed a little bit from that. It's slow, it's painstaking. But that's the other side of me, I guess. I like that meticulousness, even though the -- my other sense of being is I'm an artist and my art and my paintings are very brightly-colored, semi-abstract, huge, splashed all over. Completely different from this meticulous translating, careful research, footnotes, get this correct, don't leave out the page number, all that. But it all seems to work, and I just think I've been incredibly lucky to 37:00be able to do it all and to have Yiddish, to boot, because I would have never done a doctorate were it not for Yiddish. I was never that interested in English poetry. But somehow, the lure of this Yiddish got me to keep going and I'm still doing it. And just to add something, I think that with 1994 and the transformation in South Africa, the recognition of the manner of all the different languages -- so, there are eleven different languages all recognized in South Africa. Because of that, my Yiddish studies have been supported, which is why I'm still researching within a university context, only because it's this minor language, I'm a white woman, and I've had my opportunity, which I don't 38:00think ten years ago, even, I would have been able to have opportunity to do it. So, it's worked for me and, yeah, I just feel, as I say, very, very fortunate.

CW:What is the place of Yiddish in the academy and in South Africa?

HF:There is no voice of Yiddish in the academy at all. I'm attached to the English department and the creative writing department at Wits University. And I'm supported by funding that was intended for a now-defunct department of Portuguese and other foreign languages. So, they still had money for some scholar in some foreign language. So, that is what supports me. And my role there is supervising students who are translating grandparents' memoirs, working 39:00on Holocaust material. Holocaust Writing is the elective that I present. But Yiddish, per se, has no face in university ever. In an informal forum, there is a strong contingent in Cape Town. They have cultural festivals, they put on theater, they have sing-songs. Johannesburg lags very much behind that. I think it's very dependent on the personalities involved. And Cape Town has a dynamic leadership who are determined to keep it going. And I've managed to, but unfortunately, in Johannesburg, it's not so -- so, even in the informal sector, it has a very small presence. And it's difficult to perpetuate it on one's own. I mean, I would love to have someone just to talk to, but our class is literary, and it's too short to actually converse and read and talk about the story that 40:00you're reading or this poem that you're reading and how amazing it is. So, in a way, I feel alone and in a vacuum, and that's been quite hard for me. And then you think, Well, then, what is the point? But I know there's a point. Somewhere there's a point.

CW:And what has it been like for you to travel to these conferences and meet other people in your field and elsewhere?

HF:So, I think what was important for me when I started was to just put the words out there. So, whereas most of the papers that are presented present an argument, my focus was on using Fram's poems as testimony and memory and trying to recuperate a lost community. So, rather than even debating that, I just took 41:00that as a given and presented his words and then translated them and then maybe did some analysis of it, just so that his voice wouldn't be silenced. At least, that's one voice. So, his story -- he left in 1927, came to South Africa. He left his parents and his sisters and a brother behind. His parents and a sister perished. They're recorded in Yad Vashem and his poems that he wrote afterwards were "Mayn lite, mayn heymland [My Lithuania, my homeland]," "How can I believe it?" "Ikh ken dos nit gleybn." And that is what really moves me to perpetuate it. And I'm sure that there are other poets, but he's been my focus.

CW:And do you have any thoughts on sort of why this has not been -- this story has not been included in sort of the understanding?

HF:I think that because of where we are, we are out on a limb. Our upbringing was mainly colonial, so the focus was mainly British. I mean, my education was -- let's just take my high school education. Fabulous teachers, all educated in Britain. All came to South Africa as a colony. They were committed to a colonial upbringing. So, the Jewish side really lapsed unless you were in a Jewish day school, which, when I started school, it wasn't that prominent a choice. And so, I was -- I mean, I can sing you any hymn you like about -- for any festival. I 43:00know them all. They're still stuck in my head because that was what we sang. And I think my sadness is that I came to it so late that time's running out even for me, and I have to do what I can while I still can. So, I don't get into the arguments about whether you should or you shouldn't. In my opinion, this is what I do and people who are interested will listen. People who are interested will ask me questions. When I was at the Baltic Studies Conference, people came up and said they were moved to tears by the poetry. And that, to me, made it meaningful. And for that, it was worth doing.

CW:Would you like to read one of the poems?

HF:Yes, I would.

CW:Great. (laughs)

HF:I won't read it all. I'll read a little bit.

CW:You can read it all if you want, that's fine.

HF:Then I'll do it.

CW:Great.

HF:Okay, so this poem is called "Ikh benk" and it was written just after Fram came to South Africa. And he records his memories of what it was like growing up in the shtetl of Panevys. And the way he expresses it, there's an ambivalence between the struggles of his family and his community, and also the 45:00good things that he remembers. "[Yiddish - 00:45:08 to 00:47:00]."

CW:Read the translation?

HF:"I long so tiredly for a piece of black soil and earth, for autumn rains on the fields, and for mud on the endless road. Where tired, soaked, late, and forlorn horses trudge along, heavy with village sadness and packed with peasant toil. I long for the Jews of the forests, pitch dark, like copper firs, smelling of the early scents of mushrooms and warm moss, who drag themselves home for Shabbos through windy autumn nights, craving tranquility from the heavy, exhausting week. I long for the days when the orchards give up their bounty and the cellars are filled with their wine-like golden store and skies draw closer, stopping down towards the earth, and the sun visits a while like a rare, honored guest. And then the moments become quieter, even more still than empty orchards, 48:00even quieter than village desolation in the autumn abandoned field. And growing then in warm hearts a great, merciful God spreads a mighty belief on a grey, silent world. Then I believe. Then I believe, together with hearts that believe faithfully and piously, packed like autumn cellars with holy prayers. Now, when I have lost those orchards, I long alone and silent for Jews at the pitch of the forest and the endless muddy ways."

CW:So, what do you like about that poem?

HF:So, I think it combines the memory of what was beautiful, the essence of what he lost, and it echoes what we all lost, what so many other people lost -- and 49:00spoken from so far away, poignant but very specific about what he misses, how he misses it, realizing the back story that -- what he remembered no longer existed. Maybe ten years after he wrote it, there was nothing left of it. And just, to me, that the poem is almost like a Kaddish in itself, a yizkor in itself for what is no more.

CW:Have you ever been to Lithuania?

HF:No, and I'm very torn as to whether I should or shouldn't go. I weigh it out annually. On the one hand, I would love to go. On the other hand, I think that I just can't bring myself to do it.

CW:What can one learn through Fram's work and also through Yiddish more broadly that you can't get otherwise?

HF:I think it's a very specific culture. As with any language, it represents communal beliefs, communal approaches, communal way of life. And Joseph Sherman actually said that you cannot understand the Jewish psyche with only Hebrew or only Yiddish, that actually, that those are -- the Jew needs both of those to be able to see. So, it's his two eyes, actually. And for me, somehow, the Yiddish 51:00opened avenues and pathways which Hebrew never did. Not that I'd reject the Hebrew. Perhaps that was the way that it was taught to me. We were taught Hebrew as the loshn koydesh [the language of holiness] to be able to daven and pray and go to shul. For me, it was never accessible as a daily language. This is the language that they spoke in the marketplace, together in families, communicated, wrote in it. And the stories that came out of it, you can't get it in any other way. And certainly, the translations don't touch it. I mean, you can get an English word, but it doesn't signify -- it's just a very basic representation of the feelings behind what he wrote.

CW:And what do you see as the place, the situation with Yiddish nowadays?

HF:Well, I'm surprised at this conference how many people are interested in Yiddish, how many use it as a background for their own studies. I've been pleasantly surprised about that, because I had been under the impression that it was really only the very Orthodox who speak it and daven in it and are committed to it, who would perpetuate it. I feel more hopeful, actually, having come here now to see how vibrant an interest there still is and that maybe it's even -- there's a resurgence. However, I'm not -- I don't want to be overly optimistic. It is nice that it's offered here in academia, that there are possibilities of reading it, that there is the Yiddish Book Center, that there is an Aaron Lansky, that there are other people like that who are driven to save it. However, it does worry me that -- yes, the books are there but who is going to 53:00read it? Because I know -- I think that I've been committed in learning it and I know how hard it has been for me. So, I'm not sure how people will perpetuate it, really, seriously, rather than just the flippant expressions, a nosh or a shlep or a chutzpah. Those words will be perpetuated, but what about the serious side of it? What about the culture? What about the background? What about where I come from? What about where everyone comes from? I just hope it won't be lost.

CW:So, what's the project you're working on now?

HF:So, I discovered that Fram wrote a whole lot of love poetry, and that is going to be my next translation project, hopefully. I don't know if it'll hold 54:00up. I haven't really looked at it, because I've been much more interested in the other, but maybe it'll give me another angle. He also wrote a lot of letters home from South Africa, and when I started reading them -- they're actually stored in the University of Austin, Texas. When I started reading them, I could see that a lot of the issues that come up in the poetry -- he writes about his family back home in a different way, with a different focus. Talks more about himself. Rather than struggling to make an aesthetic product, it's more -- they are more natural. And I'm hoping to look at some of those, maybe get some more family background, find out more about where he came from, what the history was, what he was really like. I also am a creative writer, so just as an aside, I've 55:00written two novels. And in the second novel, it's about two Jewish women: a young woman who writes about her daily struggles and an older woman whose voice comes through in her poetry. And a lot of the poetry is in Yiddish. And when I was writing it, it was -- if it were my bobe, this was what she would have written. So, that novel is called "Illuminating Love" and I hope to go on doing my own writing, reflecting, my reading and my research. And I have started writing something which may or may not be a novel. We'll see.

CW:Wonderful. Well, is there anything you wanted to add that we hadn't talked about yet?

HF:I would just like to say that I was privileged to do some interviews with people who came to South Africa just before the war. So, the South African story 56:00of survivors is slightly different from what we talk about when we talk about people who actually survived Auschwitz and Birkenau. Because they came before the war, they are still survivors. However, they left their families behind and those families perished. Many of those people spoke to me in Yiddish, and I was able to understand them and document their stories. For some of them, it was the first time that they'd spoken about what had happened to them, because their families didn't want to listen or else they couldn't speak about it before because it was traumatic. So, for that function alone, I was happy that I could communicate with them in their tongue and that they could feel comfortable with me. And that those stories are now written down is part of what we're trying to do to preserve the memories of people who otherwise would not have been taken 57:00cognizance of. And it also gave me a lot of insights into what had happened, which -- otherwise, I would have had really no idea about what their lifestyle was like, how they grew up, what those little girls experienced, how those little boys went to kheyder [traditional religious school] from the age of three, how thy were induced to learn their letters by licking the honey on the alef, in the dark, in the freezing cold, taken there by their mothers, dragged home, exhausted. Who would have known? And by hearing these stories actually first-hand -- gave me an insight which I could then transmit by writing it down. And subsequently, have written down stories of other survivors from the camps and was able to communicate with them very closely because of it, because of the 58:00Yiddish, because of the connection.

CW:So, you interviewed them in Yiddish and then wrote their --

HF:Yes.

CW:-- helped write the memoir in English?

HF:Yes, their memoirs are all in English.

CW:Amazing. Well, I always like to end by asking if you have an eytse [piece of advice], if you have any advice for anyone who wants to get into this field, this kind of work that you do?

HF:I think that what has driven me has been the passion. I think that if you follow your intuition about what your calling is -- but if you can start young, I think that's a really good thing. However, I know that when one's young, one's got other commitments and other issues to face up to. I just feel privileged 59:00that I've come to it when I did and been able to do what I have done.

CW:Well, looking forward to reading more of your work in the future, and a hartsikn dank [thank you very much].

HF:A dank [Thank you].

CW:Thank you so much.

[END OF INTERVIEW]