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Feature Story
A Holocaust Journey...
Tearing Down the Fence Between Hate and Forgiveness
A Conversation with Faith Feldman
by Sydney L. Murray
Pondering on the theme of forgiveness, I found myself considering the people throughout history who had the most to forgive. Initially, I thought of the Native Americans who were killed by Europeans in their quest to settle North America. Next I grieved for the African-American slaves that were brought from Africa to work the great plantations of the Southern United States. And then there was the greatest act of genocide of all time when Jewish people were massacred during World War II, otherwise known as the Holocaust. I was recently introduced to the book written by Faith Feldman entitled, Inherited Enemies, Through My Father’s Eyes–A Holocaust Journey…Tearing Down the Fence Between Hate and Forgiveness. This book is a heartfelt account of a woman’s journey to understand herself and her heritage while offering that understanding to others. Recently I had the opportunity to speak with her about her experience with forgiveness.
Vision Magazine: What led you to this journey?
Faith Feldman: My journey toward forgiveness began when I was bothered with myself. Do you ever just not like yourself? Well, I didn’t and I realized my life was not how I wanted it to be. I began reading spiritual books and going on special adventures. Yes, I had a beautiful marriage, children, a house and more. Yet on a spiritual level, I was not connected to my heart. I would see my father’s anger, how he conducted his life and treated others and realized I was doing the same. I was looking into a mirror and not liking myself at all. That’s why the subtitle of my book is “Through My Father’s Eyes.” I lived my life through his eyes. He couldn’t help himself. I love him and will always feel his pain. But I realized I can help myself and be responsible for who I am.
I found myself being very uptight and not a loving or compassionate person because that is how I was taught. My father was like this because of his history. At least he has an excuse, but I don’t. Still this illustrates what happens when you are living with a Holocaust survivor or somebody that has had anything terrible happen to them. These people can hold onto bitterness and pass it onto the next generation. I identified myself as the daughter of a Holocaust victim and that was always my excuse for my anger. Somehow I knew I needed to do something about it. I realized that I had to commit to trying to work things out in that area.
VM: What steps did you take to work through your anger?
FF: I attended a group called Second Generation, made up of children of Holocaust survivors. I went to these meetings and thought it would be therapeutic for me. Then I noticed that the people there were even angrier than their own parents.
Next I was invited to an event about a documentary entitled, German-Jewish Dialogue. This organization brings together children of survivors and children of Nazis to have a dialogue. The children of the Nazis were in so much pain knowing what their families did that they were crying. Pain is pain. They were in the same kind of pain that I was in. I had to walk out because I never knew that that pain existed.
So I went on with my life. One day my daughter came home from school and told me she’d had an incident where one of the other students threw a penny on the ground and said, “Pick it up, Jew.” This broke my heart. I had never wanted to keep my kids in a Jewish neighborhood because just staying with your own is very typical of fear. I always felt we had to go out of the box and be together with other types of people. Therefore, we moved to an area that was not predominantly Jewish.
I had this passion to tell people how these experiences hurt me or my daughter. I also wanted to share my father’s experience, but I didn’t know how to do it. Finally I put together a workshop for high school kids about my experience. Then my father was interviewed by the University of Southern California Shoah Foundation Institute to become part of their Visual Histories Archives project. www.college.usc.edu/vhi/
This gave me an idea. Wouldn’t it be great to add this video to whatever facts these kids were learning about WWII? It would give them the opportunity to see a person who went through the horrors of this war. The workshop got bigger and bigger. I found children of color and other religions, and I got them to come up to the class to talk about what happened to them or their families. It became a very interactive workshop. I realized at that point that I was really making a change in a lot of the kids’ lives. I talked about the pain I was in, and they got to see others going through the pain of discrimination.
But I wasn’t done yet. I still had work to do. I remembered the documentary I had seen with the German-Jewish Dialogue and I was determined to find it because I wanted to add it my workshop. While I was searching for it I found the man that was a facilitator of one of the dialogues. I contacted him and he asked me if I was willing to be part of the dialogues. I froze. I got scared because I didn’t know if I wanted to face anyone affiliated with the Nazis. Nonetheless I knew I had to go forward with it.
He set me up with a son of an SS Officer [SS stands for Schutzstaffel. Literally it means “protective squad”]. It was an amazing experience. I wanted to hate him so badly. Remember, this was at the beginning of my healing process. But I couldn’t hate him. We had a German-Jewish dialogue and he was very loving and compassionate. He apologized for his relatives and said he was ashamed for what the Germans had done. A lot of that is in my book. We became friends.
Still I felt like I was betraying my family. Betrayal is a big issue during the process of forgiveness. You feel like you want to hold onto the anger for the sake of others involved. Or even if you’re working on forgiving yourself, it’s the same feeling of either betraying others or yourself. I was in great conflict with the question of how to forgive yet remain loyal to my family. That’s where the determination and courage comes in. I was tired of living an angry and bitter life. I could forgive but I could not forget.
Forgiveness is a gift of freedom! It’s a big part of a healing process. Hurt and pain dissipates. It allows us to become who we really are. Whether you or someone you love has been hurt, we naturally carry the pain with us everywhere we go. The hurt colors our world. Without forgiveness we live in a prison and will never find peace.
VM: How has forgiveness changed your life?
FF: It has opened so many more doors for me. I am able to live inside myself in a much more joyful way. I don’t have that anger and my life has just been more peaceful. And I am not so defensive at the times when someone pushes a button in me. I stop and think about it. I have more compassion for others. I’ve noticed my relationships, whether at work or with friends, are so much more enriched. And at the same time, I’ve helped others where before I couldn’t.
VM: Are your workshops conducted mostly in high schools?
FF: Yes, the high schools in the area I was living in were doing lessons on WWII. But my workshop focuses on more than the Holocaust; it is about discrimination issues as well. My main objective is to teach respect. We’re all human beings with feelings, no matter what our gender, color, religion or background is.
I have had children speak out about discrimination issues they have experienced. In the video that was produced by Shoah, my father was interviewed about his childhood, and then went on to tell his Holocaust story. I explained to the children how this genocide not only affected my father, but my brother, me, and my children as well. Hate crimes and discrimination do not only affect the victims. It’s like a domino affect. The visuals with the video and the other children’s stories make it real for these students. If anything, I plant a seed of respecting people of all kinds because we’re all one! I see change in a number of the children, which is very gratifying.
VM: What advice do you have for people who want to find forgiveness in their lives?
FF: Letting go of pain is a key to attaining happiness. Even more so is learning how to forgive. Neither of these things, unfortunately, will happen—for me, you or anyone else—overnight.
Forgiveness in particular is a difficult thing, a process that takes an enormous amount of time and effort to achieve. Though it’s more in our human nature to want to change people whose behaviors we don’t like, anyone who’s tried that can tell you that it’s always a losing proposition. You just can’t change those who don’t want to do it for themselves.
So instead, you have to start with yourself. Look at your defense mechanisms, the old emotions that you fall back on when times get tough. What in your own world, in your own mindset, is creating hate, anger and resentment—the core components of most people’s misery? Once you can identify these things and work on ridding your life of them, you will be on your way toward healing, forgiveness, and happiness.
Maybe my current viewpoint comes simply from being older and wiser; though none of us want to admit it while we’re young, perspective does come with age, and what seems like the end of the world at 20 might seem very different a couple of decades later. Years of seeking truth, praying for guidance and processing my every thought and action has led me to believe that we all come to this earth with the same natural instinct to love and be loved, and that hatred is nothing but an aberration. All the things I have gone through in my life, especially my journey toward healing, have made this abundantly clear to me—more so than I ever would have imagined as a child, when I was taught that fear and violence were the inherent ways of the world.
But out of that, against what I once thought were incredible odds, I found my way to forgive, and the joy it brought my life has been immeasurable. Not every moment is perfect, but each day brings new light and hope to my world. Truly, what more could I ask for?
Faith Feldman conducts workshops that deal with descrimination, hate crimes and forgiveness. For more information contact her at u2havefaithbks@aol.com or visit www.arborbooks.com.