BOOK & FILMS

YEARS LATER WE WOULD REMEMBER

Kents '64 l-r Jack, Martin, Roza, Joseph

A Memoir – by Martin Kent

Prologue & Chapters 1-3 (work in progress)

Prologue

I grew up in the shadow of the Holocaust. No grandparents. No aunts and uncles around. In their place — big black holes. While my parents tried to shield me from the details of the horrors they experienced in Poland during the 1930s and ‘40s,, they couldn’t protect me from them. No one goes through something like that and leaves it behind. Misery, sorrow and pain are clever hitchhikers. Hank Williams, the tortured genius of country music, created a line that continually resonates with me: “No one gets out of here alive.” In essence, we are all survivors, to various degrees. The more we live, the more we become the walking wounded. Sooner or later, we all walk through the fire. And yet, we live our lives, doing the best we can, trying to make these precious journeys worthwhile. Trying our best to sort things out.

Growing up in New York City in the 1950s, my childhood outside my home was exciting, interesting, stimulating. But inside those four walls, I felt like I was living within a box — one that contained a giant jigsaw puzzle. Many of the pieces were not exactly missing; some were faded and hard to discern; others were locked away – on purpose. My mother had a great capacity for joy, but she could also quickly slip into a state of melancholy. My father was remote, quiet, off at work all the time, and had little patience for the precocious, curious child I was. I had an older brother, who found his own coping mechanism for our dysfunctional family. He was never home. We were four people living under the same roof. But we really weren’t a family. Our home was full of secrets. Full of walls. Full of feelings that were alternately repressed — or suddenly, explosively — released. For most of my life, my parents’ story remained shrouded in mystery. It was something they just couldn’t bring themselves to talk about. My mother and father were unknowable. But… if I couldn’t know my parents, how could I ever hope to truly know myself?

All that mystery had a profound effect on me. I was determined to explore the world. To dig into the past. To uncover the motivations of people who shaped history. To just know things. I carved out a satisfying career as a journalist, an occasional university instructor and a documentary filmmaker, sharing my passions, telling other people’s stories.

Oskar Schindler

Then in 1999, after the release of “Schindler’s List,” Thomas Keneally’s book and Steven Spielberg’s subsequent film of the same name, Hearst television executive Don Cambou hired me to write, produce and direct an A&E “Biography” of Oskar Schindler, who saved over 1,200 Jews from certain death at the hands of the Nazis. Was this by coincidence? Nothing happens by coincidence. This was my gateway to the dark days of the Holocaust. In the process of making this film, I interviewed survivors, Thomas Keneally and renowned holocaust historian Michael Berenbaum; I did all the necessary research and legwork, and looked at all the horrific film footage. When I told my mother about this project, she showed no surprise at all. “Oh, Oskar Schindler? Yes, I knew about him. You remember my friend Sally Huppert? She was one of the people he saved. She told me the whole story.”

I was shocked. I was upset. One of the black holes of my childhood had actually held light. Sally had sat in our kitchen, having coffee and ruggalach with my mother on hundreds of occasions. Decades ago, when I was embarking on my journalism career, continually on the prowl for a good story, Sally and Roza had kept quiet about the amazing and moving tale of Schindler, the womanizing, black-marketeering Nazi factory owner who transformed his greed into goodness, and ultimately discovered his soul.

As if something like that happens every day.

I considered the irony that one of the greatest stories of the 20^th century had been right under my nose for all those years. Had it slipped through my fingers? No. I factored in the concept of destiny, and knew in my heart that that particular story had never been mine, but Keneally’s, all along.

“Mom,” I said, “what other stories haven’t you told me about? Isn’t it finally time for you and dad to tell me what happened back in Poland?”

My mother took some time to consider what I had said, and the fact that I had been adequately inoculated by all my work on the Schindler documentary. Finally, she called me up one morning and said, “Ok, I’ve thought about it. I’m appointing you family historian.” Just like that. At long last she felt I was ready to face the demons and ghosts she and my father had tried to tamp down in that jigsaw box for a lifetime. It was difficult for both of them to delve into their tragic past, but they did it, and they did it for me. Often with tears.  Often with self-imposed interruptions, when the burden of memory threatened to crush them.

After about a year spent doing background research and interviewing my parents, I felt compelled to make a trip to Poland, a place I’d never wanted to visit. I needed to experience total immersion in this process. But by this time, my mother was too frail to make the trip. There was no turning back. I packed a video camera and embarked on a journey to spend nearly a month on the road with a stranger – a man I hardly knew — my father. I had to learn the true story of my parents’ survival and unravel the personas of the two people whom I’d sought to know and understand my whole life.

My father, Jack, AKA Olek, age 19

In Poland, as I walked on ground that held the blood and ashes of millions of murdered souls, I pointed my camera at my father and the all the places he wanted to show me. I found out that over half a century ago, my father Olek, a brash Polish Catholic boy of 19, met my mother Roza, a terrified Jewish girl of 20, when she was on the run after she’d survived two Nazi massacres of 6,500 Jews in her village, 300 miles away from his. The Nazis killed her two older brothers, who’d been in the “resistance,” shortly after they got my mother out of the Jewish ghetto. One day, she walked into the tavern that my father and his father Antoni ran, asking for a job. She was hired. A few months later, Olek, in a private moment, confessed his feelings to Roza. He told her he’d fallen in love with her.

My mother Roza, AKA Ziuta, age 20

She was shocked. “Well, I have a shock for you,” she replied. “I’m Jewish.” My father considered the full weight of what she’d said. And then, as only a 19-year-old with stars in his eyes and love in his heart could respond, he said: “You’re Jewish? That’s great! Now I can prove my love for you. I can lay my life on the line.” And he did just that. For two and a half years, they were on the run, with the Nazis at their heels. With bravado, with cunning, and some would say foolishness, he protected her every step of that perilous journey. And that’s why I’m here today. My brother Joseph, too, who was born during that time.

In the course of my research, interviews and journey to Poland, I finally got to know and truly appreciate the strange and wonderful people who’d raised me and made me who I am. I sent a detailed account of this story, along with supporting documentary evidence, to Yad Vashem in Israel. About a year and a half later, they came to a decision. On Yom Hashoah, Holocaust Memorial Day, 2003, in a packed ceremony at the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles — before the Mayor, and diplomats from Poland and Israel — Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the center, bestowed my father with Israel’s highest honor, the Righteous Among the Nations award — the very same medal of heroism Oskar Schindler had received. The story had come full circle.

After years of showing bits of my film and telling this story orally — to gatherings of friends, as well as public audiences — I finally decided to take everyone’s advice and write a book, a memoir. And so, here it is. The memoir delves into a number of themes – the search for identity, for family, the discovery of who our parents are, and how deeply their own experiences shape them, and us, in turn. It’s also a love story — how love can inspire someone to do the unthinkable, the impossible. Some might say, the foolish. And finally, it’s an exploration of heroism — how a single heroic act can shape the rest of a life — and the aftermath of heroism, when the adrenaline finally stops flowing. And one simply needs to live a life, day by day.

My mother passed away on the night of January 16, 2009, at the age of 87. My father and I were at her bedside, holding her hands, telling her how much she was loved.  She’d led a full and incredible life. I know I was blessed to have her as a mother. But twice blessed to have had the opportunity to discover the truth and meaning of the life she and my father had led before I came into this world. They were together for 67 years.

As for my father and I — we are no longer strangers. I won’t sugarcoat this — we can still get under each other’s skin. But I see him with greater clarity now.

The ghosts and demons my parents tried to keep from me for nearly a lifetime are still there. But they’re no longer a gnawing mystery. I’ve shared a vodka with them. I’ve looked into their eyes. They no longer have power over me.

I have come to see life’s journey as composed of two intersecting realms: destiny and free will. Destiny, to me, is a hallway of doors. Each door offers a different possibility. My hallway and my doors are unique and different than yours. We harness the power of free will every time we come to a new door. Will we open it and walk in? Or just walk on by? As difficult as my experiences were, I have no regrets about the doors I chose to open and enter. I hope my story inspires you to open some new ones — to look inside, into your heart, into your family, and discover your own story. I hope it inspires tolerance of those who pray to a different deity, look different, or look at the world differently. And lastly, I hope it inspires unconditional love – not just romantic love, but the love of fellow human beings. We needed that so much back then. We certainly need it now.

*****

CHAPTER 1

Their father sat in their kitchen, wrapped up in a swirl of anger. Red-faced, swollen, drunk, he had once again been summarily fired for mouthing off to the boss, and had to return home in the middle of the day. Humiliated, vengeful, impotent, he addressed his three crew-cutted boys, gathered before him: “Know what? Go out and beat up that fuckin’ Jew kid and show ‘im just how fuckin’ welcome he is!” The words he shot out didn’t just blast into his sons’ faces. They ricocheted out of the house, echoing in the alleyway our two families shared.

I was a Jew? What’s a Jew?

I was five years old, and had just come out to play, looking to make new friends. This was the first day after my immigrant family had moved from a fourth-floor walkup apartment in the decaying South Bronx of 1956, and into our very own house in the relatively idyllic residential neighborhood of Jackson Heights, Queens. My parents, who’d only physically survived the Holocaust in Poland — of which I knew nothing about at the time — would remain in that house, in utter denial, trying to remain invisible, next door to those people for the next twenty-five years. I never understood the reasons. I never stopped looking for answers.

Here’s another Kodak moment. I’m nine years old. It’s a New York winter. Bone chillingly cold. Nasty. It’s just snowed so badly, the snowdrifts piled up on the decaying, wooden, hinged, swinging doors of our backyard garages are up to ten feet high. So woo-hoo! No school! But of course, that means after Mom gives me a hot breakfast, she will send me outside to shovel snow. I know why I’m the designated shoveler. Everyone else in my little Polish immigrant family has suffered enough, I’m told. And I’m the sole American. I can grow up to be president, after all. I’m certainly not going to let my mother Ziuta, AKA Roza, go out and shovel. If I did, what kind of little man would I be? Besides, poor thing — she’s feeling depressed today. The snow must have triggered one of her bad memories – the ones she hints at, but never talks about. And my father Olek, AKA Jack, is at work, as usual. And my much older brother Yosef, AKA Joe, Joseph, or Joe-chu, is out somewhere – anywhere — keeping his distance from the family.

Since we shared not just an alleyway with the next-door neighbors, but our backyards had no dividing fence — allowing access to our adjacent garages — our lives continually collided. Old lady Hevessey, a widow and an immigrant herself, from Hungary, who occupied the top floor, owned their house. She was a furrier, and apparently quite successful. If not for her largesse, her indigent son, his wife and their five kids would have long ago wound up on the street. One daughter was Mary, the oldest, who was a little angel, and always sweet to me. The other was poor little Suzie, the youngest, whom I only heard about; she was mentally retarded and institutionalized. But the ones I knew the most were the three brothers. Michael. Larry. And Billy. They were like a little Army unit. Tight. Sure, they bloodied each other’s noses from time to time, but when faced with an outside enemy, they closed ranks.

And so here we all are, in the post-snowstorm, New York-winter-white apocalypse, laboring to cope with the ravages of Mother Nature. One of those Hevessey brothers is taking care of shoveling out their half of the alleyway. Another is doing the backyard. And the last one is taking care of the front sidewalk and porch. Incredibly, as if they are characters in some Disney movie, they are actually whistling while they work!

Me, I’m looking enviously at this happy-go-lucky, precision-operating little snow squad, dividing up the work, and tackling it like they’d been trained for winter military patrol. What a shitty deal that I’ve got to do the whole horrible thing myself. How come I didn’t have a bunch of brothers? How come I didn’t have grandparents, for that matter? How come I didn’t have aunts and uncles? How come I didn’t have a family that hung together like those three boys?

Where the hell did everyone go?

After what seemed like hours of shoveling snow, I come in for lunch, exhausted. Mom fixes me up with her usual array of gastronomical wonders. Sure, I loved the kid stuff, like peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, but she’d always include something exotic and eastern European — like calves’ knuckles, boiled for hours with garlic, salt and pepper, then congealing once it cooled, into a jello-like substance mixed with chopped carrots, hard-boiled eggs and celery that you’d eat with vinegar splashed on. It was a dish that was so outrageous it would make most kids throw up if they ever smelled it, tasted it or even looked at it. Galaretka. A weird name for a weird dish. It could have been the star of a ‘50s Japanese horror movie. But I loved it. And survived eating it. Looking back now, I think this is what made me so bulletproof.

After the knuckles and garlic jello and peanut butter and jelly sandwich had all stopped trying to kick each other’s ass inside my little stomach and settled their differences, I came back outside to try to enjoy my day off from school and all the snow that was out there in the giant mounds I had created. So did the Hevessey boys. In fact, what we were all doing now was nothing more than engaging in a testosterone-fueled activity of little anthropological throwbacks to Neanderthal man. We were building snow forts. Little fortresses to protect the clan from nature’s fury and potential invaders. Only the Hevesseys actually had a clan. On the other side of the two adjacent backyards, it was just me.

Eventually, the snow forts were built. And of course, theirs was done first, because there were three of them. But somehow, I had managed to build mine nearly as quickly. And then the assault of the snowballs began. It was the proverbial shit storm. Never mind that these turds were white. It didn’t make them the slightest bit more pleasant.

The individual members of the Hungarian-go-beat-up-the-Jew squad began launching their white fury onto my territory. And they were really good aims! That motivated me to hurry up and put the finishing touches on my fort as best as I could. And attempt to give as good as I got. It never occurred to me that all I had to do was make a dash from the backyard to the side door of my house, located in the alleyway. I had too much pride for that. To hear three boys scream taunts of “chicken” was a fate I could not, would not endure. Best to stay, hold my ground as best as possible, and just tough it out.

Michael, the oldest of the bunch, a real alpha dog, was devilishly accurate. And dangerous. Because Michael was the oldest boy, his father beat him the most. So Michael had a festering vicious streak in him. He worked hard to tightly pack as much material into his snowballs as possible. This way they’d be heavier, fly straighter, and have greater impact when they hit. They were the ones to watch out for. Most of the time I was able to weave and duck, so that I suffered only glancing blows. But at one point, as I was dodging snowballs from the other two brothers, Michael was taking his time, particularly focused on packing one special snowball. Distracted by his comrades, I was suddenly a sitting duck. I saw him look at me hard, his snakelike tongue peaking out of one side of his mouth, his eyes narrowing into slits. Determined to get me, he took careful aim. Then fired. Bulls-eye! Hitting me so hard in the gut, its force penetrated through all the layers of my winter clothing. It felt like I’d been rammed by a baseball bat.

As my eyes bugged out and I gasped desperately for a gulp of frozen air, Michael howled with wicked laughter, basking in the attaboys of his two brothers. In slow motion, as the volleys suddenly ceased, I moved behind the center of my snow fort, where I wouldn’t be seen and could recover not only my breath, but my dignity as well.

After the snot dripping from my nose had turned to icicles on my upper lip, I knew it was time to pick myself up. I packed a few snowballs and then popped out to return to battle. I wanted so much to get him back. But outnumbered, outgunned, I just couldn’t. I have no idea how long that contest lasted. Somewhere, sometime in that adrenaline-fueled experience, continually getting pummeled by more nasty, hard snowballs as big as baseballs, overwhelmed by circumstances far greater than me, I felt the full weight of my nine-year- old life. Not just the physics of mass times velocity equals force. But the metaphysics of the situation. Feeling cold, exhausted, pelted by endless volleys of wintry ammunition that often found their target, I felt profoundly besieged. I wasn’t a kid who was part of the neighborhood. I was a human target. Demoralized. Those kids were little pricks. Their father was a horrible, mean bum. But somehow they hung together as a family. They had a purpose. A shitty one. But a purpose no less. They sought to weed out the outsider, the other. Where was my family? What was our purpose? To just be the other?

When the Hevessey boys’ mother peaked out the back window and saw what was going on, she banged on the glass and made angry faces, gesturing to them to come inside. The battle was over. By not running away, by not crying, by enduring, I had fought them to a draw. I could now walk wearily away from my snowfort, secure that those boys would not stomp it into oblivion later on that evening. I had earned their respect.

I came back inside my house. Peeled off the layers of my winter clothes. Plopped down on my bed. Still breathing heavily, still smelling that funky aroma of sweat and melted snow and wool wafting from my sweater, scarf and cap. I think that’s when I must have come to my bad conclusion. I really didn’t have a family. There were four people coming and going, living under one roof, eating at the same kitchen table, sharing and stinking up one bathroom. But it wasn’t anything like what I would have considered to be a family. Those fucking goddam assholes next door… Now that was a family.

******

CHAPTER 2

The trip back to my childhood chilled me, despite the heat of late June. Like a pitcher who didn’t like the signal his catcher was giving, I shook it off and focused on matters at hand. I found myself once again at Los Angeles International Airport, excitedly breathing in the distinct and intoxicating aroma of jet fuel, making my way through the crowds of fellow travelers. I was about to take flight, embark on another journey, to make yet another documentary. Though my subject matter usually varied, this one was much different from the others, for a number of reasons. I would not be traveling to some exotic location like Jerusalem, Sao Paulo or Nashville (yes, to a Jew from New York, Nashville was absolutely exotic). There would be no meetup with a professional video crew. The crew was me. I must have looked like a street guy at Venice Beach — loaded down like a pack mule, carrying a video camera, audio equipment, tripod, cables, tapes, lenses, filters, batteries – Jeez, did I forget anything? Plus my personal belongings. A one-man band, I would be the director, writer, producer, camera operator, audio technician, gofer and whatever else the situation called for. My fellow travelers had no empathy. I endured harsh looks every time I bumped into one of them, or dropped something, forcing them to walk around me.

I had spent a lifetime denying this trip. I feared it. I loathed it. I lusted for it. And yet I really didn’t know what to expect. There was no angle to this story. I was wide open to being swept along to wherever the journey would take me. I was like a satellite dish, spinning around madly, in search of a coherent signal. I considered the story of Odysseus instructive: the journey itself was only half the battle I faced. Homer taught us that what ultimately mattered most to that ancient Greek wanderer was his second act — how well he folded his experiences into the life he faced once he returned. Could a guy who killed the Cyclops and had sex with Circe come home and be okay with having to take out the garbage? I understood that this was going to be an odyssey like no other I’d undertaken. And that I too would come back changed, and the repercussions and echoes of this experience would be perhaps limitless, unknown, maybe good, maybe bad. Probably — like everything else in life — a bit of both.

On this journey, I was traveling with my 78-year-old father Jack, a man I hardly knew. Our relationship had, up till now, been confounding, maddening, uncomfortable. We’d never really given each other what the other one truly needed. Now we were on our way to spend nearly a month together in Poland, a place whose mere mention would upset me when I was a child. Blind in one eye, with limited scope in the other, and an occasional fiery temper, my father was a Cyclops of sorts. Returning to a place that had compelled him and my mother – for so many years — to deliberately imbibe on the wine of forgetfulness.

The audience for the film I was about to make was a niche within a niche. It would be my two sons, their unborn children and generations to come. The void — the gaping black hole I’d stepped lightly around for my whole life, trying not to slip into it – was now about to be filled. I fully intended to seek out and meet the demons and ghosts in Poland. To talk to them. Question them. Share a vodka with them. And at last learn about what had happened to make my father, my mother, my brother — and ultimately myself — the strange, tormented creatures we had become.

Just before we’d departed for the airport, I’d asked my mother, whose declining health prevented her from accompanying us, to tell me how she felt about us going back to Poland, a place she’d left a half century earlier, never to return.

“I am happy you are writing about dis,” she said, without a single trace of happiness in her face or voice. “And your grandfadder, Yosef Kunstler, would be happy too, because…” She suddenly broke off. Covered her mouth. Her face contorted. Tears began streaming from her eyes. She choked up. “Dat’s enough,” she said, waving her hand in front of her face, gasping for air, suffocating from and trying to push away the invisible demons that only she could see. “I can’t. I’m sorry … ” A moment later she forced back her sobbing and continued. “…because he always wanted someone to remember — what dey went troo. And you’ll remember.”

*****

CHAPTER 3

After my father and I had boarded the 747 bound for Munich, where we needed to change planes for Warsaw, we got settled into our seats, and began making small talk.

“Howya feeling, Dad? Everything all right?” I asked.

“Yes, fine. Everything’s fine, Martin. Actually, I think I’ll take off my shoes to get more comfortable.”

“Yeah, great idea, Dad. It’s a long flight. You do that.”

A silence grew, like an expanding toy balloon between us. It needed to pop. “Big plane, huh?” I asked. We were in the middle section of the 747.

“Yeah, huge.”

Good enough.

I wasn’t really present, as I had other thoughts going on in my head. I was wishing my mother had been able to join us. I had always had a close relationship with her. We’d often had heart to heart talks about so many topics – things that were important to her. Things that were important to me. I’d never really had that with my dad. Nothing even close.

Roza reading in bed

I recalled one Sunday afternoon when I was a little boy of nine with fire engine red hair, a face full of freckles, and curious blue-green eyes that peered out of brand new horn-rimmed, tortoise shell eyeglasses; I heard soft sobbing and followed the sound. I walked past the kitchen, into the living room, and from there saw my mother stretched out on her bed, having returned to her bedroom after making me lunch. She was reading a strange-looking document and crying. It was upsetting to see her like this. As usual, my dad and my brother weren’t around, so it was just she and I in the house.

“What’s the matter, Mom?” I asked.

“Notting. It’s okay.”

“But…”

“I really don’t wanna talk about it.”

“What are you reading?”

“It’s my story. What happened to me.”

“What do you mean, your story? What’s your story?”

“It happened… just like it was predicted in my dream.”

“What dream? When did you have a dream?”

“When I was nine, I had a dream. In the dream, it was Yom Kippur. And I went outside, and looked up, and the sky split open. A very powerful voice spoke: ‘A terrible thing will happen to the Jews.’ And then it did.”

“Mom, what happened to the Jews? What happened to you?”

“Its all in here,” she said, pointing to an onion skin document that looked like it had many pages, written in a foreign language, in a strange alphabet.

“Is that Hebrew?” I asked.

“No, it’s Yiddish. Da same letters, only it’s a different language.” My mother was super intelligent; she spoke seven languages, though she struggled with her English pronunciation, especially her v’s and w’s and the t-h sound. “Like what we speak at Chocha Betka’s house.” That was what we called our cousin Betty Weitz.

“Why is your story written in Yiddish?”

“A man at a Jewish organization in New York interviewed me after ve got here. He didn’t speak Polish, and I didn’t speak English. So ve talked in Yiddish. That’s how Jews talk. Den it was transcribed,” she said, putting the transcript into a brown manila envelope and back in the drawer of her night table.

“Why did he interview you?” I asked.

“Dey wanted to interview everyone. Dey wanted to hear all the stories. So the world would know.”

“But don’t you want me to know your story, Mom? I’m your son. We’re supposed to be a family.”

“No. It’s too terrible. It’s about the war. Vat the Germans did to us.”

“Mom. I wanna know what happened. Can’t you translate it for me?”

“Never,” she answered, in a tone that would have been the same if I had asked if it were possible for her to inhale a tank.

“Never?”

“Vell, I suppose you can have it translated after my death,” she said flatly.

She turned away from me, put her hands under her head, and curled up in a fetal position, and just stared out the window. I didn’t say another word. There was nothing left to say.

I went back to my room. Back to my Mad magazine. I just stared at Alfred E. Neuman, the idiot cover boy who comprehended nothing. I suddenly felt a kinship.

The story couldn’t be told until after her death? Oh my God! What horrors were slithering around inside that harmless-looking plain brown envelope? I thought about what she said for the rest of the day.  And the next 40 years of my life.

*****

© Copyright: Martin Kent 2010 – All Rights Reserved

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