And antisemitism and holocaust denial, and called upon to be bolder in our mission of education and outreach. To never. To events like this one. Tonight his if it is indeed a special one. The launch of a new edition of shores beyond shores. Powerful memoir by doctor irene hackenberg letter. A survivor of two concentration camps to its dedicated her live to Holocaust Education and key activism. She is the cofounder for the raleigh burr metal at the university of michigan where she is professor of public health. She is also one of the founders and arab jewish style the group in ann arbor. We are also so pleased to have with us, her coauthors john the growth is holy. We are honored to have this conversation and doctor solomon is the renowned author of spartan the tree. Parents and children in the search for identity. As well is that atlas of depression which when the 2001 National Book award for nonfiction. Is professor of clinical medical psychology at Columbia UniversityMedical Center and a former president of american center. I just want to share with you, briefly his reaction to shores beyond shores. After reading this memoir, he was inspired to write quote hiring letters both in the triumph of clarity and concision, written with a passionate intent to inform and acknowledge. It is by profound and intimate. Bears witness to the resilience of the families who drew strength from one another even through the darkness of the holocaust. It is a shockingly honor and hopeful book. Thats quite a response and this is our starting. Im very much looking forward to this conversation and we will have an audience q a afterwards. And following that book and from our distinguished guests they will be on sale and or others will be available for signing in the main lobby. I like to welcome our cspan viewers watching us on bookkeeping. Were going to now watch a brief video about not long ago, not far away is been a tradition currently on view that are museum and after that our program will begin. Thank you so much. [applause] [background sounds] not long ago, not far away that the museum of jewish heritage and living memorial to the holocaust. For exhibition tickets visit our punishment. Nyc. [background sounds] let me begin by thank you for hosting and support conversation and thinks to the books coauthors and snakes to marry this big, who helped or to organize this if it in monday snakes to media. I think most of not to doctor irene. You heard the enthusiasm of my response to the book which is read. I will read it aloud again. But it will say that it is an extraordinary book. It tells the story of the holocaust over again that you read it it becomes a shock. But also extraordinary because is a transformation and it describes irene is she went from her original experience is a small child in germany through the mary knee painfully spaces of war and a live afterwards. It is very encompassing and very humane and i think its a very important book. So i am honored to be here with you. Thank you very much. What would begin giving a quick description of what happened and where you were and where you went. Summit book is the memoir that covers the first 15 years of my live. I was born in berlin. And at edge seven, my family left to emigrate to the netherlands. Because of hitler because of the persecution of the jews. My grandfather owned a bank in berlin. When the bank was taken away, by the nazis because jews were not allowed to own a blank anymore my father was unemployed. And that led him to the netherlands. Helping that we would be safe there. We were in college for two years for the invasion is a nazis. And instantly helen became an occupied country. Snakes happen very gradually. Rights were taken away from the jews. One by one. And of course the horse was the deportation eventually did we were deported to festival first which was a concentration camp but also called a transit camp and after eight months we were set to berlin. After bergenbelsen, we had the incredible fortune of being included in a Prisoner Exchange between germany and america. In america was sending germans citizens who had lived in america but couldnt go back to germany when the war began and felt jews with american passports for this Prisoner Exchange. We were included in one of the few transports out of there. We were there almost a year and we were barely surviving. And sadly my father dried and train the second night of the train. And when we arrived in switzerland, my mother and my brother were so ill that they had to be hospitalized immediately. This was to not allow me to stay there. So i was sick to a displaced persons camp. A refugee camp. In algiers, north africa. It took juan pierre before i was able to come to america. We had family who provided affidavits eventually. And god leases eventually. It took six more months for my mother and brother to come to america. Altogether i was separated for 18 months for my mother and brother and four days after i lost my father. So that is the outline of the story. Some teams people asked me why did you wait so long to write this book. Some of it has to do with being very busy raising a family and elderly parents. A career, and so after retirement, i began to consider this did i must say i am really glad that i waited so long because i think the book is far more relevant today than it wouldve been ten or 20 years ago. Had i had the time to write it. Talk a little bit about your parents and your family in the spirit you had in being with them. I think it was unusual for a family to remain intact in two different camps. And for the length of time. To think he wouldve wouldve been able to make it that went out having been altogether in that time. I have serious doubts because when i came to there i was 13 years old. I think if we hadnt been for my family, i wouldnt have survived very long. Family meant everything. In those times. Because everyone is out for him or herself in a concentration camp. You dont think about other people and a child, less by itself that went out parents could barely make it. So i think being together, with my rights of our brothers helped not of us and give us resilience and support. He gave us the strength to try to survive. Extraordinary thing about the book is the way it captures the perspective of a child. I will make the inevitable comparison to anne franks diary but the early chapters are really written if none of the voice of a child so much is from the perspective of a child. And then is it goes on, you concealed the narrative and maturing is you find the character growing older. We do were writing the book was that true to your experience. Yes it was quite intentional to do that. There are a few, is you know monday books and by Holocaust Survivors. Mutually, later on in live, and usually they were children when the experienced this but most of the books i have written, is an adult, tells the story. From the point of view of the child. What did the child here, but if they see. And what did the child think. Having the background and the conceptual information. What did the child make out of being in living on the circumstances. My coauthors helped a great deal with this. We tried very hard to incorporate this perspective and voice of the child. When we spoke on the phone, i thought it was extraordinary to imagine what it would have been like for doctor and her parents from going from the experience of living quite considerable luxury into the darkness of the camps. He said to me luxury had nothing to do with it. It was just the dehumanizing snakes. Certainly did nazis didnt care who you know. Both of you know young or old or male or female or what nationality or what color what religion, with ethnicity. They treated everybody the same. I really dont think that people lived in lower standard of living or less educated than my parents that they suffered less. Just because they had less. Before the camps but i dont know. Thats just my perspective. A brief paragraph in the book, this is about halfway through and this is in the middle. We had try to make sense of everything. Is if members of family would make the snakes better. They didnt seem to be any understanding of certain of promise. So i clung to the civilization the good people were capable of surviving. Tell me about that idea of trying to make sense out of this. How did you recover. I dont think i ever make sense out of this but i think what helped me a great deal and i think people who survived, they need it that and if for some of it is luck. I think you have to have a goal, a strong will to survive. We do live on the circumstances. And i didnt. I wanted to live in one of my dreams was at that time, is a young girl hey had red young oaks about heidi. And there are some similarities she had lost her parents, she went to live with her grandfather read she was skiing, so my dream was that i would survive and i would go to switzerland and live in the mountains. And i would learn how to ski. Of the other girls your age taking care of the children and the little children, the tiny children whose parents had been sent out to work at various times, and how you try to take care of them under these incredible adverse circumstances and try to give them comfort but also a connection to the of the people with whom you were doing it. You said in the concentration camp everyone is out for himself or herself but actually part of what you describe as people within the camp most all your parents but also of the people who were willing to pause long enough to recognize one anothers humanity. Can you comment on that . Yes. Well, of course, the children had to bring out humanity of those taking care of them because they were so beautiful. They were so hungry. Often they were sick and they were totally listless and passive. They just were not like children anymore. So it became very important to try to comfort them and maybe introduce some humor or song, and maybe get them to smile if it was only for a second. I mean, we didnt have food to give them. We didnt have clothing. We didnt have toys and the only thing we could really give them was love. I think that was really important. And also, and the health of our parents deteriorated. There was a role reversal. They could no longer take care of my brother in the, and so it became our duty to take care of them. Because we had more strength, more resilience than they did. And so thats another reason, it was another reason for me to fight for survival because i was taking care of my parents so i had to survive just for that reason. And taking care of other people does give one the feeling of, a feeling of gratification, and gives meaning to your life, even under these terrible circumstances. If you can help someone take care of someone just a little bit, that might make their day. There was a sociologist who once said, we not only take care of our children because we love them, but also love them because we take care of them. Thats a very powerful process. Tell me how that shift took place per your parents, your father seems to been an extraordinary man doing absolutely everything he possibly could to save his family. And then as you began to take care of them, with the able to receive that care . Was at a ready reversal or a very difficult one . They were able to receive it because my mother became very ill and she was bedridden for several months in the camp before we left. So i was the only one who could take care for her. There wasnt anybody else around. My father accepted it as well, i mean, they were so weak that they were so miserable that in help that anybody could give them would make a difference. Yeah, well, i wouldve liked to get more parenting from them, but that wasnt possible. And tell the story of going to be checked before your put on the train to switzerland and how you and your father went down and you were mistaken for your mother. Thats a very moving story. Yes. Well, one day there was an announcement that anybody who had south american passports, which we had, and that was the reason we were included in this Prisoner Exchange, anyone who had a passport needed to report to a camp doctor at a certain place in the camp. And so my mother had already been bedridden for several months, and so my brother and i said we should try to dress her and walked her there. But that didnt work. She collapsed just right after we got her dressed and out of bed, so we took her back to bed. And then my brother and i went and had our names checked off by the doctor, and then my father came back from work, and heat, we only found out later what happened to me, had been brutally beaten, but he was so weak and he was so miserable. And he seemed to barely be conscious. So we told him what it happened, that we had walked with him to the station for screening, and he couldnt. He said no, if possible, i have to lie down. So we did, and after a while we begged him to come, because they seem to be our only chance ever to get out of there. And so eventually he agreed and he was leaning heavily on me because he could barely walk. We had come to the station and theres a doctor, and he says to my father, you are john . My father says yes. A second question was, are you sick . Which seemed ludicrous question but he said no. And then he looked at me and he checked off my mothers day picky said your children have already been here, so get ready. Tomorrow you will leave. Now, whether a 14 Year Old Girl looked like a 45yearold woman, nobody knows. Of course, we were both very skinny. We were both wearing rags, but anyway, that did it. Talk about the pink blanket. Well, the pink blanket was on the back cover of the book, and it is a blanket, i had received as a young child in berlin and i always took it with me. And it even took it to the concentration camps. It really gave me a great deal of comfort, like a comfort blanket can be for a child, or even a person. And i always had it with me, and i still have it now. Its maybe, maybe youve seen the blanket that is part of this exhibition upstairs and it sort of looks like this. The blanket has seen a lot and experienced a lot, so i think it should also be in the museum. I hope that it will be. Im going to read another short passage aloud. This is also from later in the book and ask you to explain what it was in multiple and just read this. Poppy like the hanky express come he said. He said it was important to get to know other people in other places, but if we do that it was a sure way to have more friends and fewer enemies. Im not sure i agree anymore. We seem to have a lot of enemies and that looked us right in the face. Maybe its still true, i said, the nazis never bothered to get to know us. They hated everything they saw. I dont think they really saw us at all. Tell me about that. What was it like to be seen that way . Well, it makes you feel like a nonentity, like not being human, not being recognized as a person here in auschwitz of course people just had numbers and they were a number, and that was the only identity they had was the number tattooed on their arms. But if people dont look at you and if they dont call you by your name, then you feel like you are a nobody and you are nothing. Right. And do you think that if you happen to have the exchange passports, those passports from ecuador, that your family would have survived the war . Well of course, nobody knows but we left bergenbelsen three months before it was liberated, and considering the conditions of my parents, i have doubts that they would have lived that long. My brother possibly, but he had a very bad infection so i dont know where that would have taken him. So the passports certainly were an important element. Not all people who had passports survived. Not all people were exchanged eventually, but in our case it was a fortune, a good fortune. And can you explain about those passports . The purpose of them was not moved ecuador and obviously you would not started life as a citizen of ecuador. Tell a story about getting them, about receiving them and how they came to play in your lives. Well again, as part of the exhibition here in the museum shows a consult from lithuania i think it issued many passports to jews, and consults in many European Countries that did the same thing, hoping that they could rescue them and save their lives. And so my father had met a friend in amsterdam who are just received the passports for him and himself, and he gave my father the name of a man in stockholm. And he said to send in four passport pictures and you dont have to say very much in your letter because he will know why you are sending it. And so we were hoping we would receive his passport in the mail, but that did not happen. We were deported to best of bark, and the passports had not arrived. But about two or three months later they arrived in the camp, and that was in self a miracle because passports had been sent to our home address in amsterdam and we never got any mail forwarded from our home address. One day the passports came. So probably had something to do with the fact that germans, the nazis had a policy, and exchange, where they they were eager to have a reserve of dues with passports that they could use to get german citizens who were in foreign countries, when the war began and they couldnt come back to germany. And they wanted to have their germans back to help win the war. So when the passports arrived, we were no longer at risk of being deported to auschwitz. And there was a train every single week leaving for auschwitz. So we became exchange jews. We were a special category. And a few months later we were sent to bergenbelsen, and what they told us, toles was bergenbelsen is an Exchange Camp and its better than where we were which was a total misstatement. And besides that, we wouldnt be there very long because we would be exchange. Well, it turned out to be a slow death camp. It did have gas chambers, but the survival rate was very, very low. We were there almost a year before the exchange actually took place. I only know of one of the group that ever left bergenbelsen, and they were to palestine and to about 200 people who were sent to palestine. Actually did get there. Other than that, we were the second group and i dont think there ever was another group of people, even though there were several thousand jews with passports, including bergenbelsen. Im going to read one more passage, also a very brief. My promise to myself is that after you had seen a body, my promised myself was not to tell what i had seen. They had enough to worry about, and i do start acting like likg girl. I heard other people talk about the dead body, turned out to be a man. And they didnt seem upset. But i couldnt help myself when i was asked if i was okay. She listened to me when she got back. She always said she was sorry. I was glad we were sleeping together. Thats a lovely description i think of the comfort that you able to get from your mother, even it at that point when she was not very well, in talking what had happened. How did your relationship to death at a dead bodies and what was going on in that regard shift and change . Well, when you see so much of death day after day, week aft