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

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.

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]

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]

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

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].

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.