CONTACT:   Dr. Michael Milgraum

drmilgraum@gmail.com, (301) 588 5861 

Poetry of Jewish Grandfather, Son and Granddaughter Featured in New Book

            When psychologist, Michael Milgraum, first read poetry written by his eleven-year-old daughter, Rena, he found it hard to believe that such maturity of expression originated in one so young.  Upon reflection, he realized that it was to be expected.  From a young age, Rena had a philosophical bent and liked to ask big questions.  But there was another reason that Michael should have known that his daughter was a natural poet—two generations of poets preceded her. 

            Michael’s father, Leonard Milgraum, has been writing poetry since he was ten years of age (he now is 84).  Leonard has penned thousands of poems, ranging in themes from religious, to humorous, to pastoral, to love, to mystical.  In 2005 he published a volume titled I Am a Jew, which is a 170-page collection of his Jewish-themed poetry.  This book examines the multifaceted Jewish experience, in terms of the history, spiritual longings, identity and accomplishments of the Jewish people.        

            Michael also started writing poetry at a young age, and he has always maintained the identity of a writer, even though his professional career led him in other directions.  He started his career as an attorney, but was dissatisfied with the adversarial nature of the profession and went on to become a psychologist.  He has written poetry throughout his life, in order to sort through his own feelings or express his deepest convictions.  He recently published a novel called Never Forget My Soul, which examines the multigenerational effects of the Holocaust and two Jews’ journeys to find psychological and spiritual healing from this painful past. 

            As Rena continued to write poetry and share it with family and friends, Michael decided it was time to bring Rena’s work to a larger audience.  Then Michael was struck by an idea—if Rena was influenced by two generations of poets before her, why not create an anthology of poems from all three writers?  Rena liked the idea and proposed that it be titled Poetry of Three Generations.

            Poetry of Three Generations has just been released by Guidelight Books and is available through major book sellers.  Spirituality, relationships and nature are important themes in this delightful volume.  The book is divided into three sections: “Parents and Children,” “The Art of Living,” “Nature,” and “Connection and Disconnection.”  Within each section the three generations are intermingled, making the book read like a lively conversation between the poets.  In the book, each poet exhibits his/her own unique style, personality and perspective.  Leonard’s poetry is lyrical, inspirational and warm.  Michael brings deep psychological insight, challenging readers to find more meaningful engagement with life.  Rena’s voice is filled with innocence and celebration of the beauty and richness of the world.  She reminds us to wonder at the miracle and artistry of a tree, freshly fallen snow or a newborn baby. 

            Although this book can be read and enjoyed by individuals from every background, it has something special to offer Jews, due to the theme of Jewish spirituality that can be found in many of the poems.  The book begins with a parable (written by Michael), which is based on the Biblical story of Noah’s sons.  This parable expresses the Jewish understanding of how poetry and words can unite a fractured world and a disconnected self.  Other Jewish themes found in the book include submission to God’s will, appreciation of His blessings, Jewish prayer and emerging from isolation. 

            The Jewish soul that breathes through these pages indicates that not only the art of poetry was passed down in this family, as a precious family heirloom; love of the Jewish heritage has been faithfully transmitted as well.  

Danny impressed me as a man with a strong sense of integrity and a passion to speak out against injustice, combined with intelligence, warmth and an infectious sense of humor.  He also multitasks like a fiend.   As we drove, he phoned reporters (who were fact checking stories about his work), scheduled interviews, discussed how to get funding for his continuing work and revised his travel plans.

Danny and I arrived at the stately, beautifully ornamented Byrd Theater in Richmond, shortly before the film started showing at 7:00 pm.  After the showing, Danny and I discussed our work and fielded questions from the audience.  (We also had a chance to sell copies my book Never Forget My Soul  and DVD's of Danny's film.)   In his remarks, Danny stressed that the Lithuanian government has been trying to whitewash the brutal attacks on Lithuanian Jews by local Lithuanians during the war, some of which occurred before the Germans even arrived in these communities.  He said that many of these Lithuanians are regarded as national heroes for their resistance of Soviet occupation, and that it is an inconvenient truth that they also took part, with great enthusiasm, in senseless killing of Jewish men, women and children in Lithuania.

In my comments I emphasized that we need to remember not only the devastating cruelty and loss of life that occurred in this region, but we need to honor the culture that the European anti-Semites and the Nazi's wished to eradicate.  I made reference to the fact that Lithuania was famous, during the pre-war period, as the location for some of the finest Jewish religious academies (Yeshiva's) in the world.  In Vilnius, Lithuania, rabbis and their students spent day and night studying the holy texts of the Jewish people (the Torah, Talmud and treatises of ethics, spirituality, character development, and law).  These teachings had a defining impact, over the centuries, not only on the Jewish people, but on Western culture as a whole.

Just to name a few of these Jewish teachings that helped form Western culture: the inalienable rights of the individual that are not to be dismissed or impinged on in service of state interests, that human sacrifice is abominable, that kindness to the poor, disempowered and animals are not just nice things but non-negotiable have-to's (commandments from God), that murder is wrong whatever one's recent trendy  -ism that is justifying it, that the pursuit of pleasure without seeking a meaningful life is a wasted life, that it ennobles a human being to immerse himself in learning, that literacy is desirable for the population as a whole, that society must be governed by the rule of law and a non-corrupt court system that not even a king is above, that we are responsible for making the world a better place, and that there is one loving, benevolent God– not a mish-mash of random forces fighting against each other who could care less about the well-being of man.  

I told the audience that Holocaust education is in a state of crisis.  Now that we are numerous generations out from the Holocaust, many young people are just not interested in the subject, and, if we look at it objectively, why should they be?  It is depressing, and the barbarism of mankind has not eased at all in the seventy years since the war.  I said that if we want people to remember and learn from the Holocaust, then we cannot just focus on the loss.  We must give them a clear and active agenda for the present, something positive to focus on.  In this regard many people focus on speaking out for political justice, which is something that I applaud.  However, I would add to that and urge Jews to familiarize themselves with the incredibly rich source of teaching to be found in traditional Jewish sources.  There is such a wealth of information out today, making traditional Jewish literature and teachings accessible to those with little to no formal Jewish education.  One can attend classes, read books or peruse the almost endless sources of information on the Internet.  In that regard, allow me to suggest one very helpful website: http://www.aish.com/.  

Let us honor the memory of those who were lost, by paying attention to the richness of Jewish tradition and teachings, something that Hitler tried to eradicate.  Learning Jewish heritage and teachings will be our most lasting act of resistance against the enemies of democracy, tolerance and peace.  

© 2013 Michael Milgraum

            The State Department event featured the very impressive work of Father Patrick Desbois.  Desbois has painstakingly documented the mass executions of 2.5 million Jews and thousands of Gypsies, perpetrated by the Nazi’s in the territory of the former Soviet Union.  These executions did not occur in the gas chambers that are so often associated with the Holocaust.  Rather, they involved gruesome shooting of people standing over mass graves, which the victims had been forced to dig themselves.  Desbois has interviewed 3200 witnesses of these horrific events, including residents of the Ukraine, Romania and Poland.  He has also exhumed mass graves, providing tangible evidence of these crimes against humanity, occurring 70 years ago.  As an indication of the magnitude of the destruction involved, Desbois said that there were 700 extermination sites in the Ukraine alone. 

            The State Department event included the showing of a documentary produced by Desbois’ organization, Yachad in Unum.  The documentary, entitled “Holocaust by Bullets” let the eye witnesses of the killing do most of the talking.  These witnesses, now of advanced age, were children during the war.  Some of them hid behind bushes to see the atrocities.  Others were deliberately brought by adults to watch the killings, as if it were a public show.  (In one town, five classes were gathered in a school assembly, and the children were instructed to go watch the killings and discuss these events in school the next day.)  The witnesses who were featured in the documentary shared details which were painful to hear, such as the Nazis getting locals to walk over piles of corpses that were in the pits, in order to compact the mass sufficiently so that more of the slaughtered could fit.

            Desbois said that he does his work to emphasize that “We cannot build democracies on mass graves.”  In addition, he wants the perpetrators of such atrocities to know that regardless of how much time has passed we will not forget what happened and we will continue to bring their crimes to light. 

            Also in attendance at the event were Ambassador Michael Kozak, interim Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism; Suzanne Brown-Fleming of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum; Ambassador Douglass Davidson, Special Envoy for Holocaust Issues; and Victoria Holt, Deputy Assistant Secretary for the State Department.  These individuals and Father Desbois served on a panel, which discussed themes related to the documentary.  Representatives from Austria, France, Greece, Israel, Sweden, the United Kingdom, Estonia and Lithuania were present.

            Members of the audience directed a number of questions and comments to the panel.   A representative from Estonia commented that in addition to atrocities of the Holocaust, we should not forget that the Baltic States are “soaked with the blood” of people targeted by not Nazi but Soviet forces.  I found his comment troubling.  While his observation was accurate and it is a tragedy that the Soviet regime repressed and murdered millions, its actions had neither the purpose nor outcome of genocide.  The objective of the Soviets was to so dominate its subject states that resistance appeared impossible.  The goal of Nazi genocide efforts was to dehumanize and exterminate specific ethnic groups, to murder whole target populations.  To a large extent they were successful.  Before the war there were 9.5 million Jews in Europe.  Thus, two-thirds of the Jewish population of Europe was murdered.  Further, the feverish pace of extermination occurring up until the very end of the war indicated that the Nazis made their genocide efforts an utmost priority.  (For more information about revisionist history trying to equate Soviet violence to Nazi genocide, see rewriting-history.org.)  

            These facts make the soul shudder.  They should.  We should be horrified.  Let us support human rights for all people, but let us also educate others about the special nature and causes of genocide, so that this demonic form of hatred and destruction can be uprooted from humanity.     

© January 2013 Michael Milgraum

I am not sure what haunts me more—the horrendous news from Connecticut or the incomprehensible fact that we must be on the lookout for copycats, jealous of the attention given to an insane killer, itching to have their own moment of glory in the evening news.  There have been multiple reports of potential copycats out there since the mass slaying.  What is going on in this world?  We need to think and to think hard about this insanity.  I will put down some of my own thoughts herein, which will hopefully spawn more thought and discussion.

Everyone is talking about gun control now.  I will, thus, make my comments about guns brief, because there are so many other things that need to be addressed.  Suffice it to say that assault rifles are designed to do the maximum amount of damage in the minimal amount of time.  They should not be in general circulation.  Period.  We can go hunting and defend our homes with much more modest firearms. 

That being said, we must realize that we delude ourselves if we think this is just an issue of firearms.  There are other vital issues at play now, such as the state of many American youths, the cult of violence, obsession with celebrity/publicity, isolation, glorification of pleasure seeking and our “me” culture. 

Let’s start with the cult of violence.  From video games to the latest over-the-top violent movie thriller to sensationalism in the news media, graphic images of violence, gore and death have saturated our culture.  Images of violence have become like the thrill of a roller coaster– they scare you, but you know you are really safe, so it just turns out to be a fun ride.  We use violence, or, more accurately, the media uses violence to use us and to generate a willing pair of eyes to which our consumer society can market.  If we do not treat human destruction with the sensitivity that it deserves, then we lose our sensitivity and become just callous and heartless consumers of it.

The obsession with celebrity and publicity is at the heart of those copycat killers we fear.  But what we might be loath to face is that, in a sense, they are just a logical conclusion of the thrust of American culture.  How many celebrities have profited from the maxim that any press is good press?  In the world of celebrity, reputation, morals and integrity are so much less important that just being noticed.  In fact, as many rappers have demonstrated, the “badder” you are, the more you are noticed and the bigger you become.  But that is the vexing problem in this country.  With a new twist on the maxim “might makes right” our actions now proclaim “sight makes right,” meaning  that if I got you to notice me, you might buy what I’m selling, thus increasing my strength.  Well, nothing makes anyone take notice more than a gun.

What about isolation?  I will tell you that, as a therapist, I see, day after day, that isolation is one of the number one problems in this country, especially amongst American youth.  People are burrowed into their little technological worlds, using Facebook, texting, email, Twitter, etc. to limit how much face-to-face contact they have with others.  These technological hideaways allow us to recreate ourselves, show only as much as we would like others to see.  Our hideaways make it much more difficult for family and friends to have some actual authentic access to us and perhaps intervene if we are unstable or in crisis. 

All this technology facilitates our isolation, but it did not cause it.  In fact, when the Internet came on the scene, American culture was already a fractured landscape, populated by many isolated and hurting people.  The astounding rates of divorce (driven by many people who enter marriage thinking that it is supposed to gratify all their needs) has gone a long way in shattering social connections.  In its wake are countless hurting children who do not understand why they have become negotiable commodities in legal battles, where the “best interests of the child” is only a slogan.  But it goes beyond the ravages of divorce.  There is too little awareness of our responsibility to be involved in our communities.  Many people withdraw and just don’t bother.  But the sad truth is that the easy way is many times not the healthy way.  We withdraw, self-isolate and consequently, contribute to the atrophy of social networks which make up society.

The fabric of American society is also suffering because we are spoiled.  We believe that pain is intolerable and that it is our right to be happy.  (Jefferson said our right was the pursuit of happiness, not happiness itself.)  Further, our culture goes the next step and equates happiness with physical pleasure.   That is why recreational drugs and promiscuity capture so much American interest.  They promise us physical pleasure, which we believe to be the pathway to happiness.  But the truth about physical pleasure is that if it is not balanced with a meaningful life, it will always disappoint.  And when they are disappointed, people either ramp up their stimulating activity of choice or seek something more stimulating, like violence and fame, combined—perhaps the ultimate in stimulation.

How are our American youth doing?  Not well.  Our youths are the canaries in the coal mine.  They are the impressionable minds, who reflect our worst and best traits back to us.  They are absorbing all of these influences and it is dehumanizing them, just as we are being dehumanized.  Many of them have looked into the heart of the meaninglessness of our culture and they do not know any way back from the abyss.  Some fall in and then we all must pay the price. 

This article was published last week on Patch.com and in the Washington Jewish Week.

Nov. 1, 2012                                                                   mmilgraum@doctorMMsolutions.com

From October 26^th to 28^th, Cleveland, Ohio was the host for the 24^th Annual World Federation Conference of Jewish Child Survivors of the Holocaust and Their Descendants.    Five hundred people attended, many more than were originally expected.  Participants came from all over the world and across the life span.  First, second and third generations of those devastating wartime years were present, each contributing a unique perspective.

An important theme that emerged in the conference was that survivors who were children during the war had a different experience than people who where older.  Individuals who came of age before the war were able to absorb education and culture, which helped guide them and give them strength during the challenging years that followed.  In addition, they remembered what a normal world looked like, a world that they could hope would return.  Too young to develop these assets, child survivors were often left to fend for themselves, in trying to comprehend the horrifying world they saw and in developing their own moral and spiritual selves.  Religion was especially confusing for them, because most of them were hidden with non-Jewish families, many who converted the children to Christianity. 

Now that seventy years have passed, almost no survivors who were adults during the war remain.  The child survivors are therefore the last ones who can bear witness to the atrocities that Nazi hatred perpetrated.  The child survivors also serve as an inspiration of how to persevere against all odds and proceed to live meaningful, productive lives.

The conference included many seminars and discussion sessions.  Perhaps one of the most moving workshops was one facilitated by psychologist Michael Milgraum (from Silver Spring, MD), who is a child of a survivor.  The title of the workshop was “Spirituality After the Holocaust—Where was God and Where is He Now?”  One hundred people attended, and half of the audience consisted of survivors.  “The many survivors at this workshop helps dispel the popular myth that survivors are not interested in discussing religious topics,” said Milgraum. 

Milgraum is an Orthodox Jew, but, he says, “The purpose of this workshop was not to preach God or Orthodoxy or really to preach at all.  I believe we are enriched when we grapple with the infinite and spirituality, when we continue to ask questions, even if satisfactory answers about human suffering are so hard to find.”

The workshop lasted for two hours.  During the first half hour, Milgraum discussed the role of spirituality in his own life.  The remainder of the session consisted of a lively audience discussion, with topics ranging from God’s involvement in the world, Jewish continuity, survival of Judaism as defiance against Hitler, tensions between religious and non-religious Jews, faith and sources of hope.  Milgraum stressed that the purpose of the workshop was not to prove who was right and who was wrong, but to create a forum where different perspectives could be heard and acknowledged.  Participants seemed very pleased with this opportunity to have their voices heard. 

Milgraum is the author of Never Forget My Soul, a book discussing the multigenerational effects of the Holocaust and psychological/spiritual healing.  

           This morning my seven-year-old daughter said to me, “People think that people are things, but they’re not.”

            Intrigued by her observation, I asked her, “Then what are they?”

            She thought for a moment and answered, “They’re creations.”

            Her words were an amazing piece of serendipity.  Shortly before her comments, I had been wondering how to describe an unusual and heartwarming experience that occurred yesterday, when total strangers reached out to me, seeking understanding, affirmation and hope.  Yesterday, I was in downtown Brooklyn at the Brooklyn Book Festival, sitting in a little booth, under a canopy, as the cool fall air and the sun’s warm rays competed with each other.  A wide variety of people walked by—young, old, wealthy, poor, aimless, hurried, dark-skinned, light and everything in-between.  The main headline of my poster was “Faith After the Holocaust.”  The title of my book: “Never Forget My Soul.”  Three words drew people in and made them want to talk—“faith,” “Holocaust,” and “soul.”  “Holocaust,” because it speaks of the cruelty and suffering in our world; “faith,” because people need to believe that the horrors that we have seen cannot be all there is to the universe; and “soul,” because, well, to paraphrase my daughter: People want others to know that they are not things, that they get hurt, that they hope, that they long for peace, truth and love, that they matter. 

            An African-American woman approached me and said she would buy my book, if she had the money.  She told me that her son had been shot a year ago—a loss, which, understandably, had taken her the whole year to come to terms with.  Many children of Holocaust survivors approached me, just to let me know, that they, like me, faced this question, “What is our source of hope, soothing and meaning, now, having such a legacy?”  A substitute teacher from the New York City school system was in tears, telling me that it breaks her heart to see the cycle of poverty, ignorance, drugs and violence that destroys young lives.  A self-proclaimed atheist asked me what my definition of spirituality is.  We discussed the matter and agreed that it involved connecting with something that is greater than oneself and brings one an internal feeling of elevation, beauty and inspiration which transcends the mind.  He denied the existence of God, but, I believe, was seeking a perspective that affirmed…, well, that he is not a thing.

            Maybe we all can use these vignettes to understand a fundamental truth:  Those people you pass on the street today—any one of them, could be one of the people who stopped at my booth and opened up about loss, pain, despair, longing and hope.  So many of us are in such a rush.  How often do we get angry at people who “get in our way,” and obstruct our path to our “very important” goals.  We must remember, as my daughter said, people are not things, they are creations.  And I’ll tell you something about creations.  When we create something, we inevitably put a part of ourselves in it.  We connect with our creation in a deep way, and, consequently, we love it.  If we remember only this, that everyone we see is a creation, loved by another—their creator—then we will treat those people as real and value our encounter with them.  Then, step by step, we may truly make a world where a Holocaust can never happen again. 

          To confront the Holocaust some struggle with God, some with humanity and some with memory.  In this moving novel, Never Forget My Soul, Michael Milgraum struggles with all three.

            The two central characters, Adam and Joe, are both descendants of Holocaust survivors.  Adam is the child of survivors, the son of a family where memory haunted his childhood home.  His world was divided between those who could be trusted and those who could not.  The content of his Jewishness was fear and anguish.  Adam’s mother was barely functional; she internalized her pain.  His father’s aspirations were seemingly modest—safety, security, survival.  Yet only after seeing what he had seen and entering into the world of the Shoah, could one appreciate how significant an achievement that was.

            Over the vehement objections of his parents, who wanted him to avoid danger and stay close to home, Adam journeyed to Israel in the post-1967 euphoria, a pilgrimage that brought him into the presence of a Rabbi, a man of faith and learning, who despite his prior internment in the concentration camps and his life under Nazi persecution, did not lose his belief in God or in life.  He taught Adam that faith, and he modeled an alternate Jewish path as to how to grapple with memory.  Adam desperately embraced that path, but could not overcome the legacy of his past.  His religious praxis was perfect; his spiritual development arrested.  His prayers were by rote and yet he was both comforted and tormented not by his inner spiritual attainment, but by the idea that there could be one, should be one, one that was not his.

            Joe is the grandchild of a Holocaust survivor, a hero, one of the few who escape Treblinka, where some 900,000 Jews were murdered and there were less than 100 known survivors.  Scott Cohen had participated in the Treblinka Uprising and escaped the death camp in its aftermath.  In response to his youth, he was living, what Primo Levi described in his magisterial work If This Be a Man, falsely re-titled to give it an upbeat feel for an American audience Survival in Auschwitz,  “the cold life of a joyless dominator.”

            Joe’s grandmother was submissive, and Joe’s mother sought to escape her father’s domination by marrying a non-Jew who seemingly was everything her father was not, yet who, as often happens in marriage, shared much in common with her father.  He was a determined dominator, yet, unlike her mother, she escaped, neglecting her children, by burying herself in a successful career. 

            Brilliant and impulsive, selfish and hedonistic, Joe rebelled, seeking refuge in drugs and sex and acts of daring, then, at least externally, finding his own way through life as a successful physician, an indifferent husband, and an occasional father, drowning himself in sex and work.   The fact of his grandfather’s survival seemed of no importance, and he last made contact with his own Jewishness when he stormed out of his own Bar Mitzvah sermon, having spoken defiantly, confronting God and Abraham and mocking those who revere sacred scripture.

            Both Adam and Joe are driven to therapy and find themselves in group sessions with diverse characters led by David, a wise and caring therapist who seems to know precisely when to intervene and when to remain silent.  The skill of a good therapist is not only in knowing what to say, but also when to say it.  As one who has done some significant counseling as a chaplain and rabbi, I always marvel at the patience required.  A scholar, writer or preacher must tell the truth that he knows; a wise counselor must guide the person being counseled to discover their own truth.  Milgraum is a therapist, and one can tell from this novel that he has grappled with these issues himself.  

            Milgraum is a gifted story teller.  Like a fine symphony, themes present at the beginning are developed as the work evolves.  There are moments of crescendo and of fortissimo, unexpected turns, but a confident direction.

            I suspect that I have been asked to write this foreword not for my understanding of literature – I am but an appreciative reader but not a literary scholar – but for my efforts to grapple with the Holocaust, God, humanity and memory and also, perhaps unknown to the author, for my appreciation of literature as an important form of theology, especially to Jews.

            The Torah, as any student of Rabbinic commentary knows, is not only a work of law.  Rashi, the great French commentator (1040-1105) wrote in his commentary on the first words of the Torah, that had it been just a book of laws, the Torah would have began with the first commandment in the 12^th chapter of Exodus and not with the Genesis and Exodus narratives.  If Greeks might say: “in unity there is strength,” Jews would be more inclined to tell a story of “two dogs that killed a lion.”

            So what does this story tell of the Holocaust?

            Viktor Frankl, the eminent Viennese psychoanalyst who was an inmate of the camps, wrote of liberation:  “only later– and for some it was much later or never – was liberation actually liberating.”

            Milgraum does not choose the easy path.  He portrays the painful truth of survival, which tends to be obscured in our feel-good society.  Adam’s parents and Joe’s grandfather and mother, paid for their experience of trauma.  The Holocaust did not end for them, not in the conventional sense.  They did not overcome; they endured, paying an ongoing price for all that they went through, for childhoods interrupted, witnessing the death of parents and siblings, the murder of their entire community, the demise of a whole world.  The anguish does not end with the generation of survivors, it is transmitted directly and indirectly, knowingly and unknowingly, in ways that are acknowledged and in a manner that cannot be, to the generation after, and even beyond.

            Theologically, he offers no cheap grace, no feel-good story and no way out of the abyss, without confronting the darkness.  One must respect the integrity of the writer and of the therapist who resists the all-too-prevalent temptation in our world to retell only the good, to describe strength and not probe weakness and to offer easy triumphs.  The impact of the Holocaust is lasting, and even though survivors demonstrated manifest, dare one say awesome strengths, in the very fact of their survival, they paid a price for that survival, an ongoing price.

            Twice during the work Milgraum insists that there is only one way to confront the Holocaust and that is to go into the darkness.

            This endears him to my heart.  Permit me a personal story.  When I was writing my Ph.D. dissertation on post-Holocaust theology and the work of Elie Wiesel, I found myself drawn to the image of the void, absence where presence had been.  I considered three Jewish theologians Emil Fackenheim, Richard L. Rubenstein and Eliezer Berkovits, who were among the earliest of the American Jewish theologians to confront the twin revolutions of American Jewish life, the Holocaust and the rise of the State of Israel.  Fackenheim had achieved fame by speaking of the 614^th Commandment: 

The Commanding Voice of Auschwitz says:

Jews are forbidden to hand Hitler posthumous victories.

They are commanded to survive as Jews, lest the Jewish people perish.  They are commanded to remember the victims of Auschwitz, lest their memory perish.  They are forbidden to despair of man and his world, and to escape into either cynicism or otherworldliness, lest they cooperate in delivering the world over to the forces of Auschwitz.  Finally, they are forbidden to despair of the God of Israel, lest Judaism perish.  A secularist Jew cannot make himself believe by a mere act of will, nor can he be commanded to do so . . . And a religious Jew who has stayed with his God may be forced into new, possibly revolutionary relationships with Him.  One possibility, however, is wholly unthinkable.  A Jew may not respond to Hitler's attempt to destroy Judaism by himself cooperating in its destruction.  In ancient times, the unthinkable Jewish sin was idolatry.  Today, it is to respond to Hitler by doing his work.

            Richard L. Rubenstein had also achieved fame by speaking of the “death of God”, not in the sense of the Christian theologians celebrating humanity coming of age, but of living in a world without a Judge and without Justice, a world in which the fear of God is no longer real and unrestrained human power had been and can be absolutely lethal.

            Fackenheim had to back away from the abyss, fearing the consequences of confronting the darkness.  See his use of the word ”lest.”  He would not allow us to go there.  Rubenstein had gone beyond the abyss, living in a godless world where humanity is the ultimate arbiter of all things.  After “the death of God”, everything is permitted – everything.  Berkovits had postponed the conflict, believing God answerable in the end of days for the anguish of the created world in which humans alone are responsible for history.  Only Wiesel, the early Wiesel, the writer before he had achieved prominence and internationally celebrity– grappled with the darkness and worked through the abyss.  He became my model, asking challenging questions, refusing falsely comforting answers, neither backing away nor resolving the issue but living in the tension.  I found in Milgraum a kindred soul.

            The denouement of the novel comes in two parts.  The first is when David finally intervenes and says to the two men:

You are both fighting against the same thing, hopelessness, or perhaps I should say that you are both trying to protect yourself from the pain of hopeless.  The only difference is that, Adam, you protect yourself against hopelessness by denying it, while Joe, you protect yourself from hopelessness by embracing it, by becoming its chief protagonist.

            Had one spoken such words of Fackenheim and Rubenstein, they might have concurred.

            The second part is the confrontation between Joe and the Rabbi, whose synagogue he stormed out of a quarter century before.  Now aging and more frail, the Rabbi too has known loss, the death of his wife and the loneliness of being a widower, but he also knows where to find consolation.

            There is an intriguing, ritualistic phrase that pious Jews recite to the mourner.” Hamakom yenachem, May the Place [a name for God] console you.”  I have often interpreted this phrase more literally: “May there be a place where you will find consolation.  That place for the Rabbi is the book of Job.

            What makes a holy text timeless is its potential to speak of each generation and each reader at each stage of his or her life as if it was written for them, here and now.  Joe barges in on the Rabbi in anguish and in despair.  The Rabbi cannot answer his anguish, but he can, like Elihu (a key figure in the book of Job), acknowledge the despair and listen to the anguish.  By listening, and by acknowledging, there is the possibility of alleviating.

            And finally, Joe and the Rabbi return to the two basic texts of Genesis, Abraham’s confrontation with God over the fate of Sodom and his non-confrontation with God over the command to sacrifice his own son, his beloved son, his Isaac.  For the Rabbi, God’s gift to Abraham at Sodom was the opportunity to demonstrate love of others in action.  “The root of all human goodness,” the Rabbi says “ is the awareness that we are not alone in the world.”

            Joe responds: “I see no gifts, only a cold world where the strong survive and the weak are crushed.”

            The Rabbi remembers the rules of counseling: “To treat the darkness you have to bear your own entry into the darkness.”  That is the inescapable beginning.

            But one need not end up in that darkness.  Some in that darkness can discover God.   God did not answer Job in the whirlwind, God addressed him.  With presence there is the possibility of meaning, without it, there may just be despair.

            And some in that darkness can discover another person and find that loneliness can be bridged with another, anguish can be shared with another.  To protest the cold cruel world, one can reach out toward the other and share the warm embrace and with that comes healing.   There may be some light out of the tunnel.

            Never Forget My Soul is a brave work that touches the soul and invites us to remember a way that can nourish and not destroy the soul.

Michael Berenbaum

Los Angeles, California

July 20, 2012 

        The child of Holocaust survivors (COS) is faced with both unique challenges and unique opportunities to find meaning.  The challenges facing the COS are manifold and include:

·         Being aware of the incomprehensible and overwhelming human evil of the Holocaust only second hand, while, at the same time, struggling with intense emotion about the Holocaust, oftentimes nonverbally communicated by the survivor parent. 

·         Developing a heightened sensitivity to human suffering (especially the anxiety, anger and depression experienced by the survivor parent) with a concomitant longing to soothe that suffering.

·         Feeling driven to justify the parent’s survival by making a powerful impact on the world, while experiencing intense self doubt about one’s potency.   

·         Knowing the parent’s expectation that the child be happy (as opposed to the parent’s loss and despair), while sensing that much more than the pursuit of happiness is needed for anyone, especially COS, to feel whole. 

           The only true solution to these conflicts is for the COS to forge his own path to meaning.  In this workshop, four such paths to meaning for the COS are proposed.  These paths arise out of four areas of “disruptions in trust” that both survivors and the COS experience.  The wartime experience gave rise to disruption of trust in 1) oneself, 2) close human relationships, 3) humanity in general, and 4) God. 

          Each of these paths will be discussed in turn, including an analysis of the cause for each disruption of trust and opportunities to repair it.  Self/interpersonal repair strategies that will be discussed include awareness of one’s spiritual uniqueness, artistic expression, psychotherapy, affiliation with others, and personal acts of kindness.  Repair strategies for renewing ones faith in God and His world include deliberate acts to improve the lives of others or resist injustice, acceptance of God’s will, acknowledgement of His greater wisdom, awareness of the goodness in one’s present life, and attentiveness to the inner voice of conscience.

          Integral to the discussion will be a consideration of how trauma shapes the personality of the victim and how that personality, in turn, influences the next generation.  The COS, who is keenly aware of this process, is highly sensitized to the effects of his parenting style, creating another fear of failure that the COS experiences.

          Dr. Milgraum is a COS and the issues involved in this workshop have been important in both his personal and professional life.  The process of loss, despair, and reawakening to opportunities for growth will be illustrated through real stories of survivors and their children.  Dr. Milgraum will draw on the legacy of Victor Frankl and show that the challenge to find meaning in the face of the Holocaust continues 70 years after the war.  This workshop is part informational, and part inspirational, challenging participants to face their own losses and cynicism and seek renewed reasons for hope.  Audience participation will be encouraged.    

Press Release: April 26, 2012

For some, immigration truly is an matter of life or death… 

Psychologist Michael Milgraum just published a novel describing the multigenerational effects of the Holocaust.  During an average work day, he can be found in his office listening to a client tell him about vicious torture, squalid conditions and degrading treatment the client received during his incarceration.  The female clients discuss the additional trauma of having been raped in a similar setting.  The only crime these clients did was to have a different ethnicity, religion or political opinion from the government in power.

But these are not victims of wartime Nazi atrocities.  Milgraum conducts psychological evaluations on immigrants who are seeking asylum from persecution in their home countries. 

“Most of these evaluations are of Africans,” says Milgraum, “particularly Ethiopia, because the Greater Washington, DC area [where Milgraum works] contains one of the main Ethiopian communities in the United States.  The record of political oppression, intolerance for free speech and ethnic-based persecution is horrendous in Ethiopia.  Those who speak out against the government are jailed multiple times on trumped-up charges, beaten during harsh interrogations, and held in unsanitary and crowded conditions.”

Milgraum listens to these immigrants’ stories, examines their psychological profile and provides reports to immigration courts about his findings.  He often is required to testify about his conclusions as well.  Almost all of these clients have Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, which can involve flashbacks of the prior abuse, panic attacks, social withdrawal, insomnia, and a host of other symptoms.    

“What’s so ironic,” says Milgraum, “is that both in my personal and professional life I can’t seem to get away from man’s inhumanity to man and dealing with the aftermath.  I am a child of a Holocaust survivor.  That’s why I wrote a book about the whole Holocaust experience.  Now I see clients who are victims of hatred and the abuses of governmental power.  We children of survivors just seem to be drawn back to trauma in one way or another.”

Milgraum goes on to explain that children of survivors frequently feel a mission to make the world a better place and to alleviate suffering.  This mission leads the second generation to work with people who have been hurt or are in trouble.  Milgraum says, “Many in the second generation became psychotherapists, which, I think, represents an unconscious wish to alleviate our parents’ posttraumatic stress.”

About Dr. Michael Milgraum

A psychologist, lawyer, writer, husband and father, Dr. Michael Milgraum has his own practice in Silver Spring, MD.   In addition to conducting psychological evaluations, Milgraum sees patients in individual and group therapy.  Never Forget My Soul is his first novel and is available in bookstores and online (in print and eBook format).  See http://www.doctormmsolutions.com/blog/ for Milgraum’s essays about the Holocaust, psychology and spirituality. 

Copyright © Apr. 27, 2012, Michael Milgraum. All rights reserved.