The seniors in my memoir classes have clever ways of letting me know when they disapprove of a writing topic. Wanda groaned when I assigned “in-laws,” and she returned the next week with a colorful essay about a second cousin once removed who’d spent much of his adult life in and out of prison. I could hear her mischievous grin as she finished reading her essay, plopped her paper on the table and declared, “he was an outlaw!” Janie wasn’t crazy about the topic, either. She came back with a piece she wrote about her decision to forego law school after college. She did not end up, ahem, in law.
Myrna’s mother-in-law Hedwig is on the left. That’s Henry, Hedwig’s son and Myrna’s husband, on the right. And that’s baby Elizabeth being held by Hedwig. Taken in 1962.
Myrna Knepler was one of the very, very, few students who opted to use the assignment to write about her mother-in law.
Myrna’s Husband Henry was only 16 when he said goodbye to his mother and father in Vienna and boarded the Kindertransport (children’s transport), the effort that saved 10,000 Jewish children from the Holocaust. Henry’s father died in the Auschwitz concentration camp. His mother — Hedwig — survived by hiding In an unheated cabin in the Vienna woods, owned by an anti-Nazi family who sheltered her there. Hedwig would not reunite with Henry, her only child, until he was 24 years old.
Myrna would get to know Hedwig Knepler a decade later, after marrying Henry. From Myrna’s essay:
Although she had proved both mental and physical sturdiness, she was thin and bent in a way that made her seem fragile and untouchable. Certainly her life experience was beyond anything I knew, in some ways so terrible I was afraid to touch it.
Moreover, I sensed the tension between her and my husband, her son. I, his new, much younger wife, wanted above all to please him. He loved his mother, but was troubled by what seemed to be her almost obsessive concern for him, a concern more appropriate to the mother of a young boy, than to a balding assistant professor in his late thirties.
Myrna wrote that her conversations with her mother-in-law were awkward until Myrna and Henry had their first daughter, Elizabeth.
Then for the six months between Liz’s birth and Hedwig’s death, talk was easier, focused on our mutual love for and wonder at this new creature, the grandchild she never expected to have.
Hedwig died in 1962, leaving Myrna and Henry to sort through a box of letters Hedwig and Henry had exchanged before and after the war. The letters were written in German (a language Myrna does not know well) and stored in their attic for years. The only time Myrna and her husband Henry opened the cardboard box together, they closed it up right away and put it back on the shelf. The material inside was too painful for Henry to read.
Henry died in 1999, and before his death, when he was too ill to deal with the letters himself, Myrna realized that they were now her responsibility. She unpacked nearly one thousand pages of letters — all typed single-spaced and to the edge of the page — and started sorting them by date to donate to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. In exchange, the museum would translate and make copies for Myrna and her daughters.
The translated letters trickled back to Myrna over a span of six years, and after reading them all Myrna was able to piece together stories of how her mother-in-law helped a brother immigrate safely to Argentina. She read heartbreaking details of her mother-in-law’s attempts to help her mother and aunt, who were already interned. They did not survive. Myrna’s mother-in-law wrote about her own struggles to support herself. About how she starved. How she helped save others. About how, in the end, some of the people she saved ended up helping her.
The original letters Myrna’s mother-in-law exchanged with Myrna’s husband are now preserved in a vault outside of Washington, D.C., where scholars can access them. Myrna ended her essay about the letters with a question. “Could I ever be as brave, as self reliant, as helpful to others as she was?” I would say yes, Myrna, you could. I just hope you are never, ever put to the test the way your mother-in-law was.
Beautiful!
Of course these words made me cry and I agree with you Beth, Myrna is a strong and most wonderful person. She was the first to offer her help when I first came to your class and I have always been touched by her gentleness. I feel blessed to know her and her mother-in-law’s story.
Thank you for sharing it with all of us.
Annelore
Thanks Annelore,
I haven’t been in the same class with you for a while, but would home to see you again.
Myrna, the longer I am in Beth’s class, the more a thought enters my mind: am I becoming involved more deeply with the past of my native country? It is one thing to read the stories of strangers, and they are just as horrifying, but to personally know those who have so greatly suffered can be overwhelming. I am grateful to have this experience. It must be one of the reasons I joined this class.
Hope to meet again soon.
Annelore
What a moving story. Myrna is not just a great writer, but a brave woman. Like her mother-in-law, I too survived a genocide – in Rwanda. A week before that happened I read Schindler’s List and like Myrna, wondered if I could be as brave as the person in the story. A week later i had refugees knocking at my door asking for sanctuary. What could I do but take them in. People are always telling me i should write a book about this, but I think it would be too painful. The people I hid did not survive. A shame and sorrow I live with to this day.
Hava, I’m not sure *anyone* should write a book, it’s a lot of work! I wonder if you might consider sitting down and writing a short essay about what happened to you and your refugees in Rwanda, though? I’ve found that writing about difficult things can be therapeutic, and if you limit yourself to just 500 to 1000 words you wil have a smaller project, something you can actually get finished. I know from the comments you leave here that you are a good writer and will take time to find just the right word to express yourself. Doing that, searching for just the right word, makes you think hard about how you feel and what you want to say about it = therapeutic! I can’t say enough about how much writing helped me in my early days of blindness, and I think the writers in the memoir classes I lead would agree that some of the things they put down on paper have helped them “process” difficult events from their past. I can sometimes hear relief – and hope — in their voices when they finish reading one of their more difficult essays aloud in class.
I may email you separetly – perhaps we have another guest blogger in our future – we could publish your essay here when you’re done.
Perhaps I should Beth – drag out all those memories i keep trying to repress and put them down on paper. Maybe it would help me deal with this. Thank you Beth and Kim and Lori and most of all Myrna, for telling her mother-in-law’s story in your class. Her example is something I should try to emulate. She obviously loved her mother-in-law very much to have written about her and had her letters translated in order to know her better.
This is amazing stuff! So impressed that Myrna had the insight to donate her mother’s-in-law letters to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum allowing others with a personal view into history. That Senior Writing Group is full of history. I know it’s been discussed before. Time to publish these memoirs. They’re too good!
Oh, the tears flowed when I read Myrna’s essay. No wonder you love teaching the seniors memoir class, Beth. Your fabulous students are teaching YOU. Tell Myrna that she rocks!
To Hava above. Please don’t allow yourself to live with shame. I can tell from your thoughtful posts here that you’re a caring, considerate person. Feel grief for the people you tried to help but remember that you didn’t kill them. You did all that you could in horrific circumstances. I’m so sorry.
We all connect to the Holocaust story is so many ways and clearly your story maintains that connection and connects us all together. I never tire of that connection. And it helps in mourning the senseless losses of then and beyond.
And I too want to encourage Hava to ‘chin up’. I cannot imagine the sacrifices you may have endured without considering them sacrifices. We do what we can and feel is right. I am truly sorry for your loss and hope that you forgive yourself someday.
Wow, Today’s post is, I don’t have the words to express it. I signed up to get email notifications each time you post a new blog and went right out there to read it as soon as I received the notification.
What a story. Thanks for posting it.
How wonderful that all Myrna’s family’s letters will now be accessible to a wider audience than just her family.
You must enjoy reading the senior memoirs when they are handed in. They seem to be not only great writers, but share interesting pasts and experiences.
It’s even better than that, Maria. The writers don’t hand their essays in, nor do they email them to me. They just bring them to class and read them out loud. Soooooo great to hear each of these writers tell their stories In their own voice, and you can just imagine the class’ reaction when Myrna finished reading this one aloud.
Thanks for all your comments.
I think my major motive for donating the letters was so they could be translated and so I could come closer to Hedwig by knowing her story in her own words. (My husband Henry’s story too as a young man.) I wanted my daughters and granddaughters to have that opportunity too.
My best to all my fellow memoir writers, those whom I’ve have met in Beth’s classes throughout the years, and those I only know from comments on the blog.
Myrna
What a great post. I loved it for so many reasons. Beth, thank you for bringing this, as well as so many other thoughtful and thought-provoking stories, insights, and ideas, to all of us who follow Safe & Sound.
Those letters left a powerful legacy. Not enough people write letters, especially today, much less preserve them. You are fortunate to get to know your mother law better through these letters. My mother saved letters from my grandfather whom I never knew but learned a lot about him from his letters to her. Myrna, thank you for your powerful essay and Beth, thanks for sharing it with us.
Audrey
Nancy and Audrey, it is truly my pleasure to share these stories. Thank you for reading and letting me know you appreciate them
And as for writing letters, I have to agree. While putting this blog post together I wondered if the story would be as dramatic and moving if someone had been sorting through email messages left by her mother-in-law on a computer screen…
Between my tears in reading the words of Myrna’s essay excerpts, I see such a beautiful story unfolding here, not only the life, struggles and strength of Myrna’s mother-in-law, Hedwig, but of so many others. Those words, now forever preserved, will help so many understand the strength of the human spirit during an unimaginable place in time. And, it does not stop there. Myrna’s story, along with Beth’s encouraging words, seems to have inspired Hava. If Hava does decide to take on a short essay, I am sure her words will touch others, as well. Words are powerful! It is touching to see this story of “paying it forward” evolve here. Thank you so much for sharing, Beth!
Amen!
Dear Beth thank you so much for sharing Myrna’s story and all the wonderful coments..I have had the privledge of knowing Myrna and being a recipent of her caring for others;;Please keep the sharing going. Jean
Will do, I promise!
You are so right — it *is* a privilege to have Myrna as a friend. And speaking of friends I have been privileged to know, we all miss you in class, Jean, and hope things are going well for you in California.
[…] for years. Hava is retired after a career in the diplomatic service, and after reading a recent post here about a Holocaust survivor, she commented that she, too, had survived a genocide — it happened when she’d been […]
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