The adventure with my Grandfather began in that fourth grade classroom, learning his story and getting a taste of everything he went through. Of course, the story had holes--which I maybe hadn't been aware of from the get-go (as a fourth grader, how critical am I really going to be of such a miraculous adventure?). The basic story, though, needs to be outlined before I delve into the journey my family and I began only after hearing about it.
The story as I imagined it in fourth grade from hearing the retelling on Grandpa's video represents such a major difference from the understanding I have of it now, at age 16. The difference comes from history classes I've taken, but also from the information we've uncovered since the vague and simple VHS. It will help to have an outline of Grandpa Fred's life before I start to reveal the depths of his saga, but with each new post about something my family and I did to uncover a little more of the mystery, I will include the paragraph of my fourth grade biography which relates to what we were looking to fill in the gaps of.
My Grandpa, Zigfried Kanfer, was born in Vienna Austria in 1925 to Anna and Oscar Kanfer, a shop owner of a small business which closed shortly after Ziggy's 12th birthday because of loss of rights for Jews in Austria. They were hidden by a non-Jew neighbor during Kristallnacht, but were soon sent to a variety of camps across Europe. Escape after close call after escape led eventually to a flee of the Kanfer family through the Spanish mountains onto a boat which would lead them to America. Grandpa's diary, which he kept starting at this young age 12, was written in German, French, Spanish, and then English, as he travelled across the world and was forced to learn these new languages in order to keep his family safe (or, relatively safe). The riveting words of this diary were found by my Grandma Ruby who handed it over to her children, my dad and his sister, in 2003 after my Grandpa had already died. The stories were tear-jerking when they had been translated by a multitude of people they worked to find. The one line everyone knows by heart, though, are the last three words of the book. Upon arriving in America, Zigfried, who worked to lose his accent, change his name, and then fight for America in World War II, scribbled in a handwriting that you could feel excitement eminating from, "Free, Free, Free."
Grandpa went on to become a professor of psychology known for his work on self-management and behavior change. People who knew him described him as not changing his attitude whether he was speaking with a renowned scholar or a janitor of his building, even as successful as he was becoming. He returned with his family to Vienna, Austria to teach and was offered the key to the city for his work, but turned it down because what they did to him and his family, he said, he couldn't forgive.
I have only seen the diary once or twice. It's such an old book, falling apart, delicate, and so valuable that I'm sure it's hard to trust me with it. I can't be surprised, however, at the character my Grandpa had in writing this record. I don't remember him enough, but I have begun to know him through the recent discoveries. All I need, though, is the memory of age three or four, while all the adults sat and talked about everything but me at holidays, Grandpa Fred always pulled out the same puzzle, invited me to join him, and spent hours until we finished it together. Whatever more important work was going on at the time, Grandpa Fred could always find the time for me.
Thursday, September 20, 2012
Monday, September 10, 2012
Curiosity Strikes
I was in Ms. Henson's fourth grade class, studying everything from melting ice cube science to oceanography to archeology. Sometime in November, we reached a biography unit. What was a biography? A description of a person, a life story, a life story of someone else, an academic paper on some type of accomplishment? In order to learn more about our own definitions, we were assigned to choose anyone we knew that was able to schedule an interview with us to work on telling a story and letting us write a biography of their lives. For this reason, Ms. Henson told us the person had to be alive and easily contacted over phone/email/in person. I thought about this for a while. I guess I could call my voice instructor...she'd probably have some good stories about her schooling. Or my mom's mom, considering the fact that I didn't know enough about her life as it was, especially for being her only granddaughter. There were always my parents, but, bo-ring! After long deliberation, I felt like the only thing to do was ask Ms. Henson for an exception.
By far, the one most interesting person with the single most miraculous story I'd ever heard was my grandfather, who had passed away years before. I hadn't ever heard his story through his words--just passed from my dad with some exaggerations and underestimations here and there. I knew this would be a good story to tell--the one of him escaping from the Holocaust, into America, the land of the free.
When I was born a couple years after my older cousin Sarah, my parents and her's decided that it would be important to get a video recording of my Grandpa Fred, talking about his experiences during the Holocaust, from start to finish. It was like a visual history, made to help us, the youth, understand and remember the things he and so many others went through during the 1940s. Though our education was the driving factor behind the desire for this video, I also think my dad and his sister, Aunt Ruthie, wanted to hear the story for themselves. Grandpa never talked about it. He was an American now, he was proud of it, and he didn't want to burden his children as they were growing up with the horrors of what he had been through at their age and younger. The whole family sat down and, with me as a one-year-old crying in the background, began to film the history in a couple-hour period.
I watched the video for the first time in fourth grade after Ms. Henson approved my idea for using it as a sort of "interview." Lying in the dark on the floor of my parents' bedroom, I teared up and wondered how something as insignificant as a computer screen could induce such emotion. My dad came in and watched with me during parts of the video, and I remember wondering how even he, such a strong figure in my life, could get so emotional over this. The only more emotional event was the first time I'd ever seen Dad cry, on the morning of Grandpa's death in 2001.
I took notes on the video, and I wrote my paper. It was simple, didn't take much time, and I got an A. It came naturally to me, giving the stories of my Grandfather's life and adding some reflection here and there. I thought it was simple at least. Next time that I visited Grandma Ruby in the nursing home, my mom made me bring the paper to show her. I complained and said it wouldn't mean anything, embarrassed to give my fourth grade writing piece (which even I, still as a fourth grader, knew was primitive) to someone who knew much more about essays. That changed when I watched Grandma tear up over the biography, and follow by hanging it on her bedroom wall until the day that she passed away there.
It was then that I realized how my writing could affect people, and how my Grandpa Fred's story should be documented for the entire world to learn from. I didn't realize, back then, the holes in the video leaving out information we'd need to really understand his journey. I'm still figuring it out, with my family, as we travelled around Europe this summer trying to retrace his steps and fill in the blanks. It's a work in progress, but is already helping me learn so much about the overall picture of the Holocaust and WWII in Nazi Germany, but also about my ancestors, their families, my Grandfather, and even the lives of my Dad and Aunt.
Even without conclusion, the embarkment on this journey we are about to begin is bringing my family closer already.
By far, the one most interesting person with the single most miraculous story I'd ever heard was my grandfather, who had passed away years before. I hadn't ever heard his story through his words--just passed from my dad with some exaggerations and underestimations here and there. I knew this would be a good story to tell--the one of him escaping from the Holocaust, into America, the land of the free.
When I was born a couple years after my older cousin Sarah, my parents and her's decided that it would be important to get a video recording of my Grandpa Fred, talking about his experiences during the Holocaust, from start to finish. It was like a visual history, made to help us, the youth, understand and remember the things he and so many others went through during the 1940s. Though our education was the driving factor behind the desire for this video, I also think my dad and his sister, Aunt Ruthie, wanted to hear the story for themselves. Grandpa never talked about it. He was an American now, he was proud of it, and he didn't want to burden his children as they were growing up with the horrors of what he had been through at their age and younger. The whole family sat down and, with me as a one-year-old crying in the background, began to film the history in a couple-hour period.
I watched the video for the first time in fourth grade after Ms. Henson approved my idea for using it as a sort of "interview." Lying in the dark on the floor of my parents' bedroom, I teared up and wondered how something as insignificant as a computer screen could induce such emotion. My dad came in and watched with me during parts of the video, and I remember wondering how even he, such a strong figure in my life, could get so emotional over this. The only more emotional event was the first time I'd ever seen Dad cry, on the morning of Grandpa's death in 2001.
I took notes on the video, and I wrote my paper. It was simple, didn't take much time, and I got an A. It came naturally to me, giving the stories of my Grandfather's life and adding some reflection here and there. I thought it was simple at least. Next time that I visited Grandma Ruby in the nursing home, my mom made me bring the paper to show her. I complained and said it wouldn't mean anything, embarrassed to give my fourth grade writing piece (which even I, still as a fourth grader, knew was primitive) to someone who knew much more about essays. That changed when I watched Grandma tear up over the biography, and follow by hanging it on her bedroom wall until the day that she passed away there.
It was then that I realized how my writing could affect people, and how my Grandpa Fred's story should be documented for the entire world to learn from. I didn't realize, back then, the holes in the video leaving out information we'd need to really understand his journey. I'm still figuring it out, with my family, as we travelled around Europe this summer trying to retrace his steps and fill in the blanks. It's a work in progress, but is already helping me learn so much about the overall picture of the Holocaust and WWII in Nazi Germany, but also about my ancestors, their families, my Grandfather, and even the lives of my Dad and Aunt.
Even without conclusion, the embarkment on this journey we are about to begin is bringing my family closer already.
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