Why did your mother keep the letters secret for so many years?

She feared the effect of the Letters on her three children – that we might be frightened if we knew all about her sad past.  “I wanted you and your brothers to be normal, just regular kids,” she told me.  She also needed some distance herself, of course.  She knew that the letters would raise painful questions.  So she hid the letters until that day in 1991 when she made the decision to give them to me. 

Where did you do your research? 

My research began with the incredible words of the letters, which I read and read so often that I could recite some of them by heart. 

To understand the context of the letters, however, I met with dozens of survivors and historians in the United States, Germany, Poland, the Czech Republic, and Israel.  Most of my interviews were tape recorded and then transcribed.  I also worked in libraries all over the world, using archives as well as published research. 

For more information on the original letters, see www.letterstosala.org.

What do you think allowed Sala to survive? 

“Luck” is the short answer that every survivor will give.  You could be cunning or you could be guileless – there was no secret formula to guarantee survival.  That said, Sala had certain advantages.  At the time of deportation, she was 16 – young and strong, unencumbered by children, and with an adolescent’s resourcefulness, energy, and determination.  (Interestingly, I have read that Jews born in 1924, as my mother was, had a better survival rate than any other birth year.)  Sala was also outgoing and attractive and made friends wherever she went.  Meeting Ala Gertner helped her tremendously, as Ala became her surrogate big sister and helped her endure the first grievous parting from her family.  Her precious few months with the Pachta family allowed her to regain her strength.  Her close friends – her camp “sisters” – protected her.  Her precious letters sustained her hope.  But in the end, only one thing mattered:  luck. 

How does your mother feel about Sala’s Gift?

I hope you’ll have a chance to watch the video of Murray Nossel’s documentary-in-progress to hear my mother speak about the letters. 

Of course, it is very difficult for my mother to relive memories that were so painful that they were suppressed for 50 years.  When the letters were finally shown to the public in an exhibition that debuted last March at the New York Public Library, my mother went from being the most silent of survivors to a reluctant celebrity, receiving attention that she said made her feel “naked, exposed to all the world.”  Suddenly, strangers were reading about her camp romance with a handsome Czech businessman named Harry, the intimacies confided by her friends.  And, she protested, does everyone have to know that I was born in 1924?

On the other hand, she has told me that it is wonderful to have her family and friends live again through their words, especially those – like Ala Gertner -- who left no survivors to acknowledge that they ever existed.  Once my mother realized that the Letters were important to people other than her family, she became a willing participant, as well as a skilled and sensitive editor.  

How do you feel about your mother’s decision to give you the letters?

It is still so incredible for me to think about how she arrived in New York as a war bride so soon after liberation, and then said nothing about the letters, nothing about her life during the war, for the next 50 years. 

I feel acutely the loneliness of her choice – and its fierce optimism.  Unlike most survivors, she did not marry another survivor.  How difficult it must have been to cut herself off from the circles of fellow refugees, to try and invent some new definition of herself, change everything about her, including her language.  She was counting on her ability to adapt and reinvent herself. 

My mother could have been simply one more victim in a tidal wave of history.  But she was able to make three choices that shaped her life:  she volunteered to go to the camp in her sister’s place.  She embraced as her mentor the incomparable Ala Gertner.  And she gave life to a collection of letters, protecting them in the belief that they could preserve her individuality and humanity amidst the degradation and death of the camp; then silencing them after the war when they seemed to stand between her and a new life; and finally, revealing them once again – and changing my life with her gift. 

How has your relationship changed with your mother?

Telling my mother’s story has been a journey of self-discovery for both of us. Few daughters get to know their mother as a bold and beautiful teenager, navigating this most hostile of worlds, taken away from her mother and father and close-knit community – losing even her language.  I have been inspired by her.  The book gave me new and unusual ways to express my love. 

She says I’ve changed little in her eyes.  That’s a relief to me, as I have sometimes been relentless in my pursuit of her history, at least according to my three children, who are ever vigilant on behalf of their bubbe.  But once she made up her mind to allow me to tell the story, she never looked back.  “I didn’t know what would happen,” she says.  “But I didn’t want to take the secrets with me. It was instinct to give them to you, and then a tremendous load was lifted. I felt relieved. I trusted you to sort it out. You did the right thing.”

How could people receive letters in labor camps?

Very little has been written about the complex network of Nazi labor camps, where conditions were far better than the death camps.  Sala was in seven different labor camps altogether, part of a slave labor force called “Organization Schmelt” that was attached mainly to construction projects or factories. Until late in 1943, prisoners in the Schmelt camps were allowed to receive letters and packages, mailed through the regular Third Reich postal system. “But then we were supposed to return them,” she explained. “You could be beaten if you were caught with anything personal.” She risked her life to preserve the letters—hiding them from guards during line-ups, handing them off to friends and even burying them.

The beautiful birthday cards that my mother received in 1944 and 1945 were not mailed but were smuggled from one room of the camp barracks to another. 

Why are there suddenly more books and discussion about the Holocaust, at least some of it generated by survivors’ children and even grandchildren? 

This does seem to be an unusual, powerful moment:  our mothers and fathers are in their 80s (may they live to 120!); we of the second generation are traversing middle age; and our own children are becoming independent adults.  If we are lucky enough to be healthy and productive and thoughtful, we find this to be an important time that invites a re-evaluation of our priorities – at least I do.  Most interestingly, we may also be experiencing some strange mutation of the “echo boom.” If my own children are any example, they are coming of age as third generation survivors, confronting their grandmother’s history, claiming it, and demanding their independence. 

I understand this is your first book.  When did you become a writer? 

This is indeed my first book, and it was inspired by the extraordinary gift my mother gave me. 

I brought to SALA’S GIFT my background in literature and history.  After finishing a Ph.D. at Princeton, I taught for a few years and then found myself unexpectedly drawn to the world of media and technology.  My winding career path took me from television and technology entrepreneur to the National Football League (now that’s a long story!).  Throughout those years, I wrote freelance articles on a variety of subjects but once my mother gave me the letters, I hoped to write a book that would combine my historical discoveries with the intimate stories of the letters.   

How long have you been working on the book?

I have been working on my mother’s letters since July 4th, 1991, the day that she brought me the box of letters that she had hidden for 50 years.  Until that moment, I knew almost nothing about her life during the war, and absolutely nothing about the collection of more than 350 letters that she had received, and saved, from Nazi labor camps. 

When I first received the letters, I knew immediately that they would change my life.  (I said so, that very afternoon!)  The project kept expanding, as I moved from archivist (organizing and translating the letters) to oral historian (conducting interviews with my mother and other survivors) to researcher (steeping myself in the history of the period to understand the broader context.)  In 1994, I traveled with my mother, father, and two brothers back to Europe.  We retraced Sala’s steps throughout the war, and visited the site of all seven camps, an extraordinary journey. 

Why did you write this book? 

Over 25,000 people went to see the Letters when they were first shown by the New York Public Library in 2006.  We were contacted by people who wanted to write about the Letters, film them, and use them as the basis for creative and scholarly works. 

That was wonderful – but I realized that I was in a unique position of being a participant and an observer, memoirist and historian, daughter and author.  What started out as a personal quest had unexpectedly converged with history. The time had come for me to tell the story myself.