Transcript
Speaker: Made on Zencastr. Because Zencastr makes every stage of the podcast production and distribution process so easy. Use the link in the description to access Zencastr.com.
Speaker: It has a built-in discount. Hello and welcome to Fit for My Age, the health and wellbeing podcast from Abysseedah, on which we don't tell you what to think,
Speaker: but we do hope to make you think. I am Michael Millward. Today i am learning about generational trauma from Willie Handler, the author of Out of the Shadows, Growing Up with Holocaust Survivor Parents.
Speaker: Willie is based in the suburbs of Toronto in Canada. Now, Toronto is somewhere that I have visited both as a tourist and as a worker. I would go again When I do, I will make use of my membership of the Ultimate Travel Club to arrange my travel.
Speaker: Because as a member of the Ultimate Travel Club, I travel at trade prices on flights, hotels, trains, holidays, and so many more travel related purchases.
Speaker: You will find a link with a built-in membership discount in the description so that you can travel at trade prices as well. Now that I have paid some bills It is time to make an episode of Fit For My Age that will be well worth listening to, liking, downloading and subscribing to.
Speaker: One that will also be worth telling your friends, family and work colleagues about. Now, hello Willy. ah Hello, how are you? I am extremely well, thank you very much and hope that you can say the same. Yes, I can.
Speaker: Brilliant, brilliant. Please could we start... by you just giving us a little bit of an introduction to who Willie Handler is and why you wrote this book.
Speaker: Willie Handler, as you already mentioned, I'm a child of two Holocaust survivors, which means that I had a slightly non-conventional childhood. And as an eye adult, i I thought I was doing quite well. I i know that my I have two siblings, a brother and a sister, who...
Speaker: have had problems through the years. And I thought it was great. And as it turns out, that that wasn't necessarily the case. I was just very good at burrowing my problems or my issues.
Speaker: Around 2020, which coincided with the ah pandemic lockdown, on the urging of my wife, she said, you really should write your family story and and your parents story before it gets totally lost.
Speaker: And I said, honestly, I don't really know that much because they didn't say a lot. And I remember the first time I actually tried to sit down and write their stories, it was only, ah it was like an 1800 word blog post, hardly a ah full book.
Speaker: So i began to try and do some research and find out what happened to them, where they were, things like that, and and try and match them with the little bits of stories that they did happen to tell me. i just fell down this rabbit hole and totally got buried in this whole project of finding out what happened. And from that came my memoir,
Speaker: which really is in kind of three phases or or or parts. The first part being um sort of my family's history, not just my parents, but going back several generations on how they lived before the war, you know, including the wartime experience. And then sort of the post-war period when I was born and how I grew up and how my childhood was maybe different than others.
Speaker: Then the last part of it is talking specifically about generational trauma, my own and a little bit sort of background on what it is. it It worked out fabulously well, much better than I ever thought it was. And it has gotten some some very rave reviews. Congratulations.
Speaker: You mentioned that you started doing research. And my So my understanding is that, although the Nazis were committing all sorts of horrendous atrocities, one of the things that they were very good at at the same time was recording everything that they did.
Speaker: First of all, is is my understanding correct? Are there lots of records? And where you were you able to tap into them? Okay, so yes, i did tap into records.
Speaker: ah There are a lot of records, but there are a lot of records that were lost. At the end of the war, as they were shutting down concentration camps, they began destroying records.
Speaker: Interesting enough for my father, the earlier parts of the war, i have no concentration camp records. because they were destroyed the later part of the war. Some of those camps were closed down so quickly because of advancing Allied armies that not at all the records were destroyed. And the other aspect of this is they never kept records of people that they sent to the gas chambers.
Speaker: They were very careful about not documenting genocide. So that became more of a challenge because I had lots of family members who ended up in gas chambers in Auschwitz. My father's family lived, oh, 30 minutes from Auschwitz, you know, not far at all.
Speaker: But what I was able to retrieve was like a history of the deportations that occurred in the town and the ghetto that i pairs my father's family was in as well as i had ah i have one living relative now who was able to, although she's quite old, and her memory's not complete, was able to sort of fill in some of the gaps as well. And so i i learned I can tell you the date my grandparents were sent to Auschwitz.
Speaker: and And that's not necessarily documented anywhere. Well, that's not true. It is documented because there was a ah so there was a sort of a selection done on certain dates. And that's when they disappeared.
Speaker: so that you know that's so So that's why I said it took ah it took quite a while to research the book because some of the documentation was direct, some of it was more indirect. Because if you go to Auschwitz Records and they and they their archives are quite extensive, they never registered anybody who they were intending to liquidate right away. They were just sent directly to the gas chambers, those who were registered were kept in the camp to be used perhaps for forced labor.
Speaker: Yeah. You've used a couple of words there, which I think really, for me, evoke the the actual situation. at One was sir commodity and the other one was used.
Speaker: And it just sums up the whole dehumanization of real people right in that process. You weren't a human being, you were a commodity.
Speaker: I describe a little bit about what life is in the camp, what camps were. Now, my mother's story is quite different because she's Romanian. Romania was, for the parts of the war, was aligned with Germany. And basically, Germany never invaded Romania.
Speaker: the romanians are sure don't worry we will take care of the jewish population on our own which was this which was fine with them romania is a relatively you know large country and and the borders have changed many times in the past the western part used to be part of Hungary and Austria, things like that. and The eastern part where my mother's family was from, parts of it were for a while in the Ukraine or Russia.
Speaker: Over the years, it changed many times. But at the time, she was in Romania, and the entire Jewish population in the east part of Romania was deported to ghettos in a region of the Ukraine called Transnitzia.
Speaker: She was there for... a couple of years before she was liberated by the Russians. And a ghetto is not that much different than a concentration camp, other than there's like, they weren't any gas chambers. But most people die from starvation, disease, or exposure to the cold because they had no warm clothing.
Speaker: You paint quite a picture of some of the horrors. And of course, this becomes... than what is now called generational trauma. What do we mean by generational trauma?
Speaker: Okay. And I think people people understand what trauma is. So 70% of people probably in their life will have a traumatic event.
Speaker: it could be a car accident or witnessing a car accident can be ah traumatic and things like that. Most people, um they cut recover.
Speaker: A very small percentage don't. That percentage is much higher for people who were involved in ah in a war. And that includes the combatants. They they see and they experience horrible things. For many years, trauma was not even really recognized. well At least, sorry, post-traumatic stress, which is what what you get when you don't recover from trauma.
Speaker: when you don't overcome it, was never even recognized until the 60s. So many, many people, not just Holocaust survivors, but even the soldiers were returning from World War II or from Korea or ah you know every any other war, including refugees,
Speaker: who were in the middle of the war, were traumatized and received no treatment. And the trauma that you experience changes your DNA.
Speaker: That's something that was not very well and understood until maybe the last 40, 50 years. And because of that, because it gets buried in your genetic material, your DNA,
Speaker: it can get passed on like any other trait to your offspring. So, generationally trauma is those kind of things that you in genetically inherit.
Speaker: So, you weren't exposed to to traumatic event, but you have the PTSD. And that's basically what it is. Yeah. And some of that you're saying is actually...
Speaker: gets ingrained into this person's DNA. I think there's probably also an element of the person who had the experience in one generation is then interacting with the person from the following that generation and the way in which they behave, the way in which they react to various stimuli creates the same sort of behaviour in the next generation as well.
Speaker: Right, right. It's taken a long time for people to have ah a good understanding. They had a good understanding of PTSD, but many, many people are not aware that the next generation inherited that same trauma and the following generation as well. And I should add that part of what i After her I did my memoir, I decided I needed to know more and understand better what generational trauma was. And so I've actually written a book now that's nearly complete, following interviews of ah over 100 descendants of Holocaust survivors, both children and grandchildren, and had them describe what their personal experience was. And it it when this book comes out, it'll be very, very enlightening. To play devil's advocate for a moment, because you've written your memoir about being the child of Holocaust survivors, does the memoir in itself contribute to generational trauma?
Speaker: because you are keeping the story alive. And I don't mean that in any negative way. i think it is very important to keep the subject current and in debate and making sure that people are aware of it.
Speaker: But for some people, i imagine that there will be, well, I don't much want want to watch a film or a television program. or a documentary or read a new story or read a book about something which I experienced because my parents, my grandparents experienced it.
Speaker: It's an interesting question. I've spoken to all kinds of people who've read my book and they come from different backgrounds, but let's just say they're another descendant of a Holocaust survivor because, or somebody else who has some kind of PTSD.
Speaker: Two things happen. One is they strongly identify with certain pieces of the book. Mm-hmm. which it can be a cathartic because, oh, it's not just me. Other people feel the same way.
Speaker: But on the same hand, some things are so close to home that it get ah triggers them. so so So some of the feedback I got from people was it took me a long time to read it. I could only read a little bit at a time because they didn't want to be overwhelmed.
Speaker: So the book is... ah Not everyone, but you know there are people who had that kind of difficulty. But oh you know the reaction has been very, very positive. It's just that i you know it took me a while to read it.
Speaker: But I'm glad I did. and that's usually what I hear. Yeah, it's the the other side of the of the picture, I suppose. And I can totally understand that. I'm wondering, though, how someone...
Speaker: who's feeling stressed and all the various different other things that are associated with that, how would they know that they've got generational trauma rather than some other type of trauma?
Speaker: Well, that's an interesting and challenging question because personally, It took me decades, decades to realize that I had generational trauma.
Speaker: then like There's no one who's going to come up, you you know, no one's going to come up to you and diagnose you or tell you, Willie, do you think you have generational trauma? You know,
Speaker: That doesn't happen. But let's just say, if your father, your grandfather fought in the war, or your family from of refugees from Syria or somewhere else, and there's a good chance there's trauma in your family.
Speaker: And if your parents display some unusual behavior that could be related to their experience, let's just say hypervigilant or a lot of anxiety, certain fears like afraid of someone in a uniform like a police officer or something like that, that might be you know that could be signs of trauma. And if you if you're behaving the same way, there's a good chance that you've inherited those traits as well.
Speaker: For some people, if they're not able to deal with their own anxieties, behavior, so on and so forth, and they end up in, you know, looking for some professional help, then it will come out then.
Speaker: right I can tell you that the name of my next book is called The Hidden Victims. why Because people are walking around. They weren't in any kind of...
Speaker: traumatic event. They weren't in war, but their behavior, some of the traits are quite unusual, or they may not even realize that they're damaged. And that's why the book is called the hidden victims.
Speaker: Well, I suppose if you are suffering from any form of mental health condition, it just becomes your normal day and they creep up on you in many ways. So you don't really notice the change until the changes is quite embedded.
Speaker: but it's just your normal day, your normal way of living. ah You know, I've done a couple podcasts that I co-hosted for men who have issues with relationships and like burnout, overcommit, other sort of what we call People think they're sort of alpha male traits, but there there may be more than that.
Speaker: And you have a father, grandfather who's in the war or something like that. You might be actually suffering from generational trauma. And it's ah like a six-part series. and you know i And I throw out all these situations that are really impacting on men negatively and they don't speak about it and what they should do about it. So you know the part of it is it's very challenging to identify it. and And some people who aren't very open and don't like to talk about their feelings and their experiences, they're just holding it all in and and not understanding why why they might be successful in their work career, but everything else is shit.
Speaker: Okay. I can understand that. understand what you mean. Now, we talk about generational trauma and all the various different things that are associated with that but on your website you have given a page to your grandson jordan right i believe this is nine years old yes the i have two grandsons one's seven and one's nine so jordan is the eldest one and you've given him a page on your website he's reviewed the books that you've written and given you glowing reviews you are his favorite author apparently
Speaker: ah Because you've included your grandson on your website and because the work that you've been doing is about generational trauma, what are you doing to make sure that the generational trauma that you have and before you were aware of it, you may have influenced the life of your own children, what are you doing to make sure that your grandsons don't have the same generational trauma as you have?
Speaker: A very good question because by the time I realized that I had it, I'd already passed it on to my daughter. is like And so it's so and it's ah inevitable that her children are going to get it as well. So I've had a plan since they were very young, which is that ah we're going to We're going to be very open about our family and where we came from and what happened to us.
Speaker: but on a level that is appropriate for children at that age. And the older one, Jordan, is much more interested in this stuff than his younger brother, who is right now strictly interested in sports, which is fine. um But, you know, he's also in so he's also going, they both go to ah private Jewish schools. So this is these are topics that are going to be raised in school as well.
Speaker: So, for instance, Jordan knows there was this guy named Hitler who was horrible to Jews and he ended up killing himself. He knows that there was something called the Holocaust. Six million Jews were murdered.
Speaker: He knows that kind of stuff. That's very basic, except that he's just picked up mostly on his own. um He knows that our family, you know he knows my parents are survivors, but I never talked to him about who didn't survive. And what I what i tell them is that,
Speaker: We come from a family of very, with a lot of resilience. So, and what is resilience? Because of course, little kids don't know what resilience is, but I said, we are, we have very strong characters and we can, we can put up with a lot of stuff and really shine. And so it's presented in a very positive way. And Jordan thinks he comes from a family that's very special because of that. Good.
Speaker: it's a good That's a start. and And it just so happens that this week he's got only a half a day of school. And I volunteer at the Toronto Holocaust Museum.
Speaker: and Part of my job is showing around school children. But not the youngest is are the youngest are 12-year-olds. But I'm going to bring Jordan because he's not your typical 9-year-old. He already knows more about World War II than your 12-year-olds. And I'm going to take him through, avoid... The displays aren't very graphic. It's is' appropriate for school children. And I'm going to show him sort of bits and pieces, including a film about why World War II even happened and how it happened. And so he'll learn a little bit more.
Speaker: You'll ask some questions you when you're dealing with kids. You only answer the question and don't volunteer too much extra stuff because you don't want to upset them, frighten them or whatever, and you know in a very appropriate level. And so what you do is you boil that knowledge.
Speaker: What does that do That sort of counters that very trauma because people might think this is a little bit of, you know, ah a little bit of bull. But why do people go to therapists? Because they're holding in emotions that are ripping them apart. And once you talk about them, you feel better.
Speaker: So my parents who never received any kind of treatment because there was none available to survivors, held it all passed it on, didn't talk about it because it was too upsetting.
Speaker: That's how you end up with generational trauma. What I'm doing is in my family, we're going to talk about it, but in a positive way and not create that kind of anxiety in the family that gets built up, internalized and passed on. Yeah, I appreciate what mean.
Speaker: That's what families should be doing, no matter what kind of trauma is in exists in your family. Yeah. It's the talking about it which results in the therapy, whether you're in a formal therapy situation or not.
Speaker: It's the talking about it, the sharing of it, and talking about how it makes you feel that actually reduces the trauma. What I tell people is you don't need therapy unless you're really struggling.
Speaker: If you have safe spaces to talk about it, whether it's within your family or a group of friends or or just a group of people who have the same background as you, and that helps you, perfect.
Speaker: You don't need any professional help. It's only when you're struggling that maybe it's time for some professional help. Sound advice there. Sound advice.
Speaker: know, Willie, this has been really interesting. I appreciate the fact that you're talking about something which has been the cause of trauma for yourself. And I do very much appreciate you sharing your story and your advice with me today.
Speaker: Thank you very much. Well, you're welcome. is it it's It's certainly so something that's pervasive in society and not enough people talk about it.
Speaker: Well, you contributed to the conversation. Thank you very much. I am Michael Millward, the managing director of Abbasida. And in this episode of Fit for My Age, I have been having a conversation with Willie Handler, the author of Out from the Shadows, Growing Up with Holocaust Survivor Parents.
Speaker: You can find out more information about both of us by using the links in the description. At Fit for My Age, Our aim is proactive positive aging. Knowing the risks early is an important part of maintaining good health.
Speaker: That is why we recommend the health assessments available from York Test, especially the annual health test. Performed annually by an experienced lobotomist who will complete a full blood draw at your home or workplace, the annual health test provides an assessment of 39 different health markers, including cholesterol levels, diabetes and other conditions risks, and various vitamins levels and organ functions.
Speaker: After hospital standard tests are carried out in a UK AS accredited and CQC compliant laboratory, you'll be able to access your easy to understand results and guidance to help you make effective lifestyle changes anytime by your secure personal Wellness Hub account.
Speaker: There is a link and a discount code in the description. I am sure that you will have enjoyed listening to this episode of Fit For My Age as much as Willie and i have enjoyed making it.
Speaker: Please give it a like and download it so you can listen anytime, anywhere. To make sure you don't miss out on future episodes, please subscribe. You will probably also want to tell your friends, family and work colleagues about Fit For My Age as well.
Speaker: Remember the aim of all the podcasts produced by Abbasida is not to tell you what to think, but we do hope to have made you think. Until the next episode of Fit For My Age, thank you for listening and goodbye.
