once and for all
By DANE ROBERT SWANSON Special to the Daily Press
History doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Ask Liliane Pelzman, author of the book “And No More Sorrow.” the story of her mother’s concentration camp experience, and she will tell say history intersects with the present.
For her mother, Sonja Cohen, it all began when she was 21. It was Sunday, June 20, 1943, as Pelzman records it in her book. Sonja was on her way to work and found herself included in the last roundup of Jews in Holland, thrown into an army truck and deported to camp Westerbork in the Netherlands. From there, in 1944, she along with her first husband, Herman Rosenstein, were transported by cattle car to Theresienstadt, a concentration camp in Czechoslovakia. Later she was transported to Auschwitz in Poland where she was held until the end of the war in 1945.
“What got her through the war,” Pelzman said, ”was the love for her family.”
Sonja lost her family in the Holocaust, including Herman. After the war she married Maurits Kiek, a Jewish anti-Nazi war hero and had four children.
Liliane was born in 1953, seven years after the war. Along with her two brothers and a sister she grew up with a mother who lived as if the past were the present. This atmosphere drove Liliane from Holland at the age of 17.
“Until recently,” she recounts in her book, “I resisted listening to my mother’s stories about her journey, her war experiences and her concentration camp accounts. I would not listen to her stories of the war. As far back as I can remember I tried to banish her stories from my conscious.”
When asked why she wrote this book, she said that once we know our parents’ stories we tend to forgive them. She took on this subject as a catharses. She needed to know what went on so that she could answer questions that others asked her. She found that the story needed to be told to put the puzzle pieces together.
“It takes three or four generations to get something as traumatic as that out of your system,” she said. “I want to reach the kids. We have to reach out to our kids. We need to be responsible for their emotional health.”
It took six years to put this book together. From 2000 to 2006 she would often phone her mother back in Holland to piece together details of her horrific story. She must have made AT&T very happy.
Pelzman has a dream. Her dream is to have schools put this book on their recommended reading list. It is presently on the reading list for the UCLA undergraduate course for Dutch Language and Culture.
She also has a dream to reach out to schools and churches. For this purpose she has made herself available to talk to any school or church. She through her Web site at www.andnomore-sorrow.com.
Pelzman has a master’s degree in broadcast journalism from USC. She has written for TV Guide and has been a producer for European television.
Her book can be purchased online at Amazon.com. It is available locally at Village Books located at 1049 Swarthmore Ave., in Pacific Palisades. For information, call (310) 454-4063.
DANE ROBERT SWANSON also writes book reviews for the Daily Press.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on February 8, 2008. Read the original PDF.