Shulamit Reinharz, "Hiding in Holland: A Resistance Memoir" (Amsterdam Publishers, 2024)

Summary

Podcast Summary: New Books Network

Episode: Shulamit Reinharz, Hiding in Holland: A Resistance Memoir (Amsterdam Publishers, 2024)

Host: Rora Roussi
Guest: Professor Shulamit Reinharz
Date: September 21, 2025

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Overview

This episode delves into Hiding in Holland: A Resistance Memoir, authored by sociologist and Jewish studies leader Professor Shulamit Reinharz. In a moving interview, Reinharz shares the deeply personal process of reconstructing her father's Holocaust survival story from diaries and memoirs, weaving in her own scholarly insights, and reflecting on intergenerational memory, resistance, love, and historical responsibility. The discussion is wide-ranging but intimate, addressing the structure of the book, the family’s experience in both Germany and Holland, the importance of education and remembrance, and how love and community shape survival under persecution.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Shulamit Reinharz’s Personal Background and Motivation

• Family Roots and Transnational Life:
  Shulamit introduces herself and the turbulence of her early years, born in postwar Amsterdam, immigrating between the US and Israel before settling in America. She became a leading academic in sociology, gender, and Judaic studies, founding the Hadassah Brandeis Institute.
  “I was born in Amsterdam in 1946. The war, as everyone knows, was over in '45, and my life was pretty interesting. ... I grew up a little bit in Malden, Massachusetts, but also...in New Jersey, went to college at Barnard in New York, married in 1967...and moved with my husband to Boston, where I got my PhD in Sociology at Brandeis.” [02:24]

• Why Focus on Her Father:
  Reinharz chose to write about her father due to his prolific documentation, vibrant personality, and his willingness to confront Holocaust memory—unlike her more reserved mother, whose story she plans to tell separately centered on Zionism.
  “My father was a big talker and a big joke teller and sort of the center of attention usually. ... My mother was more reserved and didn't like talking about the Holocaust. My father really...felt there was so much to learn from it...” [04:51]

2. The Structure and Method of the Book: A Duet Across Generations

• Building the Narrative as Dialogue:
  The book is structured as an intergenerational “duet,” presenting her father’s memoirs alongside her commentary—sometimes challenging or contextualizing his perspectives. “It’s like a piano duet between you and your father in which he plays the melody and you the accompaniment.” [08:24, Roussi quoting Reinharz]

  “A lot of the book is, I disagree with you, dad, as if we were having a conversation...But my father did not do research on the topics that he discusses. I did the research, so I had something different to offer than he did. And that different voice, along with his voice of the memoir and the documents, created that duet.” [10:44]

3. Objectivity, Memory, and the Holocaust

• On the Limits of Objectivity:
  The episode highlights a profound quote from her father’s writings: “It is impossible for me to be objective in my writing. How can any living man...How can a person with a heart be objective about the Hitler era? About that absurd, bizarre sequence of events which, in the last analysis, can never be explained fully, but only described?” [12:10]

  Reinharz expands on this, arguing the value of subjective memory to evoke understanding without claiming absolute explanation. “Maybe you can't do that, but you can really talk about your memories and your experiences and let the reader think about what it all means.” [13:48]

4. Returning to Gunsenhausen: Remembrance, Dialogue, and Memorialization

• Revisiting the Past:
  The personal journey to her father’s hometown in Germany, Gunsenhausen, is a poignant thread, where Reinharz connects with local non-Jewish educators leading initiatives to research and commemorate the town’s lost Jewish community.
  “I want to go back there to learn something about what Gunsenhausen meant to my father, but I don't have anyone to talk to there. So then [the consul] wrote me...I have someone you can talk to there. ... Emmy Hetzner realized that no one was talking about the Holocaust there...” [17:37]

• Community Memory Projects:

  • Schoolchildren researching Jewish families;
  • Creation of a “German Jewish Dialogue Group” pairing descendants with current residents ([21:30]);
  • Advocacy for adding a Star of David to Jewish names on the town’s WWI memorial ([26:57]);
  • Reconceptualizing the ruins of the synagogue as a “Western Wall” and planting trees for each returning family ([29:34], [34:29]).

  “We want to have our presence felt in a respectful way. Not just a plaque somewhere, but things that are like the memorial stones, like the stones from the synagogue, like the trees. And there will be more.” [34:30]

5. Hiding in Holland: Survival, Resistance, and the Importance of Gentile Allies

• Jewish Youth, Zionism, and Self-Esteem:
  Her father’s journey—from Gunsenhausen to Munich, discovering Zionism, and ultimately being sent as a farmworker to Holland—emphasized the empowering role of communal identity.
  “Zionism saved his life. … Not because it was building a state of Israel ... but because it gave him dignity. ... Zionism was the exact opposite. You are the best. You are the future of the Jewish people.” [35:19]

• Life as a Solo “Einsel-Pionier”:
  Her father’s status as a lone Jewish worker on Dutch farms facilitated rapid integration and linguistic skills, increasing his odds of survival compared to group-bound refugees like her mother. “My father's chances of...surviving the war in Holland were higher than my mother's because my father knew Gentiles and could speak their language and could try to get them to help him.” [41:32]

• Birth of True Resistance:
  The episode emphasizes the essential advice that saved his life—refusing to board trains eastward, instead going into hiding with the help of friends, righteous Gentiles, and local networks. “And the importance of friendship also runs throughout the book.” [46:06]

6. Themes of Love, Friendship, and Human Connection

• Romantic and Communal Bonds Amid Horror:
  Reinharz and Roussi discuss how the resilience and intimacy between her parents, formed as Zionist youth and surviving separately, shaped a bond that endured and was rekindled in hiding. “They met in Munich ... and they fell in love with each other. It was love at first sight. ... They became inseparable. ... And she came and they began a whole hiding experience together.” [46:21]

• The Expansive Meaning of Love:
  Both highlight how love extends to acts of friendship and the support network among Jews and their Dutch protectors:
  “You’re right, the love isn’t only between the two of them. The love is also among friends and among...the people who help them.” [50:12, Roussi]

7. The Lasting Power—and Threat—of Education

• Negative and Positive Legacies:
  Citing her father’s observation on “German teachers [using] their authority to create a generation of Nazi criminals” ([50:39]), Reinharz and Roussi discuss how educational systems can entrench prejudice or foster understanding—a theme powerfully relevant to contemporary conversations.
  “It can be very effective for the negative. It can really teach children to hate...In these young grades, there was this education that was going on that Jews are terrible people.... There were two consequences of this. One was that the Jews felt terrible, all these things being said...It also...make[s] them hate....” [51:15]
  “So this was. And it is the case that the teachers came from the town. So they were reflecting what the town was believing.” [55:53]

• Contemporary Relevance:
  “There's a whole new subfield in Holocaust studies, which is gender in the Holocaust....now that I have read Gender in the Holocaust materials ... I think it’s a good time to write a book about my mother.” [57:49]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments (with Timestamps)

• On Objectivity and the Holocaust:
  “It is impossible for me to be objective in my writing. How can any living man...How can a person with a heart be objective about the Hitler era?” – Father’s memoir, quoted by Rora Roussi [12:10]

• On Memory and Intergenerational Dialogue:
  “A lot of the book is, I disagree with you, dad, as if we were having a conversation.” – Shulamit Reinharz [10:44]

• On Local Remembrance in Gunsenhausen:
  “We want to have our presence felt in a respectful way. Not just a plaque somewhere, but things that are like the memorial stones...and the trees.” – Shulamit Reinharz [34:30]

• On Survival and Resistance:
  “If the Germans say that all the Jews should go to Amsterdam, that is exactly why you should not go to Amsterdam. And that attitude saved his life.” – Shulamit Reinharz [41:31]

• On Love in the Midst of War:
  “They met in Munich...and they fell in love with each other. ... They became inseparable.” – Shulamit Reinharz [46:21]

• On Education’s Power:
  “German teachers had used their authority to create a generation of Nazi criminals.” – Father’s diary, quoted by Rora Roussi [50:39]
  “It can be very effective for the negative. It can really teach children to hate....” – Shulamit Reinharz [51:15]

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Important Timestamps for Segments

• [02:24] – Shulamit’s personal background and academic work
• [04:51] – Focus on her father’s story and reason for memoir
• [08:45] – Book structure and the “piano duet” of voices
• [12:10] – Discussion on objectivity and memory, quote from her father
• [17:37] – The journey back to Gunsenhausen and memory projects
• [26:57] – Advocacy to mark Jewish names on WWI memorial
• [29:34] – Stones from the synagogue and Kotel parallel
• [34:29] – Trees of life as living memorial
• [35:19] – Why write about Holland? Zionism’s transformative power
• [41:32] – Hiding, survival, and the role of Dutch helpers
• [46:21] – Love, friendship and resilience under persecution
• [50:39] – The power—and danger—of education; brainwashing and teaching hate
• [57:49] – Next project: telling her mother’s story with a gender focus

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Conclusion and Future Work

The conversation concludes with Reinharz’s intentions to next write about her mother, exploring the gendered experience of the Holocaust, Zionism, and reinvention in America and Israel. She underscores the ongoing necessity of telling stories that foster dialogue, critical thinking, and memorialization through both scholarship and living memory.

“My mother saved my father’s life.… But we have to take some of the women out of the shadows and see with the depth of their thinking and their personality is. And so I want to do that.” – Shulamit Reinharz [57:49]

She notes that Hiding in Holland was a National Jewish Book Award finalist for Holocaust memoirs [60:26].

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For those seeking an intimate, multi-generational perspective on Holocaust history—woven from resistance, loss, research, and love—listen and engage with Shulamit Reinharz’s remarkable conversation and memoir.

Transcript

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[Interviewer Rora Roussi]

Hello and welcome to the New Books Network Jewish Studies Channel. I am your host, Rora Roussi, Executive Director of Jewish Unity through Diversity Institute, where we explore the depth, breadth and future of our heritage. Today, we're really delighted to speak with Professor Shulamit Reinhardt about her book Hiding in A Resistance Memoir Poetry, published by Amsterdam publishers in 2024. Welcome Professor Reinhout, and thank you for joining us here today.

[Professor Shulamit Reinhardt]

I'm happy to be here.

[Interviewer Rora Roussi]

So it's our second time talking, but I'm still gonna ask you to give a little bit of your personal journey as I think this book is very different from the one we spoke about before the Hundred Jewish Brides. It's much more personal. So give us a little bit about who you are and how you came to write this.

[Professor Shulamit Reinhardt]

Okay? Well, my name is Shulamit Reinharts. The shulamit comes from my mother's older sister who died in Israel in Palestine in 1944 I think it was. And having a name of someone who made it to Palestine during the Shoah, but unfortunately died of illness gives me such a strong connection to all those topics. Just even when I was born. I was born in Amsterdam in 1946. The war, as everyone knows, was over in 45, and my life was pretty interesting. 45 it was over. 46, my birth. 47 we made it to the United States. 48 we moved to Israel from the United States and 49, we moved back to the United States. And I grew up a little bit in Malden, Massachusetts, but also for the most part in New Jersey, went to college at Barnard in New York, married in 1967, a few months after the Six Day War, and moved with my husband to Boston, where I got my PhD in Sociology at Brandeis. And then I've really had an academic career. Ten years at the University of Michigan, then back to Brandeis in sociology. But I was also asked to direct the women's studies program, which I did. And then I created two institutes, one for women women's studies researchers and one for people studying the intersection of gender and Judaism or Jewishness. And that was called the Hadassah Brandeis Institute. So I've been emerged in various fields within academia, and I have two daughters and two grandchildren.

[Interviewer Rora Roussi]

And all this is important for this book. Everything as we'll see it.

[Professor Shulamit Reinhardt]

Yes.

[Interviewer Rora Roussi]

We're going to evolve into it. So let's first, the book is very much about your father.

[Professor Shulamit Reinhardt]

Yes.

[Interviewer Rora Roussi]

And even though you run the Women's Institute, you chose to focus on your father. Can you tell us why?

[Professor Shulamit Reinhardt]

Well, my father was a big talker and a big joke teller and sort of the center of attention usually. So I learned a lot from him. My mother didn't do that. My mother was more reserved and she also didn't like talking about the Holocaust. My father really. I don't know if the word like is good, but he felt there was so much to learn from it that he should share with his children. And I, as the firstborn, got a lot of that immediately. My sister, born in Israel in 1949, didn't like this discussion. And my brother imitated everything my father did. So, you know, in addition to that, my father loved to write. He liked to talk and he liked to write and he liked to read. And as readers of my book, Hiding in Holland will see, the first page starts with how I found all of my father's writings which were rotting in the basement of my house in New Jersey. And when I went upstairs to him and I said, what's this? He says, oh, that's nothing. You can throw it away. But that's not true. It was everything. It was his whole life. It was all the letters, all the documents, all the diaries he kept, the journals he kept. These are all different. And the memoir he wrote. So I said to him, could I keep it? And he said, yes. I took it back to Ann Arbor, Michigan, from New Jersey, put it in three ring binders in plastic sleeves, and packed it away for 45 years, and.

[Interviewer Rora Roussi]

Then decided to open it again when.

[Professor Shulamit Reinhardt]

I retired on July 1, 2017. I said, now I'm going to write a book about my father and how he survived. But you're right in asking why I didn't write about my mother. There's two or three answers. One, I did write about her a lot in the book.

[Interviewer Rora Roussi]

Yes, she definitely is a character in the book.

[Professor Shulamit Reinhardt]

She's a character in the book. She had an influence on my father. She saved his life. So she was very present. She just wasn't much of a speaker. She gave a wonderful speech. When my parents honored the righteous Gentiles who saved them, she gave a speech, and my father expected to give the next speech, but the guy said, running the whole ceremony, said we run out of time. So that gave her a big prominent place in history because she addressed by the righteous Gentiles. A second reason, besides the fact that I think I already talked about her a lot, is that she didn't leave much writing, Right. And she didn't talk to me at length about the Holocaust. So I didn't have all that much material to work with. And the third reason is that I didn't know really what the focus would be. I knew the focus for my father was his hiding. What would the focus be for my mother? And now that I've been thinking about it quite a bit, I think the focus is Zionism. And so I have a different. Although I talked about Zionism quite a bit in the book, I have a new approach for my mother.

[Interviewer Rora Roussi]

Interesting. And resistance, as I see it, she was very strong. And so you say that this came because of the memoirs that you have. And I love the way that you say in the book that it's like a piano duet between you and your father in which he plays the melody and you the accompaniment. Tell us a little bit about the structure of the book. I love the way you said that.

[Professor Shulamit Reinhardt]

Thank you. I was first going to call it Hiding in Holland, A Memoir of the Holocaust in Four Hands, but I thought that would be confusing as a title, so. But I did, of course, Talk about it a little bit. My father had the abilities or the projected future of being a concert pianist. His piano playing was very, very important. I was like most American Jewish girls. I learned the piano a little bit. And, you know, the first piece of furniture that Jews bought when they went to the Lower east side was a piano. So piano was a very big part of Jewish immigrant life. And that was a study done by an undergraduate at the Hadassah Brandeis Institute on the. Yeah, so that was interesting. Anyhow, so my father taught me, my mother taught me, and when it came time to write the book, I really had drawers. So many different frameworks in mind, one of which was I would just reprint his journal or, no, his memoir on the right hand side of the page, and on the left hand I would give some documents or some interpretation. And it was so wieldy and such a poor idea that I dropped it. And I thought, how else can I put the two of us together rather than face to face in the book? And I said, I know, I'll comment on what he's writing. So I did. I mean, even what I just told you, hey, dad, what is all this stuff? He answers, it's nothing. You can throw it away, you know. Then I said, a lot, all of.

[Interviewer Rora Roussi]

This conversation, don't you think?

[Professor Shulamit Reinhardt]

And a lot of the book is, I disagree with you, dad, as if we were having a conversation or I never knew this. This is so important, or whatever it is. But my father did not do research on the topics that he discusses. I did the research, so I had something different to offer than he did. And that different voice, along with his voice of the memoir and the documents, created that duet.

[Interviewer Rora Roussi]

Right. And so there is this historical context that you added to it that we all see there. So it helps us to put them in context as well.

[Professor Shulamit Reinhardt]

That to me was very, very important. I didn't want to write a thing down that he said that I didn't look into.

[Interviewer Rora Roussi]

Right. And everything is verified with other sources as well. So you had to choose what to put in, because, like you said, it was unwieldy, the amount of papers you had. And there was one quote, and I like quoting people back to themselves. So as long as we're getting personal, all four of my grandparents were Holocaust survivors, not in hiding in the camps. And there was one quote that you opened the book with that I thought was poignant to me. And so I want to share it and you'll tell me how to comment on it. He said, it is possible for me to be Objective in my writing. Impossible. It is impossible for me to be objective in my writing. How can any living man. How can a person with a heart be objective about the Hitler era? About that absurd, bizarre sequence of events which, in the last analysis, can never be explained fully, but only described?

[Professor Shulamit Reinhardt]

So would you like me to comment in general on that quote?

[Interviewer Rora Roussi]

I think so. I think that deserves to be expanded upon as well.

[Professor Shulamit Reinhardt]

My. You know, when a person gets ready to run a race, let's say they'll maybe jog in place a while, you know, and then they'll run away and they'll come back and then they'll get at the blocks, right? And I think what my father was doing there was getting ready to run, getting ready to start his sharing of his memoir with me. And then I0 accidents, gave it to any relatives. He was thinking, now how am I going to write this? But instead of just having this in his head, he puts it out there. That was all. My father has never kept anything in his head. It was always out there for all of us to think about. Then he was saying, how could I write a memoir of the Holocaust? It's as if I'm saying this is a logical, rational, understandable event, and it's not in any way. And then I think I responded to him. Did I respond to him right after that quote?

[Interviewer Rora Roussi]

I didn't write it down.

[Professor Shulamit Reinhardt]

Okay. Well, I said to him, you're right. It's impossible to create a logical explanation, a fully logical explanation. You'd have to really understand the psychology of the German people, of Nazi Hitler, of the people around him, et cetera. So maybe you can't do that, but you can really talk about your memories and your experiences and let the reader think about what it all means. You don't have to explain it all to us. So then I felt comfortable with telling him, dad, I don't think you're right.

[Interviewer Rora Roussi]

Yeah. And he. Does he describe it?

[Professor Shulamit Reinhardt]

He describes it and he goes. I don't know if you noticed, but in the very first chapter, which is very short, he goes back and forth in all sorts of topics. I really see him sort of laying out the groundwork. And he does it in such a beautiful way. For instance, the next chapter is about Gunsenhausen. This is a town in Germany, which I just came back from a few days ago. Oh, yeah. For a visit. I'll tell you all about it if we have time and if you want to. And instead of just starting. I was born in Gunsenhausen on such and such a day, he says, Something like, I have to begin with Gunsenhausen. So it gives a drama. And then he says, gunsenhausen. The place of my birth, the place of my earliest memories of being harassed. He says. After he describes all these facets, he then says, and which had such an influence. Me, it'll never get out of me. So you get interested in what he's about to say about his town and you realize that it had an enormous impact on him.

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[Professor Shulamit Reinhardt]

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[Professor Shulamit Reinhardt]

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[Professor Shulamit Reinhardt]

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[Interviewer Rora Roussi]

Yeah, and I think you drew us back now. And we know that there was something in this town because you mentioned in the book, or he mentioned as well that he had to go back after the war and he had to go see it. And now you had to go back. Let's take the time now. What drew you there? What did you see there?

[Professor Shulamit Reinhardt]

Okay, well, let me just tell you about why he said he had to go back. Okay, that's all right. So he made a decision at some Point I will never go back because it harmed everybody so much. And you know the word Judenrein. So Gunsenhausen, the name of the town is Judenrein, which is really, let's just meaning there are no class there, no Jews. They were all expelled, committed suicide, or were killed. So I don't know, maybe six, seven years ago when I was thinking about writing the book, I contacted the council, the German consul in Boston, and I said, I am going to Gunsenhausen. Could you please put me in touch with the head of the Jewish community there? So he writes back to me, dear Frau doctor Professor, you know, the whole thing, Reinharts, I'm sorry to tell you that there is no Jewish community. Of course, no head of the Jewish community. There hasn't been any community of Jews since 1939. I don't think he used the word Judenhein because I think that's a Nazi term, but that's what he meant. And I was very sad to hear that and to think, well, I want to go back there to learn something about what Gudsenhausen meant to my father, but I don't have anyone to talk to there. So then he wrote me another note and he said, but I have someone you can talk to there. In other words, not a Jew, not a head of the community. And that is a woman named Emmy Hetzner. And Emmy Hetzner was a teacher at the time. She's now retired of ninth grade in the middle school. And Emmy Hetzner, unlike everybody else in Gutzenhausen, realized that no one was talking about the Holocaust there. No one was talking about their roles or their experiences in the Holocaust. And so she proposed to her principal that she teach a course on the Holocaust in Gunsenhausen. I mean, this is outrageous. It's just too mild a word. Yes, but she did it in a beautiful way. She made it a history project, not an ethics project. And the history went like this. There were 200 Jews approximately in the town, and they lived approximately in 40 houses. I'm going to offer to each student here a house for you to go look at. Photograph. Go to the archives, see who lived there. Do you know everything you can. These were ninth graders. Many of them were Moslem students because they were immigrants or refugees to Germany. There were no Jews, of course. And the Jews, the students loved this idea. They had cameras and they had video things and they poured all their information back into the classroom and into Emmy, who either with them or alone, I don't know, created a website called the Jews Juden von Gunsenhausen. The Jews of Gunsenhausen. Everything you could ever want to know is there. It's amazing. So I wrote to her after getting this note from the consul, and I said, I saw your website. It's fabulous. I want to learn something about my father. And then she says, are you the granddaughter of Carl Rothschild, the doctor? I said, yes. Are you the. You know. And on and on and on. She knew about my heritage in that town. The things that I didn't know because she had studied it. And she says, you come to Gunsenhausen right now and I will take care of you. You will be the town's guest in this hotel. And blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It was amazing. And she introduced me to her best friends and she made a coffee clutch for me. And I just saw her a week ago. Her project just expanded and expanded and expanded. And because of what she did while I was there just now, and I'll tell you why I was there. I went to the house of my grandfather for the third time and talked to the people who lived there. So I feel that I have a good knowledge of the town and its history, which was just what I wanted. But I didn't know I would get it in this wonderful way. So I had this experience at the same time. This is such a coincidence. I have a cousin in Israel who committed suicide, a young man. And he was studying his father's heritage and his mother's heritage. And he went to Gunsenhausen. I had no idea that this was happening. And he was a very spiritual person. He was too sensitive for this world. His name was Nitan El Yechieli. And he met a psychotherapist in town and that psychopath therapist. And he said, let's create a group of Jews who are living anywhere in the world and who are descendants of the Jews who live there previously. And let's match them with current non Jews in this town. And we have gotten together every. I mean by zoom, every five, six weeks. And it's gone on and on. And they have invited us to big events like the 1200th anniversary of the town where people from Kvar Dim in a. The Youth Orchestra of Kvarbor Adim came and played with the Gunsenhausen Youth Orchestra. So emotional, so wonderful. And we just had. I think it was our third trip that we came from abroad to Gunsenhausen. And then we went on an amazing journey, starting in a place called Annersee, which is not important for the moment. And then we went to Munich for two days and Then we went to Gunsenhausen for about four days, and I gave a talk there in English. I brought a friend, and she translated a major part into German. And at the very. The whole group came, of course, but there were many. There were, I don't know, maybe 100 people there. And our group was about 20 or 30. And they were very touched by everything. The crowd, the German, non Jewish crowd. And then I said, when I started talking, which was. There was a lot that happened before me, and I said, now I would like my group, which we call the German Jewish Dialogue Group, I'd like us all to stand up. So we all stood up. And I said, I'd like us all to turn around and look at the audience. And I said to the audience, these are the people from your town and from my background who are trying to create peace between Jews and Germans and to create a better world. And the audience went crazy. And I said, and you can be part of this group. You know, this is not an exclusive club, and you can help make these things happen. So I can't even tell you, or maybe I just have how emotionally powerful this is. And when I was there several times, and I always was with Emmy, we decided to make some requests of the government. And I'll just tell you one. I don't think it's in the book. They have a big memorial for the Germans from Gunsenhausen who fought in the First World War. And it's these three huge stones, enormous. And on each stone is a big cross. There's no separation of church and state in Gunsmen, right? Yeah, a big cross. And I was looking around there and I saw names of Jews. I knew these names because they were all in my father's memoir. And I said to Emmy, I don't think we should ask anyone to take away the cross, but I think we have to do something to make the Jewish presence known. Otherwise we're reinforcing the lie that the Jews of Germany did not fight in World War I on behalf of German, which was a big rallying point of Hitler against the Jews that you do.

[Interviewer Rora Roussi]

Write about in the book.

[Professor Shulamit Reinhardt]

And I do write about the stones. Right. So she went to the mayor, at my suggestion, and asked him if they could just carve Magen David next to every Jewish name. You don't have to take them away from the stone. You don't have to take the cross away. Just add that element and it's done.

[Interviewer Rora Roussi]

Wow, that's huge.

[Professor Shulamit Reinhardt]

That's huge. And there's so many other stories. Should I Tell you one more or should we move on?

[Interviewer Rora Roussi]

Yes, please, let's do one more and then we'll move to Holland.

[Professor Shulamit Reinhardt]

The there was a beautiful synagogue in Gunsenhausen and there was a picture in the book. Not a great picture, but it's a picture. And it was destroyed many times and then it was really destroyed finally, I don't know, I think in 38. And at some point the municipality of this town said, we've got to get all these stones off the road, off the area, so where should we put them? And they put them in a stone yard. And I suppose most towns have that where they keep their equipment and the huge stones that they need and slate for maybe roofs or whatever it is. So in the last couple of years, Emmy and others found out that all the stones from the synagogue were in the stone area. And she said, let's go see them. So we all went and it was very moving to see these stones. Huge blocks, very big. They would build a substantial building. And among us was an artist. There were a lot of people who joined the group of us in Glenson Housen for this trip. So she said, I want to make an artwork out of these stones. So I thought, oh, that's great. And so she said, I want to take. Make a picture, I want to do blah, blah. And then I said, I also had an idea. I'd like everyone to stand up. Well, we were all standing in here and face the stones. Just look at the stones and say, what does this remind you of? And somebody said, it reminds me of the kotel.

[Interviewer Rora Roussi]

Of the Western Wall?

[Professor Shulamit Reinhardt]

Yes, of the Western Wall. It's these big stones piled up on time. Now they are at all different angles because they were dumped there. It's different from the stones of the Western Wall. So people were just blown away by that association because that's one temple and another temple, one that was destroyed, not the wall itself in Jerusalem, but the temple. And then this one that was destroyed. And this is many 2000 years. So I said, what should we do now that we have this insight? I can't look at that bunch of stones without thinking of this. Right, right. So I said, well, one of the things that happens when people go to the Koto, the Western Wall, is they write a petek, a little note, and they fold it up tiny, and they squish it in with their strength into the wall and it is a prayer to God. And I said, not only do Jews do that, but everyone who visits the wall does that, which I'm writing an article about. That why does everybody go to the Wall from all different religions and all different countries and all different backgrounds Anyhow, I said, I'm going to write a Petek and I'm going to do it. If anybody else wants to do it, they can do it. But all I had was a big piece of paper because I had a big notebook. So I wrote on the paper, we are here to remember. And then I wrote the date. It was September 15th, I think. No, that's today. Yeah, September, whatever. It was 2025. And I gave it to the person standing next to me. And I said, I just did this one. If you feel like signing it, you can, you know, so it'd be from both of us. Well, everyone signed it. Everyone signed it. And then there was one guy there from Israel who said, I don't think you should put it in the wall. Okay? And we all said, why? Right. Said because you'll put it in the Wall. And then some workmen or whatever it is, are going to come and take. Scoop up all these huge stones and bring it to the place where the artist wants to make a memorial. And it will either fall away or a rabbi from Nuremberg, that's where the chief rabbi of this area is, will hear about this and will say, if there's a Petek in it, then it's a holy site and you can't move the stones. Now, I don't know if that's true. I don't know if that's true. Although this rabbi in Nuremberg is a pain in the neck, which you can delete if you want to. But I wanted to put up a new tombstone for my grandmother who's buried there. And he wouldn't allow it because the tombstone had been desecrated and vandalized. And so I don't know precisely where her bones are. So they're very picky. Anyhow, a woman who was a doctor in town was also in the crowd, and she came up to me because I was clearly disappointed. Yeah, said Shula, I will help you. This is a non Jewish woman, a doctor. She says, give me the Petek. I will put it in my wallet. I will watch what's going on here with these stones. And after the stones are put together in a new kind of memorial, I will put it in on behalf of all of you. That's beautiful. So this is what's going on, and this is what's. We have so many ideas. Somebody said to me, or to us a few years ago, what should we do to make our presence in history known? In this town. And everyone had different ideas. And I came up with idea that people liked. I said, well, in Israel, there's a custom of planting trees. Yes. Planting trees reminds us of the past because a seedling grows slowly. That reminds us of the present when we're planting and reminds us of the future where we think the tree will go. And it's called an ETZ chaim, which means a tree of life. And the tree of life has so many associations with it, from Ganedin to the jnf. So everybody agreed. And Emmy or somebody went to the mayor and said, we would like to plant some trees. And what was decided was there would be one tree for every family whose descendant came to Gunsenhausen for a visit, and that person could plant the tree. And it's just a few years ago, and the trees are glorious, and they're in the city center, like the commons, you know?

[Interviewer Rora Roussi]

Yeah.

[Professor Shulamit Reinhardt]

So we want to have our presence felt in a respectful way. Not just a plaque somewhere, but things that are like the memorial stones, like the stones from the synagogue, like the trees. And there will be more.

[Interviewer Rora Roussi]

Right. And exposure also helps people to remember and also hopefully builds things for the future. So I think it's so important what you're doing, but let's focus a little bit now. So your father moved from this town, and that's why the book is called Hiding in Holland, because he was in Holland during most of the war. Tell us a little bit about why it was important to write about Holland. And also the concept of there were good people there willing to hide. So in short, touch upon some topics.

[Professor Shulamit Reinhardt]

Okay. So my grandfather said, it is too dangerous for you, Max, to stay in Gunsenhausen. There's so much anti Semitism, which of course, I haven't talked about. I just talked about now, Right. And he says, I'm going to send you to Munich. Your grandmother lives there, and you'll be there and you'll be safe. Which is, of course, not true at all. It was a terrible place to be. It was the heart of Nazism. But he discovered one thing. Not entirely fresh and new to him, but relatively new. He discovered Zionism and Zionism, which he actually had discovered in Gunsenhausen. But he was so young then, 10 and 11 when he got to Munich. He was right after his bar mitzvah, a little bit older. Zionism saved his life. Not because it was building a state of Israel, I mean, a future state of Israel, but because it gave him dignity. I am not, as Hitler said, the one second. What did he Call us. He called us. The people. The great disappointment. The great betrayers. The great un Gluck. That's the word. Un gluck means misfortune. The Jews are our misfortune. Everything that is bad that's happened to us have been Jews. Well, you hear that and you try not to believe it, but, you know, it becomes hard. Zionism was the exact opposite. You are the best. You are the future of the Jewish people. You will help revive the language. You will help to revive the land. You will help to revive the Jewish people. And my father, I'm making this up, must have said, wow. And all the kids, the Jewish kids who had lived in Munich or had come to Munich, they were all involved in this redefinition of themselves. And that led him to not accept a visa to go to the United States, which came right when he was graduating from high school. And instead to go to a big farm pretty far away in a different section of Germany and learn farming skills. Not so that he could go to Israel, Palestine tomorrow, but that he could become the person that would be useful to the Jewish people at that time. So that just enhanced his self esteem even more.

[Interviewer Rora Roussi]

It's an empowering thing.

[Professor Shulamit Reinhardt]

Totally empowering. Not political. Not about going there tomorrow, you know, but becoming a new person, a person that is loved and valued and respected. So my father on Kristallnacht, which happened while he was in that camp, he was taken away with all the boys and brought to Buchenwald. Buchenwald was a concentration camp, not an extermination camp. It had a procedure that's really not so well known today, of not keeping people for a long time, although some people were kept there for a long time. What they did was get people there to terrorize them and to terrorize their families, who knew where they were. And they only needed to have four weeks to do that. So my father got out. He was not terrorized, but his family was, et cetera. And what did he do after he got out? And this is where I get to Holland. He or a group of them, because he was with his friends from the farm in Buchenwald, they wrote or contacted in some way. Berlin, where in Berlin there was the headquarters of the Zionist Movement for German Youth. And they arranged for my father and many others to go into Holland. Nobody could get into Holland at that time, but since they had some training in the farming industry, they were allowed to go into Holland and to work for practically no pay on Dutch farms. So it was seen as somewhat as a benefit to the Dutch people. And that's how he got to Holland. And he. A lot of the book talks about what it was like to work on this farm. What were the people, the farmers, what were they, how did they behave towards him, et cetera. But the great part of what he did, in contrast to what my mother did, the people could. The chalutzim, the pioneers, they could choose what they wanted to do. And he said, I want to work on a farm. My mother said she wanted to be in a group. He was what they called an einsel pioneer. A single, a solo Jewish kid on a Dutch farm. And she was in a large group of German Jews doing something else. I don't know what it was. I will find out though. And as a consequence of his being on the farm alone as a worker, he learned Dutch immediately because there was no one there to speak German to. And he met all sorts of people and with these. So he would develop relationship with Dutch non Jews. My mother did not. My mother did not learn Dutch quickly. They all spoke German with each other, all these kids, and they didn't get to know other people. So my father's chances of being surviving the war in Holland were higher than my mother's because my father knew Gentiles and could speak their language and could try to get them to help him.

[Interviewer Rora Roussi]

Which they did.

[Professor Shulamit Reinhardt]

Which they did. And in my mother's case there were not many people, but there were a couple of people who had also befriended her and with whom she could speak in pidgin Dutch anyhow. So here he is in Holland and working on this farm. He gets tired of it. He asks the people in Deventer, that's this town where. Where all the arrangements were made for these German Jewish youth, immigrants or refugees. And he went to Holland. Excuse me. He went to Amsterdam to learn how to be an auto mechanic. And the problem was that the Dutch farmers didn't teach him anything. They just used him as a step and fetch it, if you know what I mean. Yeah. So he saw all the anti Semitism going on in Amsterdam, which was violent. And he was there for the great strike. And you know, it was important to get to the city. He didn't think about it this way, but it was important because he could be at the heart of what was going on in the farmlands. You're not always that well informed. Right. And he at one point felt it was too dangerous to stay in Amsterdam because the Nazis said all Jews have to go to Amsterdam. And by this point my father had become a resister. He started as a 10 year old in Gunsenhausen. And he did it over and over and over again. And if the Germans say that all the Jews should go to Amsterdam, that is exactly why you should not go to Amsterdam. And that attitude saved his life. So he came back to the town, it's called Alamolo. And then his friend from the farm in Germany and who was also his friend in Buchenwald and who was also his friend in Holland, he could not take being on the farm either in Holland, and he decided to travel all over the country on his own somehow and find out what was going on in the country. And he discovered that Jews were being put on trains and taken to the east on the pretense that they were needed for the harvest in Germany. And Shushu was his name, and it was a nickname. And Shushu said, don't go hide. And that's why he hid. So Shushu saved his life.

[Commercial Narrator]

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[Interviewer Rora Roussi]

Where you got them?

[Commercial Narrator]

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[Interviewer Rora Roussi]

Talk soon.

[Commercial Narrator]

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[Interviewer Rora Roussi]

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[Professor Shulamit Reinhardt]

This is a real good story about Bronx and his dad Ryan. Real United Airlines customers.

[Commercial Narrator]

We were return and one of the flight attendants asked Bronx if he wanted to see the flight deck and meet Kath and Andrew.

[Professor Shulamit Reinhardt]

I got to sit in the driver's seat.

[Commercial Narrator]

I grew up in an aviation family and seeing Bronx kind of reminded me of myself when I was that age.

[Professor Shulamit Reinhardt]

That's Andrew, a real United pilot.

[Commercial Narrator]

These small interactions can shape a kid's future.

[Interviewer Rora Roussi]

It felt like I was the captain.

[Commercial Narrator]

Allowing my son to see the flight deck will stick with us forever. That's how good leads the way.

[Interviewer Rora Roussi]

And this story you expand upon quite a bit in the book. I wanna people to understand that both the history and the memoirs are that tell this story and help you understand and get into it. I want to make sure we touch upon two more themes in the book. One of them is love. And I think that's so important to put out there because we're talking about a book about the Holocaust and the theme of love goes through it between your parents at an unthinkable time.

[Professor Shulamit Reinhardt]

That's right.

[Interviewer Rora Roussi]

So I don't even know how to explain that. You say that they somehow they developed and continued this connection throughout this hiding period. Throughout this terrible period.

[Professor Shulamit Reinhardt]

Right. Well, I think you said it very well just now. They met in Munich. If you remember, I said my father moved to Munich from Gunsenhausen. Well, my mother moved to Munich from Ludwigshavn. It's a big city, actually. And they met in the Zionist group and they fell in love with each other. It was love at first sight. They were, I think he was 15 and she was 16, something like that, which I completely believe in. And they became inseparable. They became what in the Zionist movement was called the Zug. They were a couple, always together. And my father said this was my first erotic experience. Well, he was young. He was very young, but not too young. And my mother never talked about it because she was much more modest and shy. My father didn't really talk about it, but he, you know, he mentioned it and they decided. When he said he was going to go to Holland from Munich, she said, I'm going to go to Holland from Munich. She went her own way. He went some other way. I told you about the people in Berlin. That gave them a chance. And then when they got to Holland, they split up. She went to her, which he thought was the best place for her to be with this large group. And he went to his farm. And they missed each other a lot. And at one point. Well, actually, when he moved to Amsterdam, it was in order to be closer to where she was, et cetera. But they never really could get together. But at one point, when he actually was in hiding, he went into hiding because his friend Xu Xu says you go into hiding and you don't get on those trains to the East. And he believed him. The importance of friendship also runs throughout the book. And he contacted the people in Deventer, which was the head of the Zionist movement in Holland, and said, I can't take it anymore. I need to see Ilse my mother. And they arranged for it. They arranged for a Woman. Her name is Laura Dorlacher, who survived the war and moved to Palestine and lived on a kibbutz. And they said, we will. And she was considered a very brave and very effective transporter person. And they got her to come from wherever she was and take my father from Al Malo, the farmland, to Rotterdam. And then after that, friendship between my father and these two people, they're named Nick and Achschouten, righteous Gentiles who saved my father. My father said to them, would you mind having another person come here and live with us? Which was such chutzpah. Yeah. This couple had just had a baby. This baby had down syndrome. So they had their hands full. They also had someone who was hiding in their house as a Jew, which totally incriminated them. But they said yes. And she came and they began a whole hiding experience together.

[Interviewer Rora Roussi]

So. And yeah, like I said, it's really expanded in the book. But you're right, the love isn't only between the two of them. The love is also among friends and among. Also among the people who help them. I mean, that couple.

[Professor Shulamit Reinhardt]

Absolutely.

[Interviewer Rora Roussi]

So, one last theme I do want to at least touch upon is education and how that influences behavior. And again, I'm going to do a quote. You quote from the diary. I concluded that German teachers had used their authority to create a generation of Nazi criminals. And we talk about that a lot today. And you were talking about that in Germany with the teacher that insisted on reintroducing the Holocaust into the curriculum.

[Professor Shulamit Reinhardt]

I was the positive, but the negative was when he.

[Interviewer Rora Roussi]

Both sides of the same thing. Yes, definitely. I think it's important, though, to note that he called them out on the negative education. And so how did this theme play out in his life? In your life, how did this affect how you were brought up, possibly, or how he continued?

[Professor Shulamit Reinhardt]

Well, have you ever been in a conversation with somebody who feels miserable because people have the wrong ideas about Israel?

[Interviewer Rora Roussi]

Of course.

[Professor Shulamit Reinhardt]

And what you want is. So you start telling them things. There's this. Maybe you don't know about that. And then you say to yourself, is education actually ever going to be effective? And I think it can be very effective for the negative. It can really teach children to hate. I can do it in many ways by omitting the history, let's say, of refugees to this country, or telling their history in terms of very negative things. The people who are not part of this refugee group will dislike them. If you talk about the history of the Civil War, which is done in the south, people have very bad Feelings about the northerners. So my father really saw two things in the public school, in the elementary school in Gunsenhausen when he grew up. And it was very stark in the youngest grades, because the youngest grades, the children didn't even know how to argue. They just were like a sponge. That's how they are at that time. If you told a child that this is this and it really wasn't, they'd go with you what you're telling them. So in these young grades, there was this education that was going on that Jews are terrible people, that they killed Christ. And that idea was reinforced every Sunday and on Easter and on all the holidays, they killed Christ. Nobody in the class could say, no, he didn't. Who can do that? They are charging usury. The kids didn't know what usury was. They explained it and on and on and on, all sorts of things. There were two consequences of this. One was that the Jews felt terrible, all these things being said. And they're unable to. What is the word? Correct. It also that the. The Jewish people, men stayed back during World War I and didn't help the country. And that's why Germany lost the war, if you can believe that. So all sorts of lies. Lies, yes. And with no ability of anybody to refute it. In addition, this had an impact on the, as I said, on the Jews to deflate them, their own sense of self, but on the non Jewish kids, obviously to make them hate. And their enthusiasm for what the teachers were saying was parallel in the classroom, was paralleled by all sorts of public events like parades down the street with the Nazi flag. And the Jews are terrible. And the Jews were in the school, were put into a separate group for those parades. They had to be there. They had to be there. They had to sing the horrible Nazi songs about the pleasure that Germans get when they see blood spurting from the knife in a Jew. I mean really awful things. And they were spit upon by the people who lived in Runsenhausen. So the classroom spilled into the public sphere. And so this was. And it is the case that the teachers came from the town. So they were reflecting what the town was believing. There was no difference. It wasn't that the teachers were trying to correct the townspeople. And as a consequence, and one other thing which is also in the book, when Hitler came to power, he was very interested in German youth, just like the Zionists were. They were interested in Zionist youth. And they had the same motivation to be the leaders, to have the right ideology, to develop comradeship. You know that. And so they were very involved. The teachers were involved in this whole ideology of personality building for the young children and the high school kids. And finally, the teachers. Some of the teachers didn't know how to do this. Exactly. And there was a training school for all people who wanted to be teachers in Germany. And 95% of all the teachers attended. And all they learned there is how to infuse the classroom with Nazi ideology. So my father, who has always a kind of different twist on things, said he feels sorry for those teachers. They were brainwashed. And then they brainwashed the children. And they didn't have the opportunity to develop critical thinking. And that's what he was concerned about. That these people would become the leaders in Germany or the population in Germany after the war. And what could they do? They didn't have a mind that knew how to deal with eradicating this ideology and remembering it, which was exactly what happened. Right. Does that answer your question?

[Interviewer Rora Roussi]

It definitely does. But again, there is so much more in the book, and I encourage everybody to read it. This is obviously, well, two stories. I was gonna say it's one story, but it's two stories. Cause it's your father and your mother. But it's so important for us to continue to tell these stories and to continue to expand upon the themes that are part of it to spark thought and discussion. And as you just said, critical thinking is a big part of this as well. So thank you for sharing your father and your mother and their history with us. And of course, at the New Books Network, we always have to hear, what are you working on next?

[Professor Shulamit Reinhardt]

Okay, I have to ask. Of course. And one is always working. The next thing, I am going to write a book about my mother. And what's interesting about it is that there's a whole new subfield in Holocaust studies, which is gender in the Holocaust. I didn't write the book on my father in the terms of gender in the Holocaust. I really focused more on my interaction with his memoir and all the other paper in between to understand him. But now that I have read Gender in the Holocaust materials and I've written a little bit about it, I think it's a good time to write a book about my mother. And also there's an issue of fairness. My mother saved my father's life. My mother was a loving presence for him. He was frequently a nervous wreck because he's just so full of energy and questions. But we have to take some of the women out of the shadows and see with the depth of their thinking and their personality is. And so I want to do that. I'm also going to do it a little differently in that I'm going to spend time on her life in Ludwigshavn where she was born, and then, you know, the route that my father took, except for Buchenwald and then of course in Holland and what she did there. But then I want to talk about what her life is like in the United States as a two time refugee. And so I don't want it to be like just the mirror image of my father. I want it to be her own story. And her own story was also a lot in Israel. Very much so. She was more of a Zionist than my father was. And in the United States, where he found himself and she eventually found herself. Thank you.

[Interviewer Rora Roussi]

I'm very excited to read that and I'm sure our audience is as well, so thank you. And we have been speaking with Professor Shulamit Reinhardt about her book Hiding in A Resistance Memoir, published by Amsterdam publishers in 2024. It has really been a true pleasure. There's so much more to talk about. We'll have to continue.

[Professor Shulamit Reinhardt]

I would just like to make one plug. I got the. I was a finalist, the finalist from the National Jewish Book Award Council for the book in the category of Holocaust memoirs, which is a very crowded category. Yes. So I feel good that the book is resonating with others.

[Interviewer Rora Roussi]

Thank you. I apologize that I didn't research that enough.

[Professor Shulamit Reinhardt]

You don't have to apologize. Okay. Take good care.

[Interviewer Rora Roussi]

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