As Holocaust survivors pass away, fewer first-person memoirs of their experiences are being written. But the subject of the Holocaust continues to fascinate writers who research material for factual books through historical documents and long conversations with the sons and daughters of Holocaust survivors.
Such books are often written in a fictional rather than an academic style because writers want to spark and retain the interest of as wide a circle of readers as possible.
One such author is Faris Cassell, a journalist from Eugene, Oregon. With a passion for history, she previously authored The Unanswered Letter: One Holocaust Family’s Desperate Plea for Help, which was published in 2020 and won the National Jewish Book Award for 2021, as well as that of the American Society of Journalists.
Over a 10-year period, Cassell traced the story of Viennese couple Alfred and Hedwig Berger, who had managed to get their daughters out of Austria as the Nazis took over the country but had exhausted all their resources when they themselves tried to escape.
In desperation, Alfred wrote to an American stranger with the same surname, but the letter went unanswered. The letter found its way into Cassell’s hands when she came across a cache of letters written by members of the Berger family, though the recipient of the original letter was not related to them and was no longer living. It was somewhat frustrating that she could not ask him why he had kept the letter, which was found in an attic in California. Cassel’s research took her across America, Austria, other parts of Europe, and Israel.
As is the case in so many Holocaust sagas, some members of the extended Berger family perished or were murdered. Others escaped – some to the US, while others found their way to pre-state Israel, where their descendants live and thrive and, in some cases, have made important contributions to the development of the state.
Cassel’s second book about the Holocaust, Inseparable: The Hess Twins’ Holocaust Journey through Bergen-Belsen to America, was published in 2023, and released by chilling coincidence on October 7. This, as much as anything else, accounts for the fact that the inhumanity perpetrated by Hamas on that date is frequently compared to the Holocaust.
About the book
In this second book about the Holocaust, Cassell tells the tale of something relatively rare – the survival of an entire German Jewish family, which includes a pair of twins. As Hitler rose in power and life became increasingly perilous for Jews in Germany, the young Hess couple, Karl and Ilse, fled to Holland in 1936, believing that in a neutral country they would be safe. Karl, who had been a highly successful businessman in Germany, was the first to leave, wanting to establish himself in a job before Ilse’s arrival.
The Hess twins Marion and Stefan were born in Amsterdam in 1938, and for the first two years of their lives, the family lived very happily.
But May 10, 1940, saw the Nazi occupation of Holland and the persecution and deportation of Jews.
The Hess family was once again on the run, using every means at its disposal to escape discovery and to avoid deportation.
For almost three years, they lived in fear but were found. In 1943, they were included in a Nazi round-up and sent to the Westerbork transit camp, where the Nazis detained Jews, Sinti, and Roma prior to deporting them to more notorious camps elsewhere in Europe.
As happened to so many unfortunate Jews who had clung to false hopes, they traded Ilse’s valuable jewelry for promises to remain in Holland and avoid deportation to a labor camp or a death camp.
The promises were empty, and the jewelry was gone. The family was deported to the Bergen-Belsen hard labor camp in February 1944.
Conditions in the camp worsened in the ensuing months, and survival became almost impossible.
Some 50,000 Jews perished from hunger, thirst, disease, and brutal treatment by the Nazis who, over time, had lost all vestige of humanity.
It’s quite amazing how many Nazis returned to normal life after the war. A legacy of guilt was a terrible burden for innocent grandchildren to bear.
Despite the tender age of the children and the extremely difficult hardships the Hess family endured, they all miraculously survived.
Cassell attributes their survival to ingenuity, courage, determination, and luck.
Toward the end of the war, they were among survivors who were loaded into cattle cars for further deportation to Theresienstadt as part of Heinrich Himmler’s insane scheme to exchange prisoners for his own safety and improved terms of surrender with the Allies.
For two weeks, the train moved slowly through battlefields in which soldiers were still fighting. Hundreds of Jews died along the way. Time and again, the family saved one another. Even little Marion saved her brother during an Allied air raid. Though not the only surviving twins after the war – let’s not forget those who were the subjects of experiments by Dr. Josef Mengele, the Auschwitz Angel of Death – the twins may be the only surviving twins of the Holocaust who are still living.
Cassell was able to interview them extensively and was impressed by the fact that despite their suffering during the war and their current advanced age, they are remarkably vibrant, active in their communities, and eager to tell their stories.
In the course of her research Cassell found a comprehensive interview with Ilse at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC. The twins also shared with her their father’s 45-page memoir, written for the family. And so, she was able to tell their story, using their own voices, and also to place it in the context of World War II, which had everything to do with the Holocaust and the family’s survival.
Cassell says that she wrote both books as part of an effort to ensure that the world will never forget what happened more than 80 years ago. “Amid rising antisemitism, apathy, and sheer ignorance of the Holocaust, it’s frightening to realize that even in Israel, many people do not know or understand what happened, and what could happen again.,” she says.
Fortunately, future writers about the Holocaust will have an incredible amount of cross-reference materials thanks to testimonies recorded and stored in the Steven Spielberg Jewish Film Archive in Jerusalem, and those of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, the Simon Wiesenthal Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles, and Holocaust museums in many towns and cities around the world. Many of the testimonies were video-taped and are accessible through social media platforms, which means that many years after survivors have passed on, future generations will be able to see and hear them on screen.
But it is important to remember that it is not enough to read Holocaust literature, call up testimonies, and to mouth slogans such as “Never again.”
The times in which we live prove that “never again” is now.
We cannot afford to be silent. We cannot afford not to hit back.
Antisemitism is not just a Jewish problem.
History teaches that wherever the Jews are the first under attack, they are not the last.
The New England Holocaust Memorial in Boston, Massachusetts, bears a plaque with the English translation of words originally written in German in 1946 by Lutheran pastor Martin Niemoller, who died in 1984 at the age of 92,
What he wrote has changed slightly in various translations, but the meaning is loud and clear and is as relevant today as it was in 1946.
The wording on the plaque reads:
They came for the Communists, and I did not speak out because I was not a Communist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Catholics, and I did not speak out because I was a Protestant.
Then they came for me – and by that time, no one was left to speak up...■
- Inseparable: The Hess Twins’ Holocaust Journey through Bergen-Belsen to America
- Faris Cassell
- Regnery History, 2023
- 416 pages; $16.34