Biography
Sonia Pilcer was born in the Landsberg Displaced Persons camp in Germany. Her parents went there after they were liberated. Originally from Lodz, Poland, they met in Czestochowa after the war. Her father had survived Auschwitz, her mother, a labor camp in Czestochowa. They arrived with their baby daughter on the General Hersey in New York City harbor.
Although she has published four previous novels, which include TEEN ANGEL, MAIDEN RITES, LITTLE DARLINGS, and I-LAND: Manhattan Monologues, none of them dealt with the Holocaust and her family's history.
After living in Hollywood and working on the screenplay of her novel TEEN ANGEL with Garry Marshall, Pilcer returned to New York to research the book she always knew she would write.
In 1982, while living in Israel and teaching at the Hebrew University, she began THE HOLOCAUST KID. Little did she know it would take almost twenty years, five literary agents, and rejections from forty houses before THE HOLOCAUST KID would see the light of day. It is published by Persea Books (2001).
Pilcer writes about what she knows most intimately and painfully: post-Holocaust life of the survivors, how their experiences during World War II shaped them, and its impact on herself and other members of the Second Generation. In revealing the ways the Holocaust still lives, fifty-six years after liberation, Pilcer enlarges our conception of this century's cataclysmic event.
Interview with
Sonia Pilcer
What is '2G'?
'2G' is shorthand for the Second Generation, children of Holocaust survivors. There are about a quarter of a million of us around the world. Though born after the war, many of us carry psychological scars as if we'd actually been there. My new book 'THE HOLOCAUST KID' explores the ways in which the threads of the past weave in and out of our lives.
Can you give me an example?
Many of us are named after murdered relations. I am named Sonia, after my mother's mother who died in Treblinka, and my father's mother, Hannah, who died in Auschwitz. My brothers carry our parents' fathers' and brothers' names. We were the 'miracles' born after so much pain and suffering. Though most of our parents tried to spare us, the trauma of the Holocaust lives through us. I try to show some of the ways in which this manifests in 'THE HOLOCAUST KID.'
Did you parents speak about their experiences during the war?
Actually, they did. I know that there were many 'families of silence' where the Holocaust and dead relatives names could not be mentioned. But my parents, especially my mother, often told stories as did their circle of survivor friends. Their tales were not told dramatically. Actually the delivery was very matter-of-fact like talk of the weather. Someone would remember an incident and just tell it. I wrote in my essay '2G' that many of the survivors had been high school age and often they reminisced, especially when they got together, as if they were at a reunion and recalling their classmates.
Why did take you so long to write about your family's history?
Honestly, I was afraid of exploiting what happened to my parents. I wanted to make my reputation as a writer divorced from the Holocaust. Also, I felt that I had to develop a level of craft and discipline in order to tackle this difficult material.
Could some people consider the title 'The Holocaust Kid' offensive?
I've heard that before, but hopefully the title THE HOLOCAUST KID will make people stop and think. Much of what is written about the Holocaust is scholarly, reverent, often depressing. I am trying to bring some fresh air into what has become a stale monument. Besides, I am also writing from the viewpoint of a kid - who happens, like myself, to have been born as part of a huge baby boom in a displaced persons camp after WWII.
When did you begin 'The Holocaust Kid'?
I'm tempted to say the day I was born. But the truth is that we came to the States when I was a year and a half, and mainly, I was preoccupied with becoming an American girl with cool clothes and friends. It wasn't until high school - I attended Music and Art High School - that I had an English teacher, Miss Steinbach, who started me writing. My maiden effort was, of course, about a Polish Jewish family, trying to live in NYC amidst poverty and great tension at home. I actually began the book in 1982 during a year I spent living in Israel. The book was completed in 1984, but it took eighteen years (chai - a beshert number!), five literary agents and over 40 rejections to find a publisher for the book.
Why do you think there were so many rejections?
For many years, no one seemed to want to hear what I had to say.
Rejection after rejection (I stopped counting after 40) said very non-literary things like: "Haven't her parents been through enough already? Why does she want to make them suffer more?" or "The parents are great characters, but we don't like the female protagonist. What is her problem?" or "The writer has obviously not worked through her issues about the Holocaust." Finally, I found Persea, a small independent publisher, who originally published Anzia Yezierska, the first Yiddish woman writer translated in this country.
The stories are called autobiographical. Are they true?
Truth is a funny word for a fiction writer. I write stories because I want the freedom to explore not just what actually happened, but what it felt like, what my fantasies were, the magical "What if" I currently teach a course called "Blatantly Autobiographical Fiction" -- to protect the innocent and guilty, I tell my writing students. I suppose I look for a greater, more universal truth than ordinary reality.
You've published four novels. Why is 'The Holocaust Kid' a collection of stories?
It was a novel for many years. But a good novel requires a certain narrative form including a satisfactory resolution. I realized that it was in the nature of this material that there was no satisfactory resolution. Stories also allowed me to explore more different aspects of '2G' because I was not committed to a single plot.
How do your parents feel about the book?
Ambivalent, I'm sure. They're proud of me and they know how hard I've worked, but they also feel exposed and somewhat embarrassed, I'm sure, by its content. I've often thought a good curse might be: "May your son/daughter become a writer!"
