LEAVE-A-LEGACY
WRITING WORKSHOPS
FOR SURVIVORS

Left: A drawing by Simon Jeruchim of our workshop coordinators Ellen Gerstle, Jacqueling Berke, and Robert Ready. The caption reads:
"Drew University Writing Workshop for Survivors, November- December 1999
Dear Professors Berke-Gerstle & Ready--We've enjoyed very much this seminar. Thank you for your helpful presentations, critiques, and guidance. Also for giving us an opportunity to listen to other survivors' stories. Sincerely, Simon and Cecile Jeruchim"
In a sunlit room of Mead Hall on the Drew University Campus on the morning of December 2, 1998, thirty-five Holocaust survivors came mid-morning to write their stories. Professor Jacqueline Berke, Director of the Writing Program at Drew for twenty years as well as founder and Co-Director with Dr. Ann Saltzman of the Center for Holocaust Study, spoke about the need for these stories both as private legacy and as public record. "Writing is not easy, even under the best of circumstances," Professor Berke said. "Under the circumstances you are dealing with, it may seem overwhelming, even impossible. But the fact is that there is no better way to learn about the Holocaust than from your personal accounts."

One personal account, in fact, stirred an interest in a Leave-A-Legacy Writing Workshop, according to Ellen Gerstle, another Workshop coordinator and a doctoral candidate in English at Drew. Her daughter asked her Grandfather Gerstle what life was like in Germany before the war and what made him flee. He answered with an eight-page memoir, an unexpected response from a man who had never before written or spoken about his experiences. It was this encounter that moved Ellen to propose that the Center conduct a workshop for survivors, who--perhaps like her father-in-law-were waiting to be asked.

Survivors often worry: Who will listen to my story? What should I write about? How honest dare I be?

At this first workshop, Professor Robert Ready, National Endowment for the Humanities Distinguished Teaching Professor, served as moderator and facilitator. First he discussed stories by Ida Fink, a survivor-author originally from Poland: "Splinter" and "The Key Game." Both capture moments in time. One is a remembrance of a boy saved by his mother; the other, an image of a boy practicing how to save his parents. The boy in "Splinter" cannot forget that his mother pressed him hard behind a heavy oak door while he held on tightly to the handle as she was taken away. In the years that follow, the boy finds that he never loses the feeling of that handle: he's still holding on to it tightly. "Many people," Professor Ready pointed out, "are holding on to handles [memories]... perhaps people in this very room... ." He invited participants to write for fifteen minutes without stopping.

Those who had been sitting silently at their round tables erupted into a small protest. One woman said, "How can I write a life in fifteen minutes?"

Another complained, "Fifteen minutes is a long time."

Another woman insisted, "I already wrote my story," holding up her thick notebook.

Finally a man stood up, declaring firmly, "We have come to write, so let's begin."

Within seconds the room was quiet. People picked up their pencils and began writing on the white pads in front of them, calmly and methodically, as if they had all written their stories over and over in their heads. Occasionally someone flipped the page to write on the reverse side. Even the woman with the thick notebook wrote her story anew.

"May I ask you to finish the sentence you are writing and then stop please. Do not edit what you have written or worry about it. Writing implies an audience. It would be good to share what you have written with the others," Dr. Ready instructed. Table by table, participants were invited to volunteerÑi.e. to stand up and read what they had just written. Each spoke distinctly, on occasion emotionally, although always under control. Their stories covered the period before, during, and after the war. Their experiences spread across the European continent: Belgium; Germany; Holland; France; Poland, and Czechoslovakia. Most of their accounts took place in small towns and cities. Some of the participants had come from wealthy backgrounds, some from poor. Many had been in Auschwitz, Bergen-Belsen or other camps. They told about their parents, grandparents, sisters and brothers, friends and relatives--and of course, themselves.

"You are really writing!" Jacqueline Berke exclaimed, acknowledging with enthusiasm and delight that each person reading aloud had "spoken" in a distinctive and recognizable voice, each had told a story the rest of us would not be likely to forget. Indeed, we were all breathless listening, sometimes with tears.

When the participants walked across the hall for lunch served in the Wendell Room, they seemed to know one another intimately. They spoke softly in conversation, sometimes with broad smiles, as if what they had been writing in the FounderÕs Room that morning was "from another world"--as indeed it was!

In the afternoon everyone settled again at their places in Founder's Room. Klara Samuels, author of the soon-to-be-published book called G-d Does Play Dice, described the dilemma of the Holocaust victim living with memories. She told how she would write about the "horrors" all morning. "It would stay with me all day. My body would be here, but my heart and head were in the past."

What advice could she give to the participants about writing? "Write what you can today. Everyone does it differently, but the writing itself can be healing." Echoing prior speakers, she asked, "Who needs another story? Be assured your story is important. Many years from now this volume of stories will be needed to counteract propaganda which says the Holocaust never happened."

As the workshop ended, the woman with the notebook walked to the podium and asked, "Who will publish my story?" Every person in the room probably had another question: "Who will listen to my story?"

--Barbara Morrison
Graduate student and Center for Holocaust Study "Associate"

This article was orginally printed in the Spring 1999 issue of Perspectives on the Holocaust.

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