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Alison: Tomorrow is Holocaust Remembrance Day, and we are going to speak with an author who discovered her family's story of loss, and trauma through letters left behind. We'll speak with Karen Baum Gordon about her book, The Last Letter.

Speaker 2: Support for WNYC comes from New York Blood Center. The demand for blood and platelets is constant, and the need for donors is critical. This season, a donor can give a gift that doesn't require a bow. Appointments are available today at nybc.org, the Vital Projects Fund, which also provides support to the Museum of Modern Art.

Presenting a new exhibition about the craft and collaboration behind the making of the stop-motion animated film Guillermo Mel Del Toro's Pinocchio. More at moma.org. BAM, presenting the first major New York revival of Lorraine Hansberry's final drama, The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window, starring Oscar Isaac, and Rachel Brosnahan, and directed by Anne Kauffman begins February 4th. Tickets at bam.org.

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Melissa: Three weeks into the new year, America has already suffered 39 mass shootings. Over three decades, more than one million American lives have been lost to firearms. We just keep asking, is there anything anymore that can stop this violence? I'm Melissa Harris-Perry, and that's next time on The Takeaway weekday afternoons at 3:00 on 93.9 FM.

Speaker 4: This is WNYC 93.9 FM and AM 820. NPR News, and the New York conversation.

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Alison: This is All Of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. Listeners, we want you to know our next conversation includes a discussion of suicide. If you feel at any time you need help now, or in the future, the National Suicide Crisis and Lifeline number is 988. Tomorrow, January 27th is International Holocaust Remembrance Day. The anniversary of the Liberation of Auschwitz in 1945. Established by the United Nations, it's a day to remember the six million Jews who were killed and to reflect on what led to the vial semitism that engulfed Europe.

Karen Baum Gordon's family experienced the terror of the Holocaust as it was happening, and decades later when her father Rudy at age 86 attempted to take his own life. The trauma of his parents' experience in Germany, and his own as a German American soldier who was part of the troop that liberated another concentration camp Buchenwald haunted him. Karen had so many questions about her father's decision that day in the family garage. She looked for answers. She found some in a series of letters between her father, and her grandparents. They are now part of a book called The Last Letter: A Father's Struggle, a Daughter's Quest, and the Long Shadow of the Holocaust. Karen Baum Gordon joins me now. Karen, thanks for being with us.

Karen: Thank you for having me.

Alison: This book is both a history book and also a very personal memoir. When did you begin writing the book?

Karen: I began writing the book 11 years ago, shortly after my father passed away 2009.

Alison: What made you sit down and start writing?

Karen: Actually, what's interesting, Alison, is that I didn't set out to write a book. I set out to solve a mystery. I couldn't imagine what led my father to attempt to take his own life, and to write the words, "I am a tortured soul." I set out to understand that, and I kept a journal. I had these 88 letters from his parents that were written to him. They were still back in Germany. He was here. I had them all professionally translated, and I started my own figuring it out and solving the puzzle. I wrote a number of topical essays.

Lo and behold one day, I gave a talk at our synagogue on, it was a spiritual journey. In that talk, I wrote it as a letter to my grandparents who had perished. Shortly thereafter ran into a neighbor who said to me, gee. I was telling him about it and he said, "I'd really love to read that talk." I dropped it in his mail slot. The next time I ran into him, he said, "You have a book inside of you." He was a longtime editor at McGraw Hill. It turned into a back-and-forth over a number of years. I would write these essays, drop them in his mail slot. He would drop them back in mine. That's really the beginning of it.

Alison: When did you first become aware of these 88 letters?

Karen: I think I saw them once when I was growing up. Then my father was visiting in New York, and he came down to breakfast one day and had under his arm this treasure trove of letters. It was in a green disintegrating folder. I said, "What do you have there"? He said, "Oh, I've got these letters. I'm going to the Leo Baeck Institute today to drop them off." I said, "Wait, what are they"?

As it turned out, I said, "You know what? Let's give them a copy. These were written in your parents' hands. They were on onion skin paper." He said, "What would you do with them"? I said, "I don't know, but I know I'm not ready to give them up yet." Now, I have them, they're all in archival sleeves, and in an archival binder for now.

Alison: My guess is Karen Baum Gordon. The name of the book is The Last Letter: A Father's Struggle, a Daughter's Quest, and the Long Shadow of the Holocaust. When did your dad come to the United States, and under what circumstances?

Karen: My father came in 1936 at the age of 21 from Frankfurt. It was a time when he and his parents really pushed to get him an affidavit to be able to come here. Things were getting not so great at that time. His sister had already immigrated to Palestine in 1934, and they felt that he should really leave. If things got really bad, they would take the last train out.

Alison: Yes. Julian Norbert Baum did not come with him initially. What was the reason?

Karen: They figured this is going to pass. They felt they were Germans first, and Jews second, and that my grandfather had served in World War I. They were also a little bit older. They said they're going to be fine, but he is a younger man, should go.

Alison: They stayed in contact through these letters, and some are just really sweet messages back, and forth. Would you mind reading a letter from page 33?

Karen: Sure. This is actually the first letter, and it was written on November 17th, 1936. I think my father had literally, perhaps just walked out the door. My grandmother writes, "My dear Rudolph, all good wishes accompany you on your journey. Remain cheerful, and confident, and you will manage it. The awareness of being able to achieve something, and having to work a lot has helped you on your way here too. Therefore, I do not worry about you, dear Rudolph. Just remain on your right way that leads to the goal. Remain well, and think about that your mother always thinks about you, and will accompany you in your new homeland. Good luck and a good journey. Much love and kisses, your mutti."

Alison: What did you learn about the relationship between your father and his parents, your grandparents that you hadn't really known, or understood before?

Karen: What I learned is that my grandmother was very much of the way of making sure that my father, even in these circumstances, was following social graces. She would always remind him, "Make sure to follow up with this one about their birthday, and make sure you go visit so-and-so, and make sure you send a card here and send a card there." I also learned that food was very important to my grandmother. She talked about making, even when my father was gone, some of his favorite dishes. She would let him know what she was making, and she would inquire what he was eating, and how could you not have your main meal during the day.

I also learned that my grandfather was a man of few words. He only wrote very occasionally, and it was very stern, and it was very almost business-like in his exchange with my father. I also learned, quite sadly, that they were very ambivalent about leaving. I have these 88 letters are weekly from that first letter in November '36 until July of '38. Then there's a gap of three and a half years. Then I have the last letter. What I learned is that as late as '37 and '38, they didn't want to burden my father, they didn't want to go to Palestine and they were so on the fence, so to learn that was difficult.

Alison: Yes, it's really interesting. They did not signal in many of the earlier letters that there was anything difficult going on. I'm going to read from one. This is from May 1937, it says, "My dear Rudolph, I hope you continue to do well and that you will have good experiences with Golo. From here it is very difficult for me to give you advice. You will do the right thing. With us, everything is unchanged. When I go on the road before long, I'll let mutti go to [unintelligible 00:10:38] fish. Hopefully, that will be good for her. For today heartfelt regards and kisses, your papa."

Then you write, "What else was happening in 1937 in Germany that was not mentioned by my grandmother who wrote most of the letters? Jews were forbidden from studying medicine and barred from receiving university degrees. German citizens could see only non-Jewish doctors. German Jewish musicians were forbidden to play Beethoven or Mozart during Jewish cultural concerts. Jews were not allowed to be part of the German film industry. German Jews could only buy books from Jewish sellers who would only sell works by non-alien authors." You go on to list what was going on. Do you understand why they did not write to your father about this?

Karen: Well, the letters were being censored so they really couldn't. I found only two or three references and they were almost sarcastic in the letters where she snuck it in. When Hitler became chancellor, she wrote something like, well, today we celebrate the new chancellor by going to the cinema and we laughed. You had to really read those letters numerous times to understand the nuance of what she was saying.

Then there was another time that there was a reference when they were being forced out of one of their residences and moving elsewhere. New people were coming in to view the place as potential tenants, and they made the salute. She said it in such a way that again it was an intimation of what was really going on.

Alison: We're discussing the book, The Last Letter: A Father's Struggle, a Daughter's Quest, and the Long Shadow of the Holocaust. My guest is Karen Baum Gordon. There are some hints that your grandmother suffered from some mental illness, what was she struggling with?

Karen: It seemed she struggled with anxiety and depression. I remember my father saying that she would go away for six weeks to a "sanatorium". I never really understood what that meant. To this day, I'm not sure if it's-- There's sanatoriums and sanitariums. If it was more that she was out in the countryside having an easier time of it or not.

Ultimately my grandmother did commit suicide in the ghetto. My father only learned that at his age of 75 by pulling a book off a shelf the Chronicle of the Lodz Ghetto. She committed suicide on the day that they were deporting the Frankfurt Jews from the ghetto to Auschwitz. He always assumed that his father must have passed away before that but he never knew when his father passed away. That was again one of the mysteries I solved, the date and circumstance of my grandfather's death.

Alison: You mentioned earlier this long gap between the letters. They stopped in 1938, the last one came in October of 1941 and you pieced together what their life must have been like using things like tax records. What did you find that helped you understand their life at this time, your grandparents' life?

Karen: I found things like they sold furniture. They sold their couch to get money. I found things like plea-- My grandfather had made many pleas to be able to make these business trips. It wasn't so easy for him to just go to Luxembourg or elsewhere. He had to make a special application for that. I learned that there was a snitch so to speak hired into his office. Again, I could tell by the illusions that were made in the letters but also from some of the documentation from these tax files.

Alison: Your father joined the Army and it's really interesting he was under particular scrutiny as a German Jew, it's called an enemy alien. Who was concerned and what did he have to do that he was being considered this enemy alien?

Karen: He was considered an enemy alien because his origin was Germany. To be able to go back over and participate in the liberation of a place such as Buchenwald, he had to become a naturalized citizen. What's incredible is that there's a Denver Post article in 1942 when my father became a naturalized citizen. He was stationed in Colorado. The judge at the time, Judge Symes is quoted in the article saying, "This is against my better judgment. I am doing it under orders to allow each of the five of you soldiers to become naturalized citizens." Incredible.

Alison: You have a copy of the article that's actually in the book.

Karen: I have a copy of it. Yes.

Alison: He finds himself part of the group that liberated Buchenwald in April 1945. There's even this well-known photo that he's in that appeared, was it in Life or Time? I can't remember. One of the large l[unintelligible 00:16:33]

Karen: Was in Time Magazine.

Alison: Time Magazine. Did he ever talk to you about that experience?

Karen: My father would answer questions if asked. He talked about that experience in the context of we had a photo album that was tucked, imagine this, in between our regular family photo albums in the cabinet. This particular photo album had in it pictures from the liberations. It had my father walking some of the German citizens through the camp. It showed the lampshades made of human skin. It showed the skulls.

I remember sitting on the floor of our den going through those photos and asking what they were. I actually can't remember now my father's answer but he would only speak about all of that if asked. He stumbled upon a video, imagine this, a video of that experience at the US Holocaust Museum and he had no idea a video existed. As someone has said to me, Rabbi David Stern in Dallas who was the Rabbi at the synagogue my parents went to, he said it's about surviving the surviving. Wow, my father really was surviving the surviving every day of his life.

Alison: How were you able to process all this information as you learned more and more about your father and your grandparents?

Karen: It was hard and it was challenging to stay in the present while spending so much time in the past. It was emotionally gut-wrenching sometimes to walk in some of the spaces where he or my grandparents were. I took three trips to Frankfurt. I had the incredible opportunity to walk inside two of the places where they actually lived, to walk inside the space where my father slept his last night in Frankfurt. To be able to walk into the space where my grandparents were held in a big produce market in Frankfurt before they were deported. I have to say Alison those were really hard moments and yet I felt so enlightened by getting so much closer to what they went through.

Alison: The name of the book is The Last Letter: A Father's Struggle, a Daughter's Quest, and the Long Shadow of the Holocaust. I have been speaking with Karen Baum Gordon. Karen, thank you so much for making the time today.

Karen: Thank you.

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