Shebrew in the City
Shebrew in the City is a podcast exploring all things Jewish. Combining interviews and informational episodes, join Nicole Kelly as she discusses her journey with motherhood, spirituality, and everything from Hanukkah to the Holocaust. Giving a voice to modern Jews and spreading love and joy, whether you're Jewish, Jew-ish, or not anything resembling Jewish at all, there's something here for everyone.
Shebrew in the City
"Three's Company" - An Interview with the 3G Collective (Part 1)
In this episode, we welcome a panel of third-generation Holocaust survivors (3Gs) who share their grandparents' remarkable survival stories and reflect on how this legacy shapes their lives today.
• Our guests Jana Krumholtz, John Reed and Shany Dagan discuss their varied Jewish upbringings across Florida, Australia/Texas, and Israel
• Each shares detailed accounts of their grandparents' Holocaust experiences, from the Lodz ghetto to concentration camps and partisan resistance
• We explore how trauma passes through generations, manifesting in relationships with food, safety concerns, and family dynamics
• The guests reveal personal journeys to understand and heal from intergenerational trauma through therapy, bodywork, and creative expression
• We discuss the challenge of balancing Jewish identity with personal authenticity in a world where antisemitism is again on the rise
• All three guests are creating theatrical works that process their family histories and trauma
This episode is part one of a two-part interview with the 3G Collective. Be sure to subscribe and follow us on Instagram and TikTok for more content.
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looking for tips and tricks on a new city. Top Dog Tours is the best place to check out walking tours. We are in Boston, Philadelphia, Toronto and New York city. Visit us on topdogtours. com to book your tour today and check us out on social media for offers, discounts and pictures. Hi, I'm Nicole Kelly and this is Shebrew in the City, and tonight we are going to talk about two of my favorite things theater and intergenerational trauma, which in this interview, we'll find out they actually go hand in hand. So this is my first interview with more than one guest, so I'm really excited to see how that turns out. So tonight I have John, Jana and Shany with me, and they are coming from all across the country, so we have multiple time zones as well as multiple people. So how is everybody doing today?
John Reed:Very good, very good. I know John and I had double shifts at the museum.
Nicole Kelly:Today, john and I work at the Museum of Jewish Heritage downtown together and it was a long day, so I appreciate you taking the time to talk with me after two tours.
John Reed:I was gonna say I'm surprised we both still have a voice.
Nicole Kelly:I know I was thinking that about halfway through the second tour. I was like I have to talk tonight. So I drank some tea, came home and read about transit camps for class, and now I'm here talking to you guys.
Jana Krumholtz:I just love that you love intergenerational trauma so much, because so do I. It's awful to say that it's a real thing. It's so, it's such a passion. So I see you.
Nicole Kelly:Yes, we're going to. We're going to talk about that. I come with my own intergenerational trauma because my family fled the pogroms and my mother dealt with 20th century antisemitism in America. So I feel like there's remnants of that and I've talked about how my mom wouldn't say the word Hanukkah aloud in public and I'd make fun of her, and now I'm like that's valid, that is a very valid thing, um, which you know. You know, we'll all talk about how we deal with our intergenerational trauma, I'm sure, on this episode. So I always start off by asking everybody what their Jewish upbringing was like, where they grew up, if they grew up with a denomination, if they had a bar or bat mitzvah. So we'll go ahead. We'll start alphabetically.
Jana Krumholtz:We'll start with Jana okay, yes, so I was like am I first?
Nicole Kelly:yes, you're first, I'm with you.
Jana Krumholtz:So I always characterize my upbringing as being raised culturally Jewish. Okay, I did go to a Jewish day school from kindergarten to eighth grade, so that's my like religious moment. But we weren't really religious in the house, but I wore uniforms to school. We ate kosher food in school. We prayed in the morning, we prayed before we ate, we had Hebrew and Judaics every day, um, but I didn't keep kosher in the house and we would go to temple on the high holidays and then once I got bat mitzvahed, it was like you were like that's it.
Jana Krumholtz:I'm done. They were like I didn't know, discussion was had it, just religion was gone, like that was it and how it was, like that was that. And I graduated middle school and went to an arts high school and that was that. So the way that I feel Jewish in my upbringing is, you know, the Holocaust was the main thing, that was like the center point. I was raised around Probably immediate. I was raised around like 15 Holocaust survivors that was my socialization and then for big events it was like 60 of them. So that's kind of all I know about Judaism is our Yiddish speaking Polish Holocaust survivors.
Nicole Kelly:And.
Jana Krumholtz:I deeply love it and I miss it, and so, yeah, judaism to me is their language, it's our humor, it's how we relate to each other, it's unfiltered, it's honest, it's pure, it's judgmental, it's you know the love of food is and the addiction to food is you know, everyone's love language. So that's really. And then, from Jewish school and how I was raised, you know the values which we've all spoken about the three of us is really tikkun olam.
Shany Dagan-Kerem:Like it's stuff.
Jana Krumholtz:It's how I was raised and it's how I was taught in school what it meant to be Jewish, and that's how that's the most lasting thing I carry with me in my life. And where did you grow up? Boca Raton, florida.
Nicole Kelly:Oh, my goodness.
Jana Krumholtz:So I'm like the quintessential, I'm like the anti, I'm the anti-Jap-Jap.
Nicole Kelly:For those of you that don't know what Jap means it is means Jewish American princess.
Shany Dagan-Kerem:Yeah.
Nicole Kelly:It does not mean a Japanese person.
Shany Dagan-Kerem:I didn't even know that it's a very American thing. Yes, terrible.
Nicole Kelly:It's like a shiksa. It's hard to explain, but you know it when you see it. There are a lot of moms at my daughter's school who were Japs and they're very clicky and I'm like a borderline Jap when I want to be so I don't roll into school looking like a Jap, so I'm very isolated with that. All right, John, I know a little bit about your background. Can you share with my listeners where you grew up and about your?
John Reed:Jewish upbringing.
John Reed:Yeah, I mean, usually when people ask me you know where are you from, I usually either say it's a two-part answer or how long do you have? Because it's kind of weird. I was born in Houston, texas, actually to a Presbyterian father and a Jewish mother, so it was an interfaith marriage but luckily it was not a shanda for the Jewish family, it was not a dishonor or a scandal, but yeah. So I actually grew up for the first 10 years of my life in a town where we were the only Jewish family in the town. It was technically a very small town, about an hour and a half outside of Houston, and we were the only Jews in the town. We did attend Sunday school at a synagogue in Houston called Congregation Beth Israel, which actually, at least when we were there, was the largest reform congregation in the United States. We, yeah, would go there for Sunday school every Sunday We'd drive an hour and a half into Houston.
John Reed:It was imperative to my mother and actually, weirdly, to my father, that we were raised fully Jewish. So we were not. We never had a Christmas tree in the house, we never decorated or celebrated Christmas or Easter. We would go over to my father's family's houses, sometimes for Christmas dinners or we would give them presents or exchange presents, but they made it abundantly clear that we do not celebrate that because we are Jewish, which nothing will make a person more into an artist than being the only one in a town who, you know, is um, is not like everybody else, um, but then we, uh, my mother is Jewish and she's actually was born in Australia and her parents are, uh, polish Holocaust survivors, uh, that immigrated to Australia, um, after the war, polish Holocaust survivors that immigrated to Australia after the war, and their raising was actually also kind of very more cultural.
John Reed:They were definitely not religious by any means, and neither were we. We were very much reform primarily, but we actually then moved back to Australia, and that's a whole other story as to why. But when we moved to Australia, my mother was sort of very much even more adamant that me and my sister received a Jewish education. So we went to a Reform Hebrew day school and I actually was there from fifth grade through the rest of high school. It went K through 12. And so I did my bar mitzvah through there. I also sort of felt like it was kind of like after my bar mitzvah, all bets were off. I could kind of do whatever I wanted.
Nicole Kelly:I feel like we all felt free in some capacity.
John Reed:A little bit.
Nicole Kelly:Though I want to say and I don't know if I've mentioned this before this says a lot about my Jewish guilt.
Jana Krumholtz:A little bit Hebrew school. Oh my gosh, you're at school for the Holocaust. You're good.
Nicole Kelly:I am good. I also went to Hebrew high two years after I had my mom's first, so like the Jewish education did not end.
John Reed:I mean, I still have the.
Nicole Kelly:I've still definitely had the high school nightmares where I'm feeling oh yeah, yeah, but like it's weird being about specifically like Hebrew school, like I don't know if I've ever met somebody else like that.
John Reed:Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. But yeah, I sort of felt like it was a little bit sort of all bets were off after that. I always joke that like two days after my bar mitzvah I tried bacon for the first time and unfortunately I've never gone back.
Nicole Kelly:How was the bacon?
John Reed:It was delicious.
Nicole Kelly:It was great.
John Reed:Okay, yeah, it was, it was kind of extraordinary, but yeah, so I then and it was sort of very interesting because I sort of felt like actually going through high school and then into college I sort of felt like I kind of retreated a little bit from my Judaism, mainly, I think, because I was in such an insular. The Jewish community in Melbourne in particular is very insular and very I mean, all the places that we live in the ghetto, because literally everybody lives in, you know, four mile radiuses of all of one another, so we. So I felt like by the end of high school I very much actually wanted to get out of it. I was very much wanting to sort of find out who I was outside of all of it. And when I went to drama school, to, you know, study musical theater, I sort of was like, oh, these are, this is.
John Reed:I felt like I finally kind of found my tribe, I kind of found my people and I kind of went away from specifically Judaism and like attending Seders and missing, you know, rosh Hashanahs and Yom Kippur and seeing my Jewish friends, just because I thought I was like, no, the theater is my religion.
John Reed:Now I sort of got a bit high and mighty about it. But then actually I think COVID was an incredible coincidence, but I actually really started. Something changed and I don't know what, but it was trying to find ways to actually reintroduce myself to it, just even by just ingesting a lot of Jewish stories, a lot of Jewish history and really then also, as my grandfather was getting older, really taking the time to really spend as much time with him as I could before he actually ended up passing away, but very you know, not tragically at the age of 98. So you know, he lived a long life but I definitely felt I almost kind of had a renewed appreciation and understanding. I still don't necessarily call myself very religious, but culturally I've actually probably never felt more Jewish than now.
Nicole Kelly:I had a similar experience after my daughter was born. Because I, like you, I was like the theaters, these are my people, because I was, I think, think a little burnt out. And then, when we had our daughter, I was like, well, how, what do I want my family? You know, life to look like? And I feel like, after COVID, I was looking for some sort of connection. So I found our synagogue in Upper West Side. We moved to the neighborhood to be close to the synagogue. She goes to the school now and I feel like I have like tripled down on the judaism, which is like what I was like when I was a kid, because my mom was convinced I was gonna become a cantor that's all they wanted me to do.
Jana Krumholtz:They were like, don't go into the arts, but just be a cantor, and I was like what's singing?
Nicole Kelly:there's no money in clergy work. Um, I have discovered this, though there is a synagogue in which is a conservative synagogue in the san fernando valley where, apparently I don't know if he's still there the head rabbi made a million dollars a year because someone had left an endowment. Wow, but that's not normal. Um, that's not normal. He won the lottery, I know right. Okay, shawnee, how about you? Where did you grow up and what was your Jewish upbringing like?
Shany Dagan-Kerem:All right. So I'm originally from Israel. So I would say I grew up secular, very, very open. We did celebrate all the holidays. It was just kind of all around us. So we don't really talk about our Judaism because most of us are Jewish. Talk about our Judaism because most of us are Jewish. So it was just part of my life. Nothing very, very specific. We are not religious, but we did do all of the traditions. So all of the you know, seder, rosh Hashanah, the whole shebang, but it's more family-rooted. So we always went to family, we always gathered together and that's basically it In Israel, because most of the people are Jewish. It kind of.
Shany Dagan-Kerem:You don't really go into it much. You learn it in school, you learn about your past and all of that, but it's just obvious that it's part of your life. So I think that when I moved to the States, that's when I felt a little out of place in a way. Yeah, some people celebrate I mean, we do have Jewish people in America, right but it's a completely different way to celebrate. Even the food is different. The whole tradition around it is completely different.
Shany Dagan-Kerem:And, to be honest, at first I tried to kind of take a step back because I just didn't feel like I belonged to that Jewish community and I didn't feel like I'm. It's not that I felt, but I'm not part of the American culture, that is not Jewish right. And so I was kind of in the middle so I kind of just did my own thing doing holidays. It just felt very lonely because I did move by myself but, um, that that was kind of my experience. I didn't really get into it. I'm very, um, jenna and john knows me, but I'm very like, particular, I do my work and I just, you know, very specific I'm going to class, I'm taking, I'm work, I'm doing my auditions, I create, I'm taking work, I'm doing my auditions, I create my work and I just focus on that. Try not to fall into emotions too much, which is very much probably part of my trauma, generational trauma, right? Yeah, I'm more of a hard person.
Nicole Kelly:The Israeli people I know are pretty no-nonsense. I feel like that comes from not only the intergenerational trauma of a lot of Israelis being descendants of Holocaust survivors, but living in an area that's kind of fraught with a lot of things going on constantly. Yeah, yeah.
Shany Dagan-Kerem:All the time is just it's, it's part of who we are. Um, I don't know if it's good or bad, it's part of who we are. I don't know if it's good or bad, it just is. Yeah, so I think that's kind of my background. I moved to the States at 2013 when I started IAMDA. Actually, and from there.
Shany Dagan-Kerem:I stayed during COVID, I met my husband in Israel and we stayed in Israel for about three years until we kind of found what we want to do and we came back together and now we have our daughter. She's 10 weeks old and actually I really felt what you said about like once you had your daughter you're like what am I doing, you know? So that's kind of what we're thinking now. I mean, she's 10 weeks old, but we still think like, okay, how are life going to look like, especially here in the States? Like, are we going like Jewish American style? Are we completely trying to like open up to everything else, especially with the years now and and everything that is going on with the anti-semitism that is growing again? Um, so it's it's a huge question and it's very interesting and that's something that we are working through right now.
Nicole Kelly:So it's very, very interesting one thing you'll figure out as she's growing up and I never thought that I'd have this emotional reaction, but because my daughter's in jewish day school. She's growing up and I never thought that I'd have this emotional reaction, but because my daughter's in Jewish day school, she's learning things and so, like Purim just happened and I was like who you know? What do we do about? But, poor, what did you know? What was the deal with Haman? She's like he wanted us to bow down and I started crying because cry over everything. There was like this door that was unlocked in acting school and now I just literally cry all the time.
John Reed:I cry at like the Yoavid loom, like I like lost it yesterday I was like I can't, today I cannot.
Nicole Kelly:There's this little girl who died when she was was murdered when she was six, and we use a toy as like a device to talk about children murdered in the Holocaust and, like some days, I just I cannot deal with it.
John Reed:And especially seeing their reactions to some people's reactions to it as well, is also really like.
Nicole Kelly:That also breaks your heart as much as just saying that happened to people, kind of having, especially children, having this realization like wow, like I would have been killed. It's crazy. But as, as she grows up, it'll be interesting to see your reaction to uh, her learning about things because it and it goes so quick. Um, you're probably feeling like you're never going to get any sleep again, but I promise it will happen. I did not believe people, but my daughter sleeps through the night now and it's.
Shany Dagan-Kerem:it's a magical experience, but I do want to say something interesting going off, we can edit it later, but yeah, something that is very interesting about how we're thinking now is. My sister asked me. She's like so are you going to talk Hebrew at home or are you going to talk English? Are you going to? You know, read to her in English and Hebrew. So we kind of do both because we don't know yet.
Shany Dagan-Kerem:We said, we're probably going to speak Hebrew in the house and then when she goes to school she's probably going to be spoken in English. So it's just very interesting to kind of think forward.
Nicole Kelly:So let's jump in to the main topic. You are all 3Gs and for those of you that have not listened to previous episodes, I have a great one with 3G and wise President Elizabeth Kamens. These are grandchildren of Holocaust survivors. So they're 3G, so the third generation. I want all of you to talk a little bit about your grandparent or grandparents' experience, where they're from, what happened during the war, and a little bit about what their lives were like post-1945.
Jana Krumholtz:Gosh, I get even. We have. It's such a good balance. Shani needs us and we need Shani. I get even a little emotional just having you introduce us as three, you know, like the grandchildren of Holocaust survivors. It's just, it's such a special thing in all of our lives. My grandmother's name was Rose, my grandpa's name was Ben, and they both are from Lodz, Poland Lodz is how you'd say it which is actually where John's grandparents are also from, which is wild. So we think we're related.
Nicole Kelly:The Jewish geography. We are all related, I think, in some aspects, so it's possible that you could do a test with distant cousins. I think we should.
Jana Krumholtz:Yeah, so my grandparents both entered the ghetto at like 11 and 12. All of their families. My grandmother had, I think she had like three brothers and three sisters, and my grandfather had three sisters and they both. It's so interesting, my grandmother was really harsh and strict and fearful and she was that one. And then my grandfather was the sweetest, most patient, kindest, gentlest man and as I got older and re-listened to their stories, who knows why, what, when but she definitely had it harder, I think. I mean, how can you compare?
Jana Krumholtz:But then he did so, you know, she would tell little stories of them trying to steal potatoes from neighbors in the ghetto, you know, or share, burrow them in from somewhere, not steal from neighbors, steal from somewhere and share with their neighbors. That's kind of the most she would talk about it. And then in the interviews I watched this is horrible Her father refused to eat in the ghettos so they could, and so that's how he died, which I can only imagine, the guilt that she carried through. So that's part of their story. Then they went to I don't know what camps first, but my grandmother went through Bergen-Belsen and she went through Auschwitz.
Nicole Kelly:I just learned that Bergen-Belsen at one point was a transit camp, so it's possible that she went there first. But then again Anne Frank was taken from Auschwitz to Bergen-Belsen, so they were all passing people around. So yeah, yeah, yeah, okay. So she was in Bergen-Belsen and Auschwitz.
Jana Krumholtz:She had some crazy stories, so anyways the lines, and so she was taken one way and she was separated from her family at the get.
Jana Krumholtz:So I think she was in the. I think she was in the ghetto for three to four, I mean what. They went in at 1939 and then they went into the camps at 1944. So they were in the ghetto for a lot of years, um, and so she was like 12 when that happened. So she went into the camps around 16 or something, if my math's correct, um 17. I think she got out of the war at 18 or 19. It's all all of her.
Jana Krumholtz:You know, young adult, adolescent years were the war um, and she has this other story of being in one of the camps and like the, the fence, the chain, um, the metal fence, and and was separating her in this other section, and she saw a friend that she knew on the other side and the girl said come, like, because she's like are you alone? And my grandmother said, yeah, she goes, come to our side, like come, stay with us. And my grandmother was too afraid to do it so she didn't. And the next day, like that whole section had been like murdered and put like onto the gas chambers.
Nicole Kelly:So I have a crazy story about my, my great grandmother in world war one, cause she was from I don't know Russia, in a place that no longer exists, like I've Googled the town and it's no longer there. So her, she was one of six, one of seven daughters and the last one died and she was like the devil was always trying to get me because I was the one, like you know, that got away. And apparently you know, because there's a bunch of bombings during World War One, her mother was always like, if there's bombings, you have to come to the shelter near our house. So she's out playing in the fields like you do in Russia in 1916. And there was an air raid and her friend was like, let's go to the shelter together. She's like, no, no, I told my mom, I have to go to the one near her house. So they parted ways and when she came out, that shelter that her friend wanted to go to had been bombed and everyone had died.
Jana Krumholtz:So I feel like all these survival stories are all these random acts of no-transcript, because they know they're like what did I do to deserve to be alive? So she had some crazy stories like that, um, and then she survived. She was liberated, um, uh, and she got taken in by these three sisters who survived, and by two sisters, so they called her the third sister and that's when she met my grandfather what they met in germany after the war.
Jana Krumholtz:My grandfather in the same town went into the ghetto at the same age with his family and he he became like a messenger so he would ride his bike and help deliver mail to a Nazi, I believe, like he had a semi-important job so he would get some extra food for his family. So he had that kind of experience. Then him and his family got sent to the camps. He also went through. I know he was in Auschwitz for a little while and Birkenau someone was in Birkenau at some point. The thing that about him that's pretty beautiful is that him and his grandfather, him and his father, went through the entire experience together, through the camps up until two months before liberation.
Jana Krumholtz:His father passed away, yeah, but so I think even that too, just like the way he moved through life and thinking about how he got to have his dad with him through all of it up until the end, I think has a big impact on the way he was in the world, compared to my grandmother. And so then they met. You know, to the best of their knowledge, all of their families were gone. They met in Germany again. My grandfather found a cousin, leo, somewhere, um, uh, and he, they got on a train and found these three sisters. They all, they all their stories were. They all went back home just to look like let's just go back, maybe someone's there, maybe someone's alive.
Jana Krumholtz:So on their way back to or from, they met these three sisters, my grandmother being the adopted one, and they all kind of like stayed together in apartments.
Jana Krumholtz:And you know, that's where they always kind of get like shy about the story and I'm like, well, did you fall in love? You know like it's okay if something happened. But so you know, after soon discovering that there were no family members left, they got so lucky, they got papers to America very quickly and they all of them together got on a boat to Ellis Island and, yeah, they just were. They finagled their way and came here and my grandparents have a cool story, whether or not it's exactly historically true down to the very specifics. They were known to be the first survivor couple ever to be married in America after World War II. So their wedding picture is in the Holocaust Museum in Washington DC and we have New York Times articles about their wedding and you know it was a beautiful kind of commemorated thing and that took place at what is now known to be the public theater, because it used to be a Jewish tenement house for the refugees to come over and there was a little temple inside.
Nicole Kelly:I didn't know that I we give a tour, we talk about the public theater, so now I have to add that in.
Jana Krumholtz:Yeah, and so that's where they started their American life and they left the past in the past in that sense. And they came here and we're going to start anew. And my grandfather became a furrier's assistant and my grandmother was a seamstress and they lived in the Lower East Side on Eldridge Street and my grandmother was a seamstress and they lived in the lower east side on eldridge street and they their, I think their way of surviving was staying with their kind. So they I never met a friend of my grandparents that was not a holocaust survivor like that, they only were with survivors and that's how I think they made it through.
Jana Krumholtz:They took, they took english classes at night. They, you know the highest, I think it was called. They had organizations. My grandfather was the treasury they just that was what they kept them going. Um, yeah, and then they moved to the, to the Bronx, had my mom and her brother, and then they moved to Bayside, queens, and you know, and, but they all moved together, like all of you know, their close group. And then it was upstate New York, the Catskills, which is where I was born, and then down to Florida for the full retirement, which is where they're.
Nicole Kelly:They're hitting all of the Jewish cornerstones. They started in Poland.
John Reed:They came to the Lower East.
Nicole Kelly:Side, they went to Queens. They're the Catskills in Florida.
Nicole Kelly:Yeah, checked all the boxes. When you're talking about interviews with your grandmother, are you talking about the ones done through the Shoah Foundation? How did that feel watching that? Because my third grade Hebrew school teacher was an Ashwood survivor and she gave testimony and I have to contact an organization to watch it and just say I'm a master's student, I'm writing a paper or whatever, but like, just seeing that little thumbnail of this woman made me really emotional and she was not my grandmother, so how did that feel watching?
Jana Krumholtz:that Well, I honestly it's like I was. I'm in the video Like this was when I say this was my world, like I. It's so funny because my mom didn't grow up that way. Like she found the photo album of their wedding. She wasn't told about it.
Jana Krumholtz:I remember being seven or eight and them sitting us down and being like this is who you are, this is your history, blah, blah, blah. So so there's we're in the end of it. When they're talking about who their family is, you can see me as like a seven-year-old girl and my sister, who's 10, sitting on their lap, so like, and I remember that day actually I remember it being really important and my mom telling us like be quiet. And and then you know, we interviewed them for middle school. So it was always. It was not always talked about, but it was talked about. But I remember watching it through for the first time and it's insanely emotional. It's so hard, it's so, it's just so sad, it's so, so, so, so sad. And then I rewatched it at different times in my life and before writing my show I was like okay, here we go. And I think it was over COVID and there's like two, three DVDs for each of their stories. Yeah, yeah.
Jana Krumholtz:It's extremely hard, but it feels so important and you also feel so like because, even though they would talk about it, they wouldn't go into that detail. They were doing this once, like that was understood. It's like I'm doing this once and one time, only for you to get this on record, and I'm never going to do it like this again. You know so yeah.
Nicole Kelly:Thank you for sharing that, John. You're up yes.
John Reed:Yeah, incredibly, just like Jana's grandparents, my mother's parents were survivors. My grandfather was from Lodz, or Lodz with his family, but my grandmother was actually born in Bialystok, which is in the northeast.
Nicole Kelly:Of the famous bread and the producer from the producers, the producers, exactly right.
John Reed:Exactly right so and they didn't meet until actually liberation. And I mostly know more about my grandfather's story than my grandmother's, mainly also because my grandmother just wouldn't talk about it after the war. I actually never knew her. She died in 1983, before I was born, sadly of cancer. So I never got to hear her testimony. But my grandfather was also interviewed by the Shoah Foundation, I think in 1997.
Nicole Kelly:For those of you listening who don't know what the Shoah Foundation is. Someone asked me today what my dream job would be one of the kids and I was like running the Shoah Foundation. So life goals I I told my husband we can retire to la and I'll run the show.
Nicole Kelly:A foundation so if you are working for the show foundation listening, I'm gonna be your future boss.
Nicole Kelly:So after schindler's list was produced, steven spielberg realized that a lot of survivors we were losing them, so he created a foundation which is now run with usc, and they went around interviewing thousands of survivors and some of this testimony is four or five hours long and there's about 1500 interviews available online and there are about 5 000 more, I think, that are available through institutions like schools and museums and you can request to see them if you know, if you have a family member, and a lot of the work I do in school is involving testimonies from these videos and a lot of the books I'm reading involves testimony from these videos, because, as someone like me who is entering Holocaust scholarship, after a lot of these people have since passed away, this is really the only information I have for research. So it's thank you to your grandparents for doing this, because it's so informative and important for people who are studying this and to use in educational settings. I'm sorry for interrupting you, but I just wanted to make sure people knew what that was.
John Reed:No, absolutely Definitely. Yeah, my grandfather was the youngest of four kids and they lived in a very non-Jewish part of Lodz and they also were moved into the Lodz ghetto when the Nazis invaded. And his oldest brother, actually my great uncle, managed to actually escape to Russia when they invaded because he was quite a bit older and he already had a wife and because he was also actually a communist, so he was actually it was a good place for him.
John Reed:Yeah, it was a good place for him. I mean, he was still sent to a work camp in Russia, but he managed to also survive, actually, and my grandfather was essentially became the breadwinner of his family inside the ghetto. He was about maybe 17 or 18 when the war started and he essentially started working as a builder and construction man for this person, who became his kind of boss and mentor and who ended up essentially being his first savior, because he gave him a trade to be able to support him and his family and they were able to keep as much food as they possibly could, as well as keeping them from the transports a lot of the transports Until when the ghetto was liquidated in August 1944, they were taken to Birkenau in Auschwitz and my grandfather was there for two weeks and did watch his parents as well as his Death, who sent people either to the right or to the left. He was holding his grandfather's waist and they sent his father to the left and my grandfather went with him and then Mengele stopped him, pulled him aside and said no, no, no, you go work first, you'll die anyway, but first you go work, and that was the last time he saw his father and he actually managed to survive the lines for the gas chambers twice Because, also luckily, he managed to do a lot of favors for people in the ghetto.
John Reed:He actually had quite a bit of clout with his construction business and until finally two people actually managed to wake him up and get him out of Auschwitz onto a work transport that was taking people to work in a coal mine in Falkenberg in Germany, where then he was then moved on to Bergen-Belsen and he developed typhus there and was very close to death. Typhus there and was very close to death and then was obviously liberated there. And I know that my gran from little I know about my grandmother she and her sister actually survived together. She had a younger sister named Gita and she survived with her, but her mother was murdered in Treblinka and her father was murdered in Majdanek.
Nicole Kelly:For those of you who saw A Royal Pain that's, the camp that they go to is Majdanek.
John Reed:Yes, and actually what was funny enough that you mentioned A Royal Pain. I had the most visceral reaction watching that, because I don't know if you know about the program March of the Living, but I went on March of the living when I was 17, uh and uh to poland and when we and we went to my donik, um, and now that I'm supposed to that I had that knowledge and then seeing that in a real pain actually was incredibly, um, it affected me physically in a way that I really didn't expect, because I was just like, oh yes, I remember I was there, what was?
Nicole Kelly:so interesting about that is that scene after they leave the camp and just everyone's reaction. And I feel like all of those reactions are valid, because we did a trip in 2018 where we spent three weeks in Germany and Poland and visited Dachau and Auschwitz and I feel like just that kind of like defeated. You know, it's like how you feel after that.
John Reed:What do you? Yeah, no, what do you do that? Yeah, that's crazy. But then they yeah, all of them managed to actually find their way into Bergen-Belsen, and my grandmother was incredibly lucky. She was actually able to work a lot in the kitchens as well, and she was also a very gifted seamstress, so she was actually able to do very much easier jobs, so it wasn't as much of a toll on her health, and when the DP camp for Bergen-Belsen was created, she was one of the few that was actually well enough to help the soldiers, and she actually helped nurse my grandfather back to health, and that's how they met oh, I love this.
Nicole Kelly:Yeah, and I love I was weird.
John Reed:I love holocaust survivor love stories because I feel like it's crazy, very hopeful in a way, I mean that that's the thing too. Is that it like just you have no work?
Nicole Kelly:young people who'd'd been through literally the worst thing that ever happened in the history of humankind.
John Reed:They were 21.
Nicole Kelly:And then they meet other people when they've lost their entire families. And they're able to create their own families, like Jenna was saying of this group of survivors that they met.
John Reed:The fact that they can even get to be that point where they can trust anybody again or where they can love in that way was just amazing. So they actually left the DP camp together after about three months and moved to Frankfurt in Germany where they just worked and tried to save enough money to leave the country. And they had my auntie their first daughter in Salzheim, and then they managed at first actually got visas to go to Israel. However, then that was actually at the time when my grandmother was pregnant with my aunt, and then they Israel then actually rejected them because they needed fighters, they needed people that could work and could also work in the army. They couldn't have expecting mothers.
Nicole Kelly:I feel like pregnant Israeli women can fight in the army. They're pretty tough.
John Reed:Oh, 100%. But then actually what happened was that a friend of my grandmother's that also survived, who came from Bialystok, knew that there was a Bialystok Center in Melbourne, australia, that was actually able to sponsor them over, and so that's where they decided to go. They moved to Melbourne in 1950. My grandfather always used to say as well, he said he chose that as well because he wanted to get as far away from Europe as humanly possible, and there is nowhere farther from anything on earth than Australia, and my mother was born there in Melbourne in 1955. And they also went about rebuilding their lives. Many of their close friends were survivors and they also kind of became surrogate aunties and uncles and cousins to my mom and my auntie. All called them Auntie Lodja, auntie Henya, uncle Max.
John Reed:They were all family even though they weren't blood, and what my mom and my auntie remember a lot is that they had so many parties in their house. They grew up in a house full of parties where they had their friends over on Saturday nights and they would go well into the morning and then people would be drunkenly hungover sleeping on the couches and then my grandfather would be down at six in the morning making scrambled eggs for the people who had stayed over, and my mom and my auntie would just come down just being like what is going on. So they really actually took their youth back when they came. They worked like dogs and they made sure that they were really good examples for my mom and my auntie, but they also they also wanted to have fun, they wanted to drink, they wanted to party, they wanted to enjoy the life that they had managed to live, to save and they were incredibly serious about that and incredibly serious about my mom and my auntie getting a good education, because their education was obviously- Was taken away from them.
John Reed:Was taken away from them. Yeah.
Nicole Kelly:So you have a story that you told me about your grandfather having an altercation with the infamous Chaim Rumkowski, who was basically the leader of the ghetto and a terrible, terrible person. You can Google him for more information. Someone in a class I'm taking was kind of trying to be sympathetic and I used the story. I was like this is something that happened. He was not a good person and I was wondering if you'd share that story.
John Reed:Yeah, so one day when my grandfather was working in the ghetto. One day when my grandfather was working in the ghetto overseeing a building of, actually apartment complexes outside the ghetto, one of his workers actually came up to him and said I was in Auschwitz. And my grandfather said what's Auschwitz? I've never heard of that before. And he was an escaped person that managed to come back to Lodz to get this work. And he said they're gassing Jews there. This probably was maybe 42, late 42. And my grandfather, you know, didn't know what to do. So he went to his boss because he trusted him with his life, and he said this man told me that there's a place called Auschwitz where they're gassing Jews. And then his boss, gutmann, said let's take this to Rumkowski, let's tell him. So my grandfather and his boss went to Chaim Rumkowski and they said you know, we heard from this man that the reason also why there are so many deportations that have started to happen in this ghetto is because they're taking people away to gas Jews.
John Reed:Rumkowski comes up from behind the table, walks across in front of my father and smacks him across the face, essentially stating that he said he was a liar. You're lies. This is not true you're. How can you say such a thing if you, if you bring this up again, you're going out of the ghetto? And then all of a sudden, my grandfather says he never saw a man lose his cool so much than his boss, who then railed against rumkoski saying how dare you slap this young boy? He is doing this, is doing this, and they essentially he got rumkoski actually to calm down and let it go um, even as as so much, at one point rumkoski, a few maybe weeks later, come over with actually a little bit of extra food and money to give to him, to give to my grandfather.
Nicole Kelly:My grandfather said I don't want it, wow for those of you that don't know, this is a man who didn't even make it to the gas chambers at auschwitz. He was beaten by the solder commando who recognized him because of the things he had done. His famous.
Nicole Kelly:Give us your child, give me, give us, your children, give your children speech, because he was basically told he had to come up with I think it was 5 000 people by the germans and he basically was like he gave this whole speech about asking parents to give their children, so that. So this is, yeah, that's crazy. That story is crazy. Alright, shani, your turn.
Shany Dagan-Kerem:I feel like we're saying about every story it's crazy, it's an unprecedented event and I.
Nicole Kelly:God willing something like this never happens again, but it never happened before. It is, in my opinion, the worst thing that has ever happened in human history. It is the most infamous crime in history and I've never heard a story from someone who was a survivor or refugee that I did not think was crazy.
Jana Krumholtz:And I think so sophisticated and highly, cause shit happens everywhere. Excuse my language the craziness, but it's not so sophisticated and organized to the umpteenth level.
Nicole Kelly:Anyways, yeah, it's yes, yes, yes, yes.
Shany Dagan-Kerem:All right. So, um, my family'm gonna say I'm gonna talk about two of my grandparents because, um, my grandfather from my mom's side also went through the holocaust, but, uh, we don't know as much on his story, unfortunately, um, and so in my show that I'm doing as well, I'm focusing on my grandfather from my father's side, emmanuel Dagan, and my grandmother from my mother's side, lili Altea. And so I'm going to start with my grandma. She was also the closest person to me growing up and her interview was with Yad Vashem in Israel, and so we do have her testimony full. That's the first time I saw her testimony was when I was 12. And in Israel we do what we call Avodah Shor Hashim, which is basically we're going backwards and learning about our history, the tree, and so my sisters I have two sisters, they already did that before me, but I've decided I'm going to go a little bit deeper. And that's when I found Yad Vashem testimonies and I kind of learned a lot more and got more into the history of the family.
Shany Dagan-Kerem:And my grandma's upbringing was actually in Romania and was beautiful. They were very, very rich at the time. She was one of the most beautiful women. Um, she was. She was not even a woman, she was 12, but, um, she was the most beautiful one in the area, like, it was very known. My grandma was just like, uh, I don't even know how to say it she was just like, breathtaking. Um, even growing up like, as like as a grandma, she was breathtaking and she was a very hard woman but a very warm woman. So she was hard on the exterior but very warm inside, and especially to me because she was, um that I grew up with and so my grandma was, was, um, sorry, my English is is a little bit all over the place at this time.
Nicole Kelly:Um, I speak one language. I'm not going to judge you though. I have to learn German for my doctorate, so that'll be fun. I'll just start yelling at my daughter in German. Your brain, you literally lose this again, something I did not believe, that my mother told me. Your brain dies, your part of your brain dies completely, and so my grandma had.
Shany Dagan-Kerem:I would say she was lucky, and the fact that I'm saying she was lucky is because the whole family survived. But it was not an easy time at all. I mean, they ran away from Romania Altogether. They were split along the way for a few years and then they found each other. And once they found each other she ran away with her brother, bruno, who also was sick in the meantime, and she took care of him. It seemed like he's not going to survive, and then eventually they were in the hide, so she was able to kind of take care of him, as they were hidden and it's kind of unknown how they survived, but they just ran from one ghetto to another. They were caught. They ran away again. They were caught again. They ran away again Because she was so pretty.
Shany Dagan-Kerem:She managed to hide her Jewishness, although she was very Jewish growing up. But she was able to have more food because the soldiers the Romanian soldiers and the Germans kind of fell in love with her. So she was really like lucky. Lucky is a big word to say in the Holocaust, but that was something that worked for her, the fact that she was so pretty, and so we keep talking about how pretty she was, because it was basically how she survived. And so after that, um, they decided to stay in romania, um, and they went back to the house.
Shany Dagan-Kerem:The house was not theirs anymore and it was ruined of course, and everything was taken and from being very rich and have this like very beautiful house, she kept talking about the piano. The piano was the grand piano and the living room it was all taken by Germans and nothing stayed and they become poor and they kind of don't know how to live. And she met my grandfather at the time and they stayed in Romania for three more years and after that they decided to move, to move to Israel, or like to take a boat to Israel, and that's how they survived and they just started the family in Israel, um, and so my grandfather, uh, emmanuel Dagan, he grew up in Odessa, um, and he actually grew up the exact opposite. It was very, very Russian. They call him the Russian, um, emmanuel and um, they were very poor. They actually split a house with another family, a very small house. Imagine a New York studio apartment. They needed two kind of.
Shany Dagan-Kerem:But he's talking about his life before the Holocaust a very happy home. The Holocaust, a very happy home, very warm, lots of food on the table, although they were not very able. I mean, his father kept on going to work and worked really hard and they had potatoes all the time and it was kind of a he remembers it very, very happy time, although it was very poor. And so the bombing kind of caught him in the middle of camp. He was a nine-year-old, and the reason why I say the bombing is because it just started. Bombs just fell, started to fall and it was just a crazy like sudden behavior. So he didn't really know what to do and he ran home and his parents didn't believe that something like the Holocaust can happen. They heard things. They heard that it started in Romania, it started in Germany. Jews are being killed and being taken out of the house. But his parents didn't believe that someone will do something like that and and they remember that I don't remember exactly the year, but I think it was 1930. There were a few Germans that lived nearby and they were friends with them, so they couldn't really imagine a world where those kind of people that they're friends with will become their enemies.
Shany Dagan-Kerem:So my grandfather, nine years old, said I think we need to run away. And his parents said no, no, no, we're going to stay. They're going to vouch for us because you know they're friends. And that was the point also in the show that he's deciding to leave the house and his mom says, okay, you can run away, just in case, kind of find, find a place to hide and he just take. He took his backpack and he just left a nine-year-old just walked away. So, um, after that he found out that his parents were killed, um, and it was just, uh, you know, he felt guilty that he didn't stay and, like, make them come with him a nine-year-old. So that's just a crazy, crazy. After that he just ran from one place to another and he was caught a few times being taken to working camps. But every time he was taken to a camp he managed to run away. He was very thin at the time so he jumped in between the I don't know what the name of it, but they were on the train.
Nicole Kelly:they had those sticks the bars on the windows. Thank, you. I've heard stories of people squeezing through the bars on the windows or people throwing their children out of the windows from the trains, which is also crazy. So he threw himself out of the bars and the windows, or people throwing their children out of the windows from the trains, which is also crazy.
Shany Dagan-Kerem:So he threw himself out of the bars in between the bars because it was so thin. He said he's kind of when we were a little older. He never spoke about it, but then we heard it during the testimony. So actually he changed his story three times, telling us because it was so horrible. The time that we actually found out what really happened was when he told the story to Yad Vashem, and we heard it after he passed the real story.
Shany Dagan-Kerem:So the stories that we wrote about him during our Avodah Chor Hashim at the age of 12, when we learned about the history, were not true. It was all his stories in a really nice way being told. So, yeah, he just jumped from the train, he ran away again, he, he worked for people to hide his um, jewish background and he said he was just, you know, a lonely boy who, um, doesn't have a family. It was quite, quite crazy, um. But the really interesting story is that he joined the partisans eventually, when he was 11. And that's kind of what saved him. So he was with the partisans, he was a soldier at 11 years old and they took care of him and put him into the Silvino house, which is a whole story as its own. Silvino children is a very there's a book about it, there's also a movie being done and it's basically refers to approximately like 810 children Jewish children that were taken to Israel after that. So it's a very interesting story and there are 810 stories there, so I suggest you go and read about it. But that's what saved him and he got to Israel and in Israel he was a very happy boy but a crazy one.
Shany Dagan-Kerem:So everyone kept calling him Emmanuel Abusi, which is the Russian Emmanuel, because he didn't know a word in in Hebrew, but he studied on its own and and his level of Hebrew was probably one of the highest levels because he studied from Torah and he just wanted to be the best, know the best, and he wanted to stop speaking Russian. He didn't want to have any connection to his past, he wanted to black it completely, so he only spoke Hebrew, very, very bad Hebrew, but he spoke only Hebrew and so that's how he kind of learned and he completely didn't want to remember anything that happened, and he was very quiet. When I was born I just remember that he barely spoke in, but you can see behind his eyes the love, and you know everything he wanted to say. He just gave big hugs. You knew how he felt, you know. So yeah, that's basically the story.
Nicole Kelly:Well, thank you all so much for sharing that. I want to ask, because we had mentioned intergenerational trauma your parents were all 2Gs, so do you think your parents were affected by what happened to their parents and did that affect how they raised you? John's grinning.
Jana Krumholtz:I love how we're both laughing at that, because if we don't laugh, we cry. But that's to be Jewish, that is to be Jewish.
Nicole Kelly:And that's why we make great comedians, because if we don't joke about things, we have to think about it, and then we cry. That's just culturally what we do.
John Reed:Oh, yeah, for sure, yeah, I definitely. What's really interesting, though, is that I think, at least from what my mom told me, she was very much. She was very sort of outspoken, very much a go-getter, was kind of seen as a little bit of a you know, she was a rebel and a hippie and she, you know, marched in the streets against Vietnam, and I think she was incredible. She was, you know, she was the activist of the family, was incredible. She was the activist of the family.
John Reed:But I had noticed that as me and my sister have come up and gotten older, and particularly, I think, she's been getting so much more scared in the last few years, because I think she always really thought that she, that, you know, we'll never experience such hate again, and my papa would always tell her history repeats itself all the time, and she, I think, yeah, fears for me and my sister's safety sometimes, even if it's actually not probably based in fact. But I think, yeah, there's definitely a feeling of, but I think, yeah, there's definitely a feeling of. You know, we have a mark on our back, always in some form, and you know I always used to sort of joke that she would see anti-Semitism everywhere, even when there wasn't there. And now I don't know if I agree with myself anymore.
Nicole Kelly:That's what I was with with my mom and I feel like I've told this story. I tell the story like every episode is I. One of my survival jobs in my twenties is I worked at white house, black market, the clothing store, and one of the women who worked there was like this retired woman who her husband had passed away and she she was Jewish and we were talking and she said I volunteer with the ADL and I said, oh, what's that? And she explained that it's an organization that studies and fights anti-Semitism and I said, well, why do we need that? Why is that necessary in 2009 or whatever year it was? And I was just at the ADL conference at the Javits Center and I'm like, yep, we need people fighting anti-Semitism. So I think we all you know we live in a post-october 7th world and, as people who grew up hearing about the holocaust and our parents experienced antisemitism.
Jana Krumholtz:It's really scary yeah, yeah, I I am. I am kind of, uh, I think I don't know, I don't know if I can, whatever, if I'm weird or not or if it's rare, but I have, like I dove in deep to to intergenerational trauma and like healing it in my own ways, from like I think I've been subconsciously doing it ever since I got out of my house.
Jana Krumholtz:Um, I think we all have some extent, but like very consciously doing it from the ages of like 25 till now, um, like on a hungry, desperate search, like spending every dollar I've ever made, on like body work and breath work and acupuncture, and you know um reading the books and talking, trying my my darndest to understand it. So I have spent a lot of time and I think I, I it was like an obsession of mine and I'm still figuring it out, um, and also know that I like there's nothing I don't need to figure it out, and you know you can only do what you can do.
Jana Krumholtz:But I guess the biggest eye opening things for me was like going to therapy and then just becoming aware of the anxiety that lived in my body and the fear that lived in my body on such a deep level when I hadn't I haven't like I had a, I had a blessed life, like I grew up really loved and beautifully, but there was such a deep level of of pain and fear in my body that came out by me running and like dating terrible people and making terrible decisions and then when I, you know, stopped to deal with it. So for me it was like physical ailments would come out, like I had IBS from the age of 10 until I went to therapy and acupuncture and then it went away when I like learned how to calm my nervous system down and then I like had, you know whether it's like a neck spasm or like you know so, my body maybe being a dancer, but my body really was my way in for like what, my what is all within me. And it's such a personal journey and I won't take because I can talk about it truly forever, but it's something I like avidly, I'm seeking to understand all the time, and sometimes to a fault, but I, you know my shows about it and it's, I think it's kind of the purpose of my, one of the purposes of my life, but just in what I love to do, and how that was, you know, not um. So the title of my show is six million Jews didn't die for you too.
Jana Krumholtz:Dot dot, dot Um. And it's something my grandmother said to me all the time and it it was, you know, a joke. But, and I never, I never understood the gravity of it. But I think my body did so like the first time. I remember her saying it was when I was like six or seven, and she'd say, like six million Jews didn't die for you to break your arm on the monkey bars, you know, like it was just this term that she'd throw out from fear and this crazy responsibility to live a safe, perfect life because we get to live.
Jana Krumholtz:So you know. And then it came out in high school when I had a Spanish boyfriend she would. She said six million Jews didn't die for you to date a Spaniard. And then she did say to me one day at dinner six million Jews didn't die for you to be a dancer. And it it was. It was like an off the cuff thing, but that you know I carried it with me and it it was internally doing what it did. So for me particularly, it was kind of my way. My art and intergenerational trauma are intertwined and, um, I'm so great. It's like such a weird thing to be grateful for now. But I understand. I understand it on so many different levels now as best I can. And my mother and I, my grandmother, passed away when I was 18.
Jana Krumholtz:So a lot started to change because she really had the stronghold on the family and she was also the best, and we were also so close and I was born on her birthday and she was. I was her favorite, you know, like so many wonderful memories with her too. But me and my mother have been able to have conversations where my mom said to me like Jan, I would never have been able to let you dance in that way while she was alive. Like my mother's life was devoted to what my grandmother wanted for her, and so you know, even as simple as like the clothing she'd wear. So we I'm very grateful that my mom is capable of evolving and opening up, because we've had some very healing conversations around what has now been possible.
Jana Krumholtz:Um, but it, I would say it has affected every ounce of the way I grew up, but specifically because my mother chose to never leave her parents, we grew up 10 minutes away from them. We saw them five times. You know, like, and there is so much gorgeousness that came from like. I want, you want to say intergenerational, like magic you know is also there.
Jana Krumholtz:But for me particularly, that has been become like my life's work to try to unravel, mainly just so I can keep transforming it, because that's what we all deserve for them to like the ones who didn't get to live free within their own beings.
Nicole Kelly:It's a lot of pressure, I think, not coming from this as a 3D, but I think just being a Jewish person in general is a lot of pressure because I think we carry thousands of years of people who got away, people who dealt with insane conditions and a lot of people I know. You know they're expected to adhere to a higher standard and that's a lot of pressure.
Shany Dagan-Kerem:Yeah.
Nicole Kelly:How about you, Shani?
Shany Dagan-Kerem:how about you, shani? Yes, 100 percent. Um, yeah, I agree with, with everyone. I mean, we all have that going through the generations, but I feel like we felt it mostly around the table when my grandma, for example. She kept like you have to finish your plate, and so, because they didn't have a lot to eat, obviously you have to finish your plate, and so my mom kept saying you have to finish your plate. And my mom is a person who, if she's going to hear this one, she's going to kill me. I know, I'm nervous.
John Reed:Now, you're fine, you're fine it's my mom doesn't listen to my podcast.
Nicole Kelly:I literally told her last night I am like practicing, my jewish mom goes. I was like it's fine, mom, I'm really, I know, I'm really. She laughed. I was like I know, I'm really funny. You'd know that if you listen to my podcast, I have more listeners in frankfurt, germany, than in the, the house that I up in, which is a fact that I or no, no, it's I have more listeners on some random Island in the Pacific ocean than more people than, than more than than people who live in the house that I grew up in and my mom's, like.
John Reed:I can't.
Nicole Kelly:I don't figure out how to do it. I was like, well, this has been going for a year and a half and I can, yeah.
John Reed:Here's the link. Yes, I know.
Shany Dagan-Kerem:Here's the information, if you would like to listen, it's fine, like I, but okay, so go ahead and say what you're gonna say. So, so, yeah. So I wanted to say that, um, my mom can go like one meal. My, my sister is always mad about it, but she can go one meal without having something for everyone. So, for example, it's Passover coming right, and so my sister is about to host, for the first time, the whole family.
Shany Dagan-Kerem:Unfortunately, we're not going to be there, but my mom is really on her ass about having tofu and like she doesn't need tofu. She doesn't need it. But my other sister eats tofu and she knows that her kids really like tofu. But there's no Passover kosher tofu and my sister needs everything to be kosher for Passover, and so we have a real big problem now because my mom is like how are we going to go through Passover without having tofu for the kids and for my other sister.
Nicole Kelly:This is the question the Jews have been asking for thousands of years how do you do Passover without tofu?
Shany Dagan-Kerem:It's so important because it's not like she eats salads, potatoes, chicken, everything else that they're going to have there, and I mean she has to have the tofu as well, and so that's kind of our story with every meal, like everyone needs to have everything, and if she doesn't have something that she knows someone likes she's really frustrated about it. And like we always have chicken and fish and like all the proteins. So you will make sure that she's going to make sure that you have everything you wanted and more, and you're going to have to finish your plate. So there's always too much, and I think that's because they didn't have enough and it went through this generation to pass to us. So that's one thing around the table.
Shany Dagan-Kerem:And then there's another thing that she always wanted us to be together in everything, and everything always has to be positive and happy, and everything always has to be positive and happy. And if it's not positive and happy, then it's like she's taking it really personally, and so I feel like that comes from they didn't have everyone together all the time. They lost people. We have to be together all the time. We have to be happy, because we need to be thankful for being alive, which I agree, but it's also impossible to be happy all the time my mother was five when her sister died.
Nicole Kelly:Her sister was, I think 11 or 12 and she has this like obsession with me and my sister getting along yeah. Yeah, she's obsessed with it, like you're only going to have each other when we're gone, blah, blah, blah, because it's like she lost this. So I can't imagine going through losing your entire family. It's just like. Obviously my life experience is very different, like my family story, but it's just so interesting how these things from your childhood, kind of you know, can affect your great-grandchildren. Oh, absolutely.
Shany Dagan-Kerem:And I feel it on me now. I mean I have the same problem. I say that I need everything to always be perfect and it's impossible for everything to always be perfect, and it's impossible for everything to always be perfect. And my husband is trying to tell me that he's like it's okay not to have everything as perfect as you think it should be, and so I can feel it going through the generations. My mom, I'm taking it now.
Nicole Kelly:I'm sure that my daughter will eventually eventually no, and it's even like my own childhood trauma, like my husband's always like don't put your childhood trauma on our daughter.
Jana Krumholtz:It's hard not to like it'll be there regardless, yeah and, like we're in a time where we're all hyper aware of it, it's become we're allowed to talk about it and see it and like we've become so privileged and comfortable in our lives we have the time and the luxury to talk about it all.
Jana Krumholtz:So it's a, it's the thing now, but it is impossible and I can't heal it all. We can't heal it all, but I do. I am very passionate about if, if and when you can have the privilege to become aware, like, what are you going to do about it? And you really, and it's a personal journey of and and and so I think that brings us to all of our projects. Like I I don't want to speak for you guys, but, um, if I can transform it in myself, that's, that's my, that's the only if I, if I care to, that's my responsibility. And to me, what transforming looks like is finding out who I really am underneath all of it and living as authentically as I can as me, with the beautiful, everything I've learned. But like, who am I? And I just think that's kind of an across the board human thing and I just think that's kind of an across-the-board human thing.
John Reed:You know from that and also actually from your mom's sister's story is again not to make it about me and my personal trauma, but I also did lose my dad when I was quite young and I feel like, funnily enough, ever since then there has been this need that everything needs to be, sort of. I feel like since then I developed an insane amount of impatience, essentially trying to get as much done as possible, and I think that's probably also true of you know, my mother was an incredible overachiever and I think there is something to that. When you have experiences or have intergenerational traumas, particularly with death and the idea of spending as much time as possible, you're trying to make every moment count. You don't want to waste any sort of moment, but what that also can mean is that you just run yourself into the ground. And so I have, I guess, this constant ticking time. You know ticking clock in my head trying to get shit done. Sorry to swear, but like as much as I can, because you know what happens when it's all gone, you know.
Jana Krumholtz:And the underlying thing, I think, is grief like for all humanity but especially for our, our tribe, you know this.
Jana Krumholtz:it's like when did they grieve? Did they grieve? When did our parents grieve about it? When have we grieved about like? And there's this running from the present that I felt in my you know, it was like how can we obsess about the food and the wait? Why aren't you all happy? And like what you were saying, shani, like how do we just? We're here, we're here, we have to be happy. But then there's some kind of there's so much pain in what happened.
John Reed:Yeah.
Shany Dagan-Kerem:I want to say awareness. I mean lack of awareness.
Jana Krumholtz:Yeah.
Shany Dagan-Kerem:We'd never talked about it, like in the.
Jana Krumholtz:Like what actually happened and how they actually felt and right. So you know this big thing but it's never been like you know.
Shany Dagan-Kerem:I also want to add oh yeah, sorry, sorry, nicole. I want to add that in our household, for example, therapy was not a thing.
Jana Krumholtz:It's like Not in mine either. Yeah.
Shany Dagan-Kerem:So I feel like I hear it in a lot of Jewish houses. I was in a Jewish. You don't need therapy.
Nicole Kelly:I was in a mom's group through the JCC and I said something like well, I talked about my psychiatrist. She's like you told them you go to a psychiatrist. I was like this is a. Jewish mom's group in the Upper West Side, Like we're all seeing psychiatrists. Like it's such a generational shame with the therapy and I'm like we're all in therapy.
Jana Krumholtz:We all need to be in therapy. They were so scared. They were just so scared. When I started going they were so they were like why Are you just talking about me? And I was like, well, yeah.
John Reed:They always want to know if you're talking about them?
Nicole Kelly:Yes, I am talking about you.
John Reed:Yes, I am.
Nicole Kelly:And then my mom started saying things like just blame me, just blame me for everything. Anyway, it's fine, just go ahead and blame me.
John Reed:Stop going, I will feel better if you blame me and stop going.
Jana Krumholtz:I also feel, Shany, that it is so. Culturally, israel and America could probably not be more different. The difference, too, about it all. For you, growing up in Israel, in a Holocaust survivor home, of course, I could just imagine it being more of a just get the thing done Like not I don't want to say warrior mentality, but like you're in Israel also, you're not in America. It's a different, you know.
Shany Dagan-Kerem:Yeah, yeah, I I agree and I think that I'm saying it as, unfortunately, I think that we, we are so used to being in such a crazy atmosphere, yeah Like but it's like oh, it's the norm.
Shany Dagan-Kerem:You know, I went to the army. It's like it was it's part, it's part of the norm. And I would even say like when I went back to during COVID time, say like when I went back to during COVID times and that there was all type of war starting, obviously, but there were some, some bombing and we needed to run to the shelter and I freaked out because I haven't been for a while under that normal situation. So my husband was like oh, it's fine, we have some time. I was like what do you mean? It's fine, we have some time. I was like what do you mean? It's fine. Like I took the whole house. I was like I need to take cookies with me. And he's like why are you taking the cookies? I was like I don't know if someone will you know, the sugar level will drop because they're nervous. And he's like it's fine, it's like two minutes you're in the like under um in the room and then you're coming back and I'm like what I'm?
Nicole Kelly:sorry, did you say two minutes?
Shany Dagan-Kerem:yeah, you're like two minutes, so I need to like run. I was just like I freaked out and then, as we kept going through the weeks and it kept happening, I was getting chill about it as well. I was like, oh okay, we have, we have two minutes, that's like, that's so long.
Nicole Kelly:That's how long you go I, because I've never been to. I know I've never been to israel and I'm ashamed to admit that. Um, but is that how long you when there's like it?
Shany Dagan-Kerem:depends. It depends where you are in the country. So, like, some areas you need to, you have five minutes to go in, some places you have 10 seconds, some places you have two minutes. Two minutes is is normal for like around tel aviv, for example. Um, it depends where you hear it from as well. Like, is that coming from the gaza area or is it coming from the northern area? Um, so yeah, but you see, like it was, I thought it was crazy how normal people felt about it. Like okay, we have to do it, but like it's fine, like you'll be there for a few minutes 10 minutes and then you're out again and you're like how do you just keep on going with your life right now?
Nicole Kelly:you know, I think people are very adaptable and something, because I was just reading this chapter about transit camps and I think the quote was we just got used to it talking about people dying and I think that people to get through things, they just get used to things and it becomes a normal.
Nicole Kelly:Yeah get used to things and it becomes a normal. Yeah, thank you so much for listening to part one of my two-part interview with the 3G Collective. So we have some exciting interviews, as well as informational episodes coming up in the next few weeks, so be sure that you're subscribing and also follow me on Instagram and my little baby TikTok. I've been posting a lot more videos, which I'm very excited about. I'm excited to see what the rest of the year brings. This is Nicole Kelly, and this has been Shebrew in the City.
