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- [00:00]
Sponsor Representative
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- [02:21]
Meg Bowles
From PRX this is the Moth Radio Hour. Meg I'm Meg Bowles and in this hour we'll hear three stories told live on stage in Northampton, Massachusetts, New York City and Flint, Michigan. Our first storyteller, Frank Almond, is the Concert Master of the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra. Frank is a professional violinist and has performed as a soloist in some of the world's most important music venues, including the Alice Tully hall at Lincoln center, where he told this story. The only difference this time he took the stage was without his violin. Here's Frank Almond live at the mock.
- [02:59]
Frank Almond
In 2008 I received an email. And the subject line was, a violin. And the sender went on to explain that they had in their possession a stradivarius violin from 1715, and it was part of an estate situation, and they were looking for some guidance. I'm a professional violinist and have had the good fortune to play any number of Stradivaria instruments for decades, all over the world, even in here a few times, as I recall. And the thing about Stradivarius, the mystique is not that they're 300 years old or that they're worth so much money. It's that there are these amazing functional antiquities, and they're powerful, and they're sonically nuanced, and they're perfectly crafted and engineered, and they have these amazing pedigrees and histories behind them. And this wasn't the first time I had received an email like this with someone that found their Stradivari. And it's always very disappointing to have to write them back and say, no, you're Stradivari violin is not from 1982, because he died in 1737. And this email was really different. It was full of all this information and detail that completely drew me in. And it even had a reference to a violin that I had heard about before called the Lipinski Stradivarius, named after a famous violinist in the 19th century that owned it. And this violin was from 1750 and had kind of disappeared for about 20 years. And I thought, I have to check this out. This is amazing. And I wrote them right back. And it turned out it was the owners writing me. And they were in the city where I was, Milwaukee, Wisconsin. And they wanted to meet in a bank vault where they were storing the violin. And so I'm driving down to this bank vault, thinking, this bank vault is, like, three miles from my house. And I'm thinking, there's, like, maybe 250 of these things left in the world, more or less. And is it possible that one of these just dropped out of the sky into Milwaukee? It seemed very unlikely. And we get down to the bank vaults, and somebody brings in a violin case. And I open it up really slowly, and it's the Lipinski Stradivarius. And I was absolutely dumbfounded. Like I stumbled on some lost Rembrandt or something. And over the next couple months, this dialogue starts between the owners and myself. And this is what happens if you keep it. This is what happens if you sell it. This is what happens if you leave it under your bed. And we struck up a kind of connection, especially between myself and one of the owners. And one day I get a phone call, and she says, what if you play it? What if you look after it? You've had these things before, and we could come and hear it and see it if we're around, and it'd be great for the city. And, you know, what do you think about that idea? And I said, I think that's an excellent idea. That's a really good strategy going forward, and we should definitely make that happen. And a couple of days later, I'm driving home with the Lipinski Stradivarius strapped into the backseat of my car with its little seatbelt. And I get home and I take it up to my practice studio and I open it up and start playing it. And there's that sound and that power and nuance. And I set it down and I started thinking about it, and it's a little intimidating. It's not just the Lipinski thing. Like, nobody knows who Carol Lipinski is now, right? But in his day, in the 19th century, he was a hugely important cultural figure, figure and virtuoso violinist who was often compared to Niccolo Paganini, who was sort of the Eddie Van Halen of the violin. And I knew that on this actual violin, on at least two occasions, Lipinski and Paganini had done these giant spectacles where they would play one right after the other, and then the whole audience would vote on who was the better violinist. Like this 19th century violin smackdown. But it wasn't just that. Lipinski knew Mendelssohn, and he worked closely with Robert Schumann and all these other people that sort of drifted in and out of my life as a classical musician. And here it was in front of me, and I was starting to spend hours and hours with it. And it's this kind of odd relationship starts almost like a dating period where I'm putting my best artistic self forward with the hope that the violin has some kind of adaptive quality back. And my playing really did change a lot. And the violin changed a lot. And I realized really quickly that this object was capable of maximizing my artistic abilities to a degree I would have never possibly imagined. And at the same time could brutally illuminate all of my weaknesses as a violinist. And I started to play it more and more publicly. We settled into this sort of odd marriage, and people knew about the instrument and would come and hear it. And it was almost a matter of civic pride. For all the right reasons, I thought. In January of 2014, I was finishing a concert on a series I run in Milwaukee. And the last piece on the program was this incredible piece of chamber music called the Quartet for the End of Time. And it was written by a POW in France in World War II. And it's about an hour long. It's unbelievably intense, not just to listen to, but also to play. And we sort of tumbled out of the stage door. And I remember I had been really happy to get a parking space close to the stage door because it was cold. It was really cold, like 10 below zero. And I could get there very quickly to put the violin in its seatbelt. And as I'm walking to the car, directly in the space next to my car was a van. And it was backed in and it was running. And this is a weird van. This is not a quality vehicle. You know, this is like Scooby Doo level van. And I'm walking over, and this guy gets out of the van, and he walks around the front, and he's got this big fur coat thing on and a big fur hat. And he's getting closer and closer, and he's between where I need to be. And at the very last second, he opens up his jacket, and he's really close. And I see these little flashing lights. And I'm thinking, why is that guy taking my picture? And then I felt this unbelievable pain and paralysis. And I was on the ground, and then I wasn't on the ground because I was up and I was running in circles, and I was screaming, and I mean, I was really screaming. And I was screaming because as soon as I got up, I saw the Scooby Doo van drive around the corner. And I knew the violin was gone. And it was like somebody had ripped off one of my arms. And then I looked down, and there's these little fishhook things stuck in my body, like one in my chest area and one in my wrist. And I realized I'd been shot with a Taser. And So I called 911, and yes, it's a multimillion dollar instrument that was just stolen. And they shot me with a Taser. And could you please send a car quickly? And I waited and waited. And finally this lonely little squad car comes into the parking lot. And these two incredibly earnest beat cops start their initial interview with me in the backseat of the car. And lots of questions back and forth. And, you know, it's a violin, and it's worth how much? And how do you spell Stradivary? And finally, I'm getting a little agitated here. And I said, guys, you know, there's kind of a time factor. So maybe you could get on the radio and maybe try to find the van that's driving around with the violin inside of it. And they sort of looked at me and asked more questions, and everything just kept going like this. And I'm really going crazy. And I finally said, look, I know this sounds insane, but is there any way you could get in touch with the Chief of Police of the City of Milwaukee? Because he's a huge symphony fan. He goes all the time, and I've met him, and he knows the whole violin thing, and he'll get it right away. And they looked at me like, yeah, we'll get right on that. And another car came, and there were more questions back and forth. And I'm sitting there and somebody finally hands me a cell phone, and it's the Chief of Police, Ed Flynn. And I swear, within, like, one minute, there's this explosion of activity on the scene and police cars and forensics guys and lights and an ambulance and homicide detectives, like, they threw. They threw everything at this case instantly. And there was a part of me that. That's great, but I just. I couldn't get rid of this pit in my stomach. Like, it's gone, and I don't know what to think, and I'm tired, and I just wanted to get home. And I did get home early the next morning and made a phone call to the owners that I hoped I'd never have to make. And then this whole other level of crazy starts at my house over the next couple of days with media people on my lawn, and Good Morning America is calling my cell phone, and I did a polygraph test, and I'm doing hours long interviews with these homicide detectives, and everybody's into it and they're going to solve it. And all I could think of was, the violin is just gone. And I had this pit in my stomach and I had to get my life back. So a couple days go by, and I've got these concerts coming up in Florida, which is warmer, and I got a violin and decided I was going to go play these concerts. And so I fly down to Florida, and at the airport, a TSA guy pulls me aside and says, hey, you know, would you mind opening up your violin case? Because, you know, this guy got his violin stolen a couple of days ago, and he had a flyer with the Lipinski Stradivarius on it like it was somebody's lost cat or something. And I still had this pit in my stomach and. And I went and played the concerts. And I wound up in a strip mall bar in Florida. And it's bad drinks and bad karaoke. And I'm sitting there, and my phone's buzzing and buzzing, and it's all these unknown numbers. And I finally pick it up, and it's the chief of police. And he said, we found your violin, and it's okay. And it turns out that when you fire a Taser, all this stuff comes out. This little Taser chaff and these little bits of paper or whatever have all this identifying information on it for that particular weapon. And my personal Taser had been purchased a year earlier by a man named Universal Knowledge, his legal name. And he had bought it in his own name with his own credit card. And he had it shipped to his business, which was a barber shop. And he bought it with his friend as they decided how to pull off their masterful art heist of stealing a Stradivarius violin. And the violin had been found in a suitcase wrapped in a baby blanket. And apparently it was in pretty good shape. Also in the suitcase was the driver's license of the person that stole it. Next morning, I flew back to Milwaukee, and I drove right from the airport to where the owners were, and it was just the three of us. And there was some hugs and a few pictures and some tears. And I put the violin back in my backseat and put its little seatbelt on, and I drove home, and I took it up to my practice studio, and we sort of stared at each other for a little while. And my thinking had really shifted. And I realized that this thing's 300 years old, and this crazy saga is now part of its history, and it's going to be around for a long time. And I'm like this little blip. And the reality is I'm just passing through its life and not the other way around. Thank you.
- [17:40]
Meg Bowles
That was Frank Almond. The Lempinski violin has had a rather interesting life. It was handcrafted in 1715 by Antonio Stradivari in Cremona, Italy, during what is referred to as Stradivari's golden period. The instrument was first owned by Giuseppe Tartini, who opted out of a life as a priest to become a violinist. His most famous work is the Devil's Trill Sonata, which is the music you hear Frank playing now. Frank said the first couple of times he played the piece, it felt a bit creepy knowing that Tartini played the same notes on that same instrument hundreds of years before. A student of Tartini inherited the instrument. And in Turn gifted it to Carol Lipinski, who famously played the violin for countless audiences and alongside other musicians such as Schumann, Mendelssohn and Paganini. After Lempinski's death in 1861, the violin had various owners, including several generations of the Ronchgen family of Leipzig, Germany. In the 1940s until the early 60s, the violin was in Cuba until its owner fled Havana in 1961 with his two daughters and the violin to Florida, where he sold the instrument in order to start his new life. From there it traveled the world with violinist Evie Levack, and after her death in 1990, her husband wasn't able to part with his wife's beloved violin, so it sat silent until his death when the family put it in a bank Vault in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where it would stay for nine months, 100 yards from the concert hall where Frank Almond was concertmaster. And as they say, the rest is history. Coming up, the story of an impossible rescue when the Moth Radio Hour continues.
- [19:48]
Production Team
The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts.
- [19:53]
Sponsor Representative
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- [21:53]
Production Team
By PRX.
- [21:57]
Meg Bowles
From PRX this is the Moth Radio Hour. I'm Meg Bowles. Our next storyteller, Savvad Johnson, joined the Detroit Fire Department Training academy when he was 23 years old. He says he immediately felt a sense of purpose and pride in serving the city of Detroit and its citizens. He shared his story at an evening we produced at the Capitol Theater in Flint, Michigan, in partnership with Michigan Public Radio. The theme of the night was Bound and Determined. Here's Savad Johnson live at the Moth.
- [22:30]
Savad Johnson
I've been a Detroit firefighter for 24 years now and my brother was a firefighter for 11 years and we are both second generation because our father served for 20. That is actually a very proud thing for me to say. I've met a lot of great men and women on the job and through some of the things we've been through and shared. We've grown close like a family. And I might be biased in saying that I believe Detroit firefighters are some of the best in the world at what we do, but truthfully, we've had a lot of practice. In the mid-80s and 90s, Detroit was ablaze with arson fires. One year we exceeded 800 fires in the three days and nights before Halloween. This became known as Devil's Night, and I started my career at the tail end of that era. And I can recall many times watching the sun come up after fighting fires throughout the evening. And I gotta tell you, after a night like that, you were sure to find a couple of guys burning rubber out of the station trying to get home while a couple of guys might have still been asleep in the bed totally exhausted. All in all, most of my times have been good, a few have been bad, and I've had some wild situations as well. Like about 10 years ago, I was working at the station and it was early in the evening. A few of us were helping to cook out in the kitchen and a couple of guys were watching something on TV when the alert goes off. It was a box alarm, which means there's a dwelling on fire now that normally will send five fire trucks and one chief to respond. And at my station we had two fire trucks and one chief. So we all stopped what we were doing and we ran to our rigs. And as I hopped into the rescue squad. I heard a radio message that there's possibly a person trapped inside. Now that always takes things up a level. So we sped out of the station as fast as we could, trying to be the first ones to get to the scene. The location of this house fire was pretty close to my engine house, and before long the boss turned and said he could see smoke in the air. An interesting thing happened after that, though. It got really, really quiet in the rig. I mean, you could hear the sirens and the horns blaring. The traffic sped by us and lights flashing and people dodging us to get out the way. But inside no one was talking. And as we turned onto the block, the boss turned and said, we got one. Then he grabbed the radio and responded. Squad 1 to Central. We are on the scene. We have smoke showing in an occupied dwelling. The first engine will be stretching, which is bringing the fire hose. As we pulled up and parked across the street from a two story building with lots of black flames and smoke coming out the back, I hopped out with another firefighter to find a man on the front lawn saying that he had made it out the back door, but his mother was still inside. My heart paused, but I sped up the driveway with the other firefighter to the back to see what we had. On the first floor there was a large room with heavy flames blowing out of every window. And just to the left of it was the back door, wide open with thick smoke puffing out of it. Now, I knew that's where we were going to go in, so I started to put my air mask on. When the boss got to the back, he notified us that the engine was on the scene, which means we'll be having water soon. But I know that every second counts and we got to get in there to find this woman. So when the other firefighter is ready, we both tank up, give the boss a thumbs up, and we shoot right in that door. Through the smoke, I couldn't see much in there, so I'm fiddling around blindly and I'm bumping into some things, But I'm making my way as best as I can. A few moments in, I hear a sound, sort of like glass breaking. All of a sudden, a rush of fire comes into the room, Lights up over our head and banks down the walls. I mean, everything is on fire. It got so hot so fast that it forced me down to my knees. I turned around, thinking I could go back out the same way we came in, but that exit was blocked by fire as well. I didn't Even see where the other firefighter was that came in behind me. At this point, I knew I was in a bad situation, and I probably had to go through the rest of this house to get out. It got so hot as I sat there. I'm trying to move around and make my way through, and I'm bumping into things, and then my tank gets caught on something. I move back, I move forward, side to side, but I just can't break free. I can't even get my traction, honestly. I started to get nervous. At this point, the flames are going around me and my breathing is getting heavy. My tank is clanging on something, but I can hear voices quite clearly coming from outside saying, he's still in there. He didn't come out yet where survive. And at this point, my nervousness turned into fear because I knew firefighters die in situations like this. They get injured in situations like this, and I didn't want that to be my fate. I thought about a buddy of mine who lost part of his leg when a wall collapsed on him and crushed it. I pictured a video of a fellow firefighter who had to literally chop through the roof of a building because his tank ran out of air and he couldn't find another way to get out. I thought about a brother we had to bury because part of a building collapsed on him and buried him alive on the scene. And I didn't want to die in that fire. Not this way, not today. Then I had another thought pop into my head. I thought about my daughter, Kendall. She was 5 at the time. I pictured her smiling at me with her fat cheeks. I could hear her laughing when I tickled her. I pictured her running to hug me so tightly every time I came home from work. She expected me to come home from work tomorrow, and I expect to go home to work. So I decided to get up. And I lunged forward. I lunged again, trying to get some type of traction. And something broke free. I started crawling through this house, feverishly knocking over things, climbing over stuff, pushing any and everything out of the way, hell bent on getting out of this house fire. I'm looking through the smoke as I'm making my way, and I see something that looks like what I hope is daylight flashlight. And as I'm getting through it, I hear voices, first muffled, but then getting louder. And a cool sensation starts to hit my forehead at the edge of my mask. Is this water? Water? It is water. It was water from the fire hose, from the crew making it into the front door. I had made it to the front door. Where they were. And I was so, so relieved. I pushed past them and out to the front porch and snatched my mask off to get my air and get my bearings. And while I was there, calming myself down, I noticed a guy on the porch. And I asked the firefighter, did anyone find the woman yet? He responded, no. The guys in the front door had knocked the fire down just enough that it allowed us to get back in. So I picked two guys and we ran back in the front door to find these stairs. And we found the stairs. As I headed up each stair quickly but deliberately, I had my hands on the walls, feeling the higher I got on the staircase, the hotter it felt. And by the time we made it to the top of the stairs, this heat was so extreme, the three of us split up quickly to search all the rooms faster. In the first room I stepped into, I patted things down and felt a table or a chair or something. It seemed to be just furniture, so I backed out. When I entered the second room, I bumped into something about knee high. I reached down and felt it. It was sort of spongy, and I thought this might be a bed. So I started to pat it down with two hands. And as I'm going up, I feel something. It's a foot, and then another foot. I quickly pat further up, and I feel an arm, a hand, shoulders, a head. This is her. I found her. I knew I had found her, so I scooped under her armpits really quick, pulled her off of the bed and out into the hallway, yelling, I got one. I got one. Someone came and scooped up her legs, and we carried her down the stairs as quickly as we could. We opted not to take her out the front door because the sun was still out front and probably some neighbors. So we took her out the back door and waited. Someone called the EMS crew on the scene, and they brought a stretcher to the back. And as we laid her on it, this was my opportunity to take a look at her. She was covered in soot from head to toe. Her gown was dark from the smoke. Her hair was thin, her arms, her legs were thin. She was just a small, elderly woman, but she was out, and I got her out. I was relieved. We all were. And as they sped off working on her, put her in the ambulance and took off from the scene, I relaxed for just a moment, but that was fleeting as well because we still had a fire to put out. So me and the rest of the guys finished, knocked this fire out in about 45 minutes or so, and then we rolled back to the station. On my way back to the station in the squad, I asked the guys with me what happened. What did you all see? It was apparent that I had gotten in a bit further than the other guys. And when that window broke, it caused the flashover that filled that room with fire and pushed the other two guys out the back. None of it really mattered because I was okay. And in true firefighter humor, one of my buddies says, I'm glad you made it out, Savad, because if you didn't, I was going to eat your portion of lamb chops at dinner tonight. That was his way of saying, I love you. And I looked at him, I said, I love you too, buddy. A few hours later, we're back at the station. We're cleaned up and sitting around, and that same EMS crew showed up. They told us that that woman, she didn't make it. She had taken in too much smoke. That's the part of the job that sucks to me the most. I mean, I know we can't save everybody, but we try. It's never easy, and it never feels right to lose a human life when you've been called to rescue them, but it comes with the job. Things like that and other things that I've learned from those that came before me, I try to pass on to the younger firefighters on the job. See, I'm a sergeant now, and that's the family thing that we do. And I don't know how much longer I'll be a Detroit firefighter, but I'll tell you all what I tell them. When I retire, I only want to see fire on my stove, my outdoor grill, or the end of my cigar.
- [36:53]
Meg Bowles
That was Sergeant Subad Johnson. The Detroit Fire Department responds to approximately 103 emergency calls annually. Sergeant Johnson says that these days, fires are less frequent, and now 70% of the calls received are medical emergencies. All Detroit firefighters are trained medical first responders and are often called upon to handle patient care until an available emergency medical services unit can arrive. In 2019, Sergeant Johnson celebrates his 25th anniversary with the Detroit fire department. He says he can feel this chapter starting to close, and he's beginning to contemplate what the next might hold. He offered a couple of fire safety tips. He said, you should look around your house and find those things that wouldn't or are not likely to happen and turn them into can't happens, like unplugging the iron, even if it has an automatic off switch or cleaning out the dryer lint trap before every use. You can see pictures of Sergeant Johnson. And find out more about all the storytellers in this hour by visiting our website, themoth.org coming up, a mother risks it all to save the life of her child, when the Moth Radio Hour continues.
- [38:19]
Production Team
The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, and presented by the Public Radio Exchange. PRX.org.
- [38:31]
Meg Bowles
This is the Moth Radio Hour from PRX. I'm Meg Bowles, and our last story comes from Henny Lewin. Henny was born in Lithuania in 1940 and was a year and a half old when the Nazis invaded her hometown of Kaunas. She shared her story at the Academy of Music Theater in Northampton, Massachusetts. Here's Henny Lewin live at the mosque.
- [38:55]
Henny Lewin
The Germans invaded Kaunas, the second largest city in Lithuania, on June 22, 1941. I was a year and a half old at the time. My cousin Shoshana was a mere four days old. 40,000 of us were taken into the ghetto that the Nazis set up on the other side of the river in a slum area fit for about 6,000 people. And they crammed us into these dilapidated houses. Three days after the ghetto was sealed, they asked for for about 500 volunteers, men who could translate, write letters in German. So immediately they got 525 volunteers. One of these volunteers was my cousin Shoshana's father. The Nazis took this group of men and shot them at the seventh fort right outside the ghetto. She was two months old when she lost her dad. Only two months later, they had what they called an action. A roundup of the inhabitants of the ghetto. They selected who shall live and who shall die, who goes to the right and who goes to the left. Among the people selected were my grandparents, my uncles, my aunts, little cousins, and all kinds of relatives and friends. Soon we thought that our turn will be coming as well. My parents decided that maybe children should be hidden. Because they heard that in another ghetto they had an accion for children. And they were sure that ours would be the next ghetto to be hit that way. What my dad did is he built a fake wall under a staircase between our floor. We lived on the first floor and the floor above ours. He put up a fake wall with some shelves. And behind this wall Shoshana and I played. This hiding place was referred to as the malina, which is the Slavic word for raspberry. And that was the code word in the ghetto for a hiding place, place. I loved playing with Shoshana and I called her Lalque, which means doll, because she was so cute. She had These lovely black curls that I kept twisting and combing and playing with. And we amused ourselves by playing with old newspapers. We made things out of them and took them apart. And that's how we spent our time. In order to smuggle children out of the ghetto, you had to come up with some ingenious plan. Well, at that point, my mother heard of a Catholic priest, the dean of a school for priests. His name was Father Pauk Stis. And he was willing to. To find Christian homes for any Jewish children that could be smuggled out of the ghetto. He also had a very clever student who was able to make fake birth certificates with names of Christians for these Jewish children. So my mother was able to get a job with a women's brigade on a truck that would leave daily from the ghetto to the Aryan side across the river. The job of these women was to go to a warehouse that the Nazis set up in the downtown of Kaunas. And the women's job was to sort the clothing and all the belongings. My mother decided that was one way that she could smuggle me out. But she didn't want to take me to Father Pauk's D, because she was afraid then she would never see me again. My father had a very good friend, Jonas Tankiewicz, with whom he had worked before the war and whom he gave his wall paint business to. Because Jews were not allowed to own businesses when they went into the ghetto. Jonas Stankiewicz had two little girls. One was a year older than I, one was a year younger. And the Stankiewicz were willing to take me as their middle child. So one day, my father switched jobs with another man who was supposed to drive the truck out of the ghetto. My mother sedated me, put me into a large suitcase, and in order to leave the ghetto, she had to bribe the Lithuanian guard. She gave him her gold watch and her favorite red leather boots. He then wouldn't poke with his bayonet in the bundles, would just distract. The truck would leave. The gate on the other side was waiting Jonas Stankiewicz, my father's friend. And he walked away with a suitcase. I had been told by my mother that the whole thing would be pretending. It would just be temporary. I had to pretend that I was Stankiewicz's daughter. I would have two sisters. I would call them Mama and Papa. But as soon as the war would be over, my parents would come and take me back. But I must promise that I would keep this a secret. I wouldn't tell anybody. I did promise. She also promised to visit me whenever she could the first time she visited, I was asleep and she kissed me. I thought I dreamt it. Another time she visited was during a Christmas party. Santa Claus came, brought me my beautiful little stuffed bulldog that I had left behind in the ghetto. But when I looked down, Santa was wearing my mother's shoes. And I almost yelled out, but Mrs. Stankiewicz quickly put her hand over my mouth. I had a very nice stay with the Stankiewicz. They treated me as well as they did their own daughters. I ate what they ate. I went to church with them on Sunday, Sundays and holidays. I crossed myself, I knelt, and just as I was going to sleep, I made a prayer. I said a prayer for both sets of parents and for my little cousin Shoshana, whom I missed. Shoshana had to be taken to Father Pauxtis. I remember one time a ride, dressed in my Sunday best in an open horse drawn carriage. Mrs. Stankiewicz told me that we will be riding past the barbed wire of the ghetto and that my father would see me. I wouldn't see him. And I can still see myself waving. When the war was over, my parents, who miraculously survived, were able to find me and retrieve me. And they decided they didn't want to stay under the Soviets. Maybe they will not be much better. And we need to get out of Lithuania. In order to leave Lithuania, you have to go somewhere where the Allies had set up some kind of refugee camp. They called it displaced persons camps. There were camps like that in Germany and in Austria. My parents decided we would go to the American held zone in Germany. But in order to get there, you have to go through Poland. Well, they decided they're not going to leave Shoshana in Lithuania. Her father had been killed. Her mother was sent off to a concentration camp. They're going to find her, which they did, and we're going to leave together. My father bought a fake passport. Well, the passport belonged to a Polish soldier who had died. Died. And so my father glued a picture of us as a family of four. And now Shoshana and I were sisters. On the train in Poland, many soldiers and dogs came on board. It took several days. Shoshana and I and my mother were supposed to be completely mute because the only one who spoke Polish was my father. Well, eventually we did get through Poland and got through Germany and ended up in a DP camp, displaced person camp near Frankfurt. First thing they did is they took all the children that had arrived at the DP camp, including, including Shoshana and myself, into a Kinderheim. And in this house they Tried to fatten us up by giving us all kinds of rich, high calorie foods. The one food I remember clearly was hot milk. Within a few minutes, this thin skin would form on top of this milk. It looked really disgusting. And even the piece of chocolate that they gave us didn't make it taste any better. And I hate milk to this day. Well, we did start school in that DP camp. I in first grade and Shoshana in kindergarten. And we lived with my parents as sisters. And one day there was a knock on the door. Shoshana's mother appeared, was a new husband. And she told Shoshana she was the mother. And Shoshana said, no, you're not. I don't know you. And I said, shoshana, yes, that's your mother. I remember her because I'm older. And she had to go with them. And we both cried. Well, our paths have led in different directions. Shoshana lives in Israel now, and I live in Amherst. But we talk on the phone, we see each other for all those wonderful celebrations for our children and grandchildren. And when we see each other, we cry, we laugh, we hug each other, and we jump up and down like little girls. I know that because of the Holocaust, family configurations have changed. But Shoshana and I will remain sisters forever. Thank you.
- [51:50]
Meg Bowles
That was Henny Lewin. There's a saying in Judaism that if you save one life, you save the world. And Henny's parents, Gita and Yona Wiskardisky, not only saved Henny and Shoshana, they saved the lives of countless children by smuggling them out of the ghetto and into Christian homes where they could be hidden and protected. After her parents returned for both Heni and Shoshanna, they made a trip back to the ghetto and found the houses had all been destroyed and burned by the Nazis. Henny has a vivid memory of her parents digging around the rubble, seeing a twisted pile of metal that was once her baby bed. And she remembers watching her father, Yonah, dig up a large tin can he had buried under the building while they were confined in the ghetto. In the can were her parents wedding rings, some family photos, and a pair of silver candlesticks that Henny still has. Henny and her family then made the journey to the refugee camp where they spent the next four years. At the time, the US Government limited entry of refugees from Eastern Europe because many in Congress believed they would come and take away American jobs. Henney's family eventually immigrated to Israel and later to Montreal. Heney says the people she's most angry with are the majority of bystanders who let the evil happen. The people who said, it has nothing to do with me, I don't want to get involved. The people who simply look the other way, they're the ones who could have stopped it. Henny spent her career as a Jewish educator. These days, she speaks regularly to school children and adult groups about her experiences surviving the Holocaust. She wants people to understand that preventing the evil from happening again has everything to do with them, and that they should choose to stand up to even the seemingly small injustices they see in the world every day. If you save one life, you save the world. That's it for this hour. We hope you'll join us again next time for the Moth Radio Hour.
- [54:04]
Production Team
Your host this hour was Meg Bowles. Meg also directed the stories in the show. The rest of the Mall's directorial staff includes Katherine Burns, Sarah Haberman, Sarah Austin, Janess, and Jennifer Hickson. Production support from Emily Couch. Moth Stories are True is remembered and affirmed by the Storytellers. Our theme music is by the Drift. Other music in this hour from Frank Amond, Rafiq Bhatia and Katerina Lichtenberg and Mike Marshall. You can find links to all the music we use at our website. The Moth Radio Hour is produced by me, Jay Allison with Vicki Merrick at Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. This hour was produced with funds from the National Endowment for the Arts. The Moth Radio Hour is presented by prx. For more about our podcast, for information on pitching us your own story and everything else, go to our website, themoth.org.