LETTERS From CAMP Rehoboth |
Booked Solid: After Long Silence |
by Rebecca James |
"Who are your enemies?" When she was a little girl, Helen Fremont asked her father to build her a tree fort so she and her sister could defend themselves from their enemies. Her father obliged but presented young Helen with this question, and she was surprised to discover that she could think of no one. What she did not realize was that her parents had made tremendous sacrifices to ensure that her childhood would be innocent of the terrors they grew up with. After Long Silence is the result of one womans dedication to the pursuit of truth. With painstaking diplomacy, Fremont has uncovered her familys hidden history: stories of incredible courage, stories about the price one pays for secrets, and the secrets one must keep to survive. Fremont was raised Roman Catholic in America. She knew that her parents were from Poland, and emigrated sometime after World War II. Little else was spoken about this period in her parents life; only vague references to bombs, prisons and persecution peppered her memory. It was not until adulthood that Fremont and her sister began to unearth the truth: they were actually Jewish. Her parents were separated as young lovers, each went through their own versions of Nazi-inspired hell only to be reunited years later through what can only be described as fate. Unfortunately, Fremont recognizes that the characteristics that made her parents fall in love were replaced by a shared history of silence and endurance. They understood the masks that the other donned to escape and survive, and they understood how impossible it was to rid themselves of those masks, even years later. Fremont frequently acknowledges her amazement at her parents survival. "When local supplies grew thin, my mother grew more daring. She went to Nazi headquarters and bummed rides to Abruzzi and Tuscany with military transports. "You went to the Germans?" I asked. "Wasnt that risky?" "Oh, no," my mother said. She waved her hand absentmindedly, as if shooing a gnat. "Ive never been able to imagine the war correctlymy wide-eyed questions, half-whispered reverence scoffed at by her dismissive sweep of the hand, lips pulled back in a mocking pucker. "I spoke fluent German, you know," she said. "And those German soldiers stationed in Rome, they were delighted to have someone to talk to." Indeed, it was her mothers amazing versatility that enabled her to escape. At times dressed as a soldier, other times as an Italian or German, she became fluent in six different languages and a master of hiding her fear behind the names and faces she created. As she unfolds layer upon layer of history, Fremont learns to see her parents as people, as survivors. She struggles to understand the decisions they made to protect her and her sister from the truth, and why those decisions were just as much for their own protection. Throughout the book, Fremont takes the reader back to the developing war in Europe, and pieces together accounts of immense emotional strength, intelligence and luck. She then acclimates the history into her own developing identity as a Jew, all the while struggling to understand her mothers growing anger at having her past exposed. Fremonts father, on the other hand, seems eager to tell his daughter their history, but does not want to disturb her mother. Slowly, she discovers that he, too, suffered at the hands of the Nazis. Imprisoned in Gulag, Siberia for over six years, he escaped with nothing more than his thin skin pulled over brittle, undernourished bones. "Actually, its debatable whether my father has ever really gotten out of the Gulag, whether anyone does...The Gulag stays in a person. It pops out at unexpected moments, at the dinner table, or while sitting around the Christmas tree." Her father once received two beautiful belts as a Christmas gift from one of his patients. He recalled faintly how in the Gulag, where items such as belts and buttons were confiscated to prevent suicide, they would have been the "richest gift in the world, the ability to hang [himself] twice over." The ability of human beings to survive insurmountable odds has been proven through the countless stories of holocaust survivors. Fremonts discoveries are different: she examines the aftermath, the effect on ones psyche and on generations to come. She examines what happens After Long Silence. Through this process, Fremont decides that she must tell her parents her own truth: she is a lesbian. After Long Silence is not a book about coming out, though. It goes much deeper, and spans all experiences with family secrets, self-discovery, and protective love. Few readers will emerge from this encounter without a more profound understanding of intricate family histories. Using her talents as writer and biographer, her compassion as a daughter, and her ability to so effectively convey a message, Fremonts story resonates through the lives of each and every one of us. A fascinating read. AFTER LONG SILENCE, Helen Fremont, memoir. Delacorte Press, 1999, 319 pp, $23.95. |
LETTERS From CAMP Rehoboth, Vol. 9, No. 6, June 4, 1999 |