There's a Lesson in Here Somewhere
There’s a Lesson in Here Somewhere is a podcast hosted by Jamie Serino and Peter Carucci that features exceptional people that have compelling stories to tell. Whether it’s a unique perspective, an act of kindness, an inspirational achievement, a hardship overcome, or bearing witness to a captivating event, these are stories that must be heard, and from which we can draw important lessons.
There's a Lesson in Here Somewhere
Unraveling Hidden Family History: The Impact of the Holocaust and Intergenerational Trauma
What would you do if you received an email that unraveled a hidden chapter of your family history? Join us as we embark on a powerful and emotional journey with Michael Hickins, former Wall Street Journal reporter and author of 'The Silk Factory.' A mysterious email from a nephew he'd never known sets Michael on a path to uncover his family's past, which intertwines with the Holocaust, as he learns of a silk factory that was in his family for generations until his father was imprisoned in a concentration camp. Michael travels with his family to Ansbach, Germany, to learn more about the silk factory and the tragic impact of the Holocaust on his parents. This episode explores the importance of sharing our personal stories, uncovering our roots, and understanding the sources of painful experiences at both the individual and collective levels that can be passed along as intergenerational trauma.
As Michael digs deeper, he confronts the emotional complexities of reconnecting with a painful past. His travels to Ansbach, where he finds scarce Jewish historical markers, and Wiesbaden, where historians document his family's deportation, highlight the stark contrasts in how societies choose to acknowledge and remember. The conversation broadens to include his father's harrowing wartime experiences and the post-war mystery of the family's silk factory, painting a poignant picture of survival, loss, and unresolved legacies. Through this narrative, we navigate the intersections of memory, identity, and the weight of history on personal lives.
As we discuss concepts such as epigenetics and intergenerational trauma, we explore how societal acknowledgment—or lack thereof—can influence healing. Michael shares his reflections on his father's hidden fury and its influence on his life, offering insights into how visiting historical sites and engaging with family narratives can aid in breaking cycles of inherited trauma. We discuss the transformative power of storytelling and the crucial role of societal recognition in fostering a healthier future, offering hope that understanding one's roots can lead to healing for future generations.
You can get The Silk Factory here: https://a.co/d/bxK4y9N
Michael's Amazon author page: https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B0C2WMNFC4
Michael’s personal blog: https://michaelmissing.com/
Hello and welcome to, There's a Lesson in here Somewhere. I'm Jamie Serino and I'm Peter Carucci, and we're here today with Michael Hickins, a former Wall Street Journal reporter and the founder of the CIO Journal, actually, and an author since 1991, written a bunch of books and novels, and he's recently written a book called the Silk Factory, and that's what we're going to talk about here today. It delves into Michael's history Thank you, peter and it intertwines with the Holocaust and it's really an amazing story. So we're going to dive into that, michael.
Michael Hickins:Thank you for joining us today it's funny because you say intertwined, and that's really a good way of describing what happened. Um, I've come to find after the book has been published, and I've gotten a lot of really positive feedback about it. Um, it resonates with a lot of people in my generation, which is that, um, our parents um went through the Holocaust and then, you know, told us almost nothing about it, and so it's kind of been up to us to discover, in a lot of cases, the roots of the trauma that we've felt and not even really had a sense of. Like. Where is this?
Michael Hickins:Why am I so damn angry? My life's pretty good, um and of like, why am I so damn angry? My life's pretty good, and you know, it came about by accident. As I recounted the story, I one day got an email from somebody that I didn't know, and the subject line intrigued um. Intrigued me because it said um, uh, my grandmother was Vivian Bronstein Castillo Hickens. Um, and the reason that intrigued me is because Vivian Bronstein Castillo Hickens is my mother. I'm like, wait a minute, you're, you know your grandmother is, but I don't know who you are. You are, um, and it turned out that it was, um, the nephew, a nephew of mine, um, from a half brother that I have never met, and that's part of the story as well and and they didn't, and they didn't want you to send them ten thousand dollars to to some, no, and what's funny is the first reaction when I tell people that is how much money did he ask?
Michael Hickins:but he asked for nothing. What he asked for, um, was did I have a photograph of his father? Because he had never met his father either. And wow, my mother having recently died, um, I had this box in my basement and she'd always said to me when I die, there's this box you gotta look at. The'd always said to me when I die, there's this box, you've got to look at the box. So when she died, I looked at the box. I was, you know, half hoping maybe there was like a million dollars in there or something. Um, there was, you know, a, a, a bunch of memories. I, you know there was old report cards and photographs of people that some of that I didn't know, and, you know, drunk. And then you know, life is going on. I have a kid and I'm like you know, I'll get to look at this box at some point, but not now, and I put it in my basement. Here comes this guy who wants a photograph of his father.
Michael Hickins:And I'm like, oh, I know it's probably in the box, Right. So I go to the box. I find a picture of his dad as a as a little kid. But I also find these incomprehensible clues, um, photographs of road signs, of places I've never heard of, like who takes a photograph of a road sign unless it's meaningful. Right Millon in France, a picture of a guy in a mayoral garb, signed, you know, to Max, with friendship. But I'd never heard of this guy and Max is my father's name. So I'm like, what is all this stuff? And so I send Lewisis, my newfound nephew, the photograph that he wants.
Michael Hickins:But in the meantime I'm like googling all these places and names, um, and I'm trying to find. Um, I find a, a, a business card with a Astor Place address, and it's got, you know, one of those old New York time, old, ye, olde New York phone numbers, you know, with a Murray Hill 4-3-7-5, right, I'm like, what is this? And I so it's. Obviously my father's maternal grandfather was Edward Kupfer, and this was a business card for someone with Kupfer as the last name. So I'm like, oh, this must have been a cousin. Again, I didn't know we had cousins in New York.
Michael Hickins:So I'm like Googling and I don't find the Kupfer in New York, and I kind of broaden the search and I find a website for the Kupfer silk factory in Ansbach, germany. Ansbach is where my father grew up. I knew that his family owned a silk factory before the Nazis took it away. And here's this website that says Kupfer Silk Factory. Family owned for more than 135 years. And I go family owned. What family are we talking about? Right, last I looked, I wasn't an industrialist, so that is what led to a road trip with my wife and my infant, my three-year-old at the time son and my grown older son, who's now 34.
Michael Hickins:He was, you know, I guess 30 at the time, um, and we go on this road trip to germany and france and we discover all these things. Some of them are still incomprehensible, but a lot of them answer questions that were sort of in the back of my mind. But anyway, you said intermingled and it really is. I mean, it's like my life today and I think the lives of a lot of first-generation survivors of the Holocaust Jewish American people in particular resonates and the Holocaust is like this thing that's a long time ago now but it still resonates through the generations and a lot of us just don't know anything about it.
Peter Carucci:Yeah, also Blomqvist, your earlier work about basically the 12th century Northern French Normans, you know, and Vikings conquering, and then the Silk Factory. And I got to say I think I really got in your head, I really got to see how you think and I was always fascinated as I read Silk Factory. And is this you personally speaking, just everything that comes out, or do you gate this and keep it and, as you're writing, kind of have a filter? Oh, I need to say this instead in order to meet, maybe, the goal of the book, or is it just really just a memoir of everything you're feeling and thinking?
Michael Hickins:It's a memoir of. I mean. It's so raw in a way that I mean there are parts of it that everyone in my family hate. In fact, the only things I changed are people's names Because, like my son and, by the way, I mean, there are women who read this book and they come to me and go, God, your son sounds awesome, can I meet your son? And I'm like, yeah, yeah, sure, but you know it, he hated the way he was portrayed and asked me to change the name. I changed my wife's name, I changed most people's names in my family, just because you know, and I think it's less because I don't trash anybody, I certainly don't try to, but I think that it's just.
Michael Hickins:It's raw, you know, and I get a lot of. It's weird. It's like, you know, people go, wow, you're really brave. And it's like, well, yeah, I'm not. It's not like I'm running into a burning building and rescuing babies or anything. I'm not brave in that way, but I suppose emotionally there's a certain amount of courage of just going, like you know, okay, this is me with all my flaws and hopes and dreams, and I have to tell you.
Peter Carucci:That's actually what I think stood out for me stylistically with this. I stood out for me stylistically with this. I am a victim of my father having written a book of memoirs where I it's over here somewhere in my bookshelves where it didn't portray me correctly, or my other family members, and so we had to do a similar thing and say can you change our names? Because in his original one he, he, uh, he didn't, but he's very proud of it. But the truth is that stylistically he kind of tempered himself to create almost a work of fiction. And what I found in the silk factory is you are forgive my language with balls to the wall, like expressive, and it's very much like a French Impressionist painting to me it has so much expression of not only character but your inside thought processes that I found it very, very captivating in that way. I know you might have caught in flack for it, but I think that's one of the burning kind of artistic things I loved about it.
Peter Carucci:And then you tie in the history of what you're learning and I don't want to begin to explain how you jump down this journey in the box and you're finding a piece here and a piece there. I know you started to explain it already, but I don't want to ruin the plot there for anyone. But what winds up happening that you find yourself in the middle of Ansbach, germany, with your wife? I mean, I just want to know what happened. Right then You're in the middle of Germany. How the heck did this happen? How the heck did you wind up in the middle of Germany? You're just like let me find this old business card and bam, you're in Germany.
Michael Hickins:I mean, well, I mean the spark. The spark was that website for the factory, Right. So I I wrote to them, I emailed them and I was like, hey, you know, um, this belongs to my father, this belongs to my father and I would love to come visit. And I acted very like I didn't act like you know. Oh, I lived in France for 12 years and you know I'm very conversant with Europe. I was very much like gee, I'd like to take a trip with my family and visit you know, kind of very innocent, and it was. I mean, I didn't have any thoughts about any specific goals other than I wanted to. I had one goal right I wanted to see, because my father talked about the factory to the extent that he said that I mean, I knew he had that right and I knew that he lived there and I wanted to see where he lived.
Michael Hickins:I wanted to visit the apartment and you know this is in the book as well. It's like it's a three-story building and next to it is an annex. That is the manufacturing book as well. It's like it's a three-story building and next to it is an annex. That is the manufacturing part of it. But the three-story building, ground floor, are offices, second floor offices, third floor living quarters. And the woman who responded to me even says, oh, the president of the company still sleeps in the house. And my daughter says to me didn't, she mean your house? You know, but like I wanted to see that, and so and they were very courteous they were like sure, come visit when would be good, you know.
Michael Hickins:And so I planned this trip, where I also reached out to that mayor. There's a picture of a mayor and I found out who it was and it turns out his grandson has the same name as him and was the former communications officer for the biggest city in the region of that town, and it was where my father was in the concentration camp in France. And what I learned is that that mayor was able to find homes in this town of 600 people, 600 people, 600 people. They, they hosted close to 2000 Jewish refugees, wow, Um. And it struck me, you know, when I was writing the book. Um, it was uh, uh, trump's uh, 2016 to 2020 term. It was 2019 when I went and he was just saying America is full, you know, no more immigrants, america is full. And I'm thinking we're saying America is full and here this town of 600 people is hosting 2,000 refugees, is hosting 2,000 refugees so they don't have to be in these horrible concentration camps where, literally, if you went out at night and you slipped and fell and you were elderly and you fell face forward in the muck you would drown because you couldn't get up and you were drowning in the muck. So you know, I visited that guy, the grandson of that, who was unbelievably welcoming.
Michael Hickins:But when I went to Germany I was really hoping to love Ansbach. You know what I mean, what little my father had talked about. It was, you know, a charming little town and it's still a charming little town and I really wanted to fall in love with it. But there were no markers whatsoever of Jews ever having lived there other than of Jews ever having lived there other than so there's this thing that they have in Germany called Stolperstein, which are literally called German for stumbling blocks, and they're these little bronze plaques that you can buy and place in the sidewalk in front of a house that would say you know, these people who were Jewish, lived here before, and it's kind of a way of marking, of acknowledging something right, and there's none of that other than in front of the factory.
Michael Hickins:You could see that the cement was fresh around it. It was like they hastily. They were like oh man, these guys are coming, we've got to put these in. Nothing else anywhere in town. The synagogue is boarded up and there's just. I got really angry while I was there, just I got really angry while I was there. Um, but while we were there, my wife was like Googling and she said there's some people who've written an article about your family. And I was like you know that can't be.
Michael Hickins:And she's like like well, how many herschkins were there in anspach who had a silk factory? And I'm like what and um? So there are these historians in wiesbaden, which is another city north of bavaria in germany, who were doing um articles about people who were deported from Wiesbaden and, as it turns out, members of my family, my father's mother included, went to Wiesbaden from Ansbach and other parts of Germany because Wiesbaden was seen as more of a Jew-friendly city and they got deported too. But the difference in Wiesbaden you know I talk about this as well is that there are three different memorials.
Michael Hickins:There's a very much like the Vietnam War memorial type of thing, sort of long wall with names of people who were deported on plaques, and then there's a memorial by the train that was taking people to Auschwitz, the train depot. And then there's a memorial in the town hall that rotates exhibits and they're very personal, little vignettes, um, the, the. The larger memorials are breathtaking, literally like I found myself almost blacking out um, and I couldn't remember my, my own family's name. I'm looking at this wall and I'm like what's their name? Again, it was just too much.
Jamie Serino:So your family had this factory and then your father then was put in a concentration camp. So then I'm assuming the Nazi party then took over the factory at that point. Yes, okay, and so then?
Michael Hickins:Well, actually no. What happened is that my father and his sister had to give their shares to my aunt's ex-husband my father's sister's ex-husband who was not Jewish.
Michael Hickins:Okay my aunt's ex -husband, my father's sister's ex-husband, who was not jewish, so okay, and then the idea the the deal was after the war they would patch things up again or whatever, right, but that it didn't work out that way. That's part of the plot of the story, is sort of story, is sort of what happened to that. But my father was then left Germany and was arrested in Belgium and put in a concentration camp in France Because that mayor was organizing a way for Jews to get out of the camp. My father was able to apply for visas. He ended up going to Cuba with his first wife and their son and from Cuba he emigrated to the United States.
Jamie Serino:Okay, how long was he in the concentration camp?
Michael Hickins:He was in the concentration camp for about a year. Wow, a little under a year. Okay, and so was he married at that point? Let me amend that Because he was very quickly living with that mayor. Paul Mirat was his name, what was his name? And he was able to leave the concentration camp and live with Paul Mirat and but they were in Mayon for a little under a year okay and so.
Jamie Serino:So then he's in the us. And now then you know he's, and and you know you don't have to delve into too much detail, people will read the book. But now he's like okay, well, how can I get the war's over, how can I get my factory back? And he doesn't, he's not able to get it back.
Michael Hickins:Well, I mean, that's part of the mystery that's lost in the sands of time, but part of it was he didn't want to go back.
Michael Hickins:And that's part of you know, in a weird way, the book could just be a travelogue. It's the story of me, my wife and my children traveling through Europe and learning all these things about our past, but it's also about my relationships to my wife and children and how they're damaged by my let's call them neuroses. Um, my anger over seemingly nothing, and discovering just how much of that anger is a product of what happened to my father and his family, and realizing that the root of it isn't even having lost the silk factory. I mean, you know, it's weird, because we tend to see pictures of Holocaust victims as either they're really really old or they're children. Those are the pictures that we receive. Right, my father was in his 30s, so he had a whole career, right? I mean, he'd gone to university, he had built up this factory that his grandfather had created and all of a sudden he's got nothing. But that's not the fuel of his anger, anger. The fuel of his anger is that they killed his mother, you know. And not only did they kill his mother, but she was killed in a mass grave, um, no date like and and the nazis.
Michael Hickins:And you know, one of the things that the historians of Wiesbaden did was they brought me to the archive and I saw a lot of firsthand documentation how much money they're taking from her account on any given day for whatever tax reason that they can invent, including. You know, they charge her for the trip to Auschwitz, but they can't be bothered to write down the date that they kill her Because they, you know she's in the cattle car. They march them out into the forest, maybe some of them they gas and some of them they shoot in a pit. We don't know. Yeah, that's the thing that I realize drove my father crazy, and I mean I use the word advisedly because in many ways he was a normal, affable guy. You know, normal, affable guy.
Peter Carucci:But there was always beneath the surface.
Jamie Serino:A a fury that I never really understood and that I I housed in here yeah, yeah, and and that's one of the things I love about the exploration in the book is the idea of intergenerational trauma. And so your father had to deal with the trauma of losing his mother, and then that anger of how he lost her, and then now you're talking about you dealing with that Without even realizing what it was. Yeah, and then you're discovering that in this trip. So there are a lot of people out there that deal with that in a lot of different ways, and the Holocaust is a huge example of that. Can you talk a little bit more about that intergenerational trauma?
Michael Hickins:Yeah, I mean it's funny because before I started writing this book I'd never heard of the term or knew that that existed.
Michael Hickins:But we almost genetically pass along significant trauma that we incur to subsequent generations and I hope that I've caught it early enough that I spare my son that anger and that incomprehension about what that anger is about.
Michael Hickins:About what that anger is about, I think there's a lot of resonances for our society in many ways, whether it's African Americans or Native Americans or Japanese who were interned, where we're not very good at making amends as a society. And one of the things I found and the reason I was talking about Wiesbaden and the memorials is because, you know, the feeling I had in Wiesbaden was 180 degrees out from what I had in Ansbach, where in one city there was absolutely no acknowledgement of anything at all and I was beside myself with fury, and in Wiesbaden, where they seemed to bend over backwards to acknowledge what happened and to try to make amends in some small way, and it was very meaningful to me. Um and so. So I think that the converse of the generational trauma is like okay, so what do we do about that? Because we don't need to live with that right. We can.
Peter Carucci:we can fix that yeah, it seems that in your desire to seek any kind of healing through acknowledgement of the wrong helped some degree of cognizance for you that it can be okay, that you can start to heal, whereas in Ausbach the fact there's nothing there at least when I was reading that you were so fuming about it, it's still. You know. I wonder what society can do to begin or not to begin to actually help fully. I mean, will we ever heal from this you?
Peter Carucci:know, I don't know, I just said a lot of stuff there, but I was really fascinated by your desire for acknowledgement of what happened in this. Alsbach. They did not, and Weissb Wiesbaden.
Michael Hickins:Yeah, ansbach and Wiesbaden, you're doing a good job there.
Peter Carucci:It began to heal you a little. At least I read that. I felt that you know what I mean. Even still in Wiesbaden you're still like it's just a little bit. You know what it means I mean.
Michael Hickins:Wiesbaden was good, and then going to Mayon and realizing, you know, meeting the grandson of that mayor and the incredible humanity that he displays yeah, and yeah, there are some pretty interesting photographs in that book as well the humanity that that that they displayed is as much a healing agent as anything you know. I also, you know, you brought up Blomqvist and I'm like what is the commonality between Silk Factory and Blomqvist? And in both there's kind of the question of faith, right, and in both there's kind of the question of faith, right, because Blomqvist, the narrator, is bereft, because his religious tradition has been destroyed, right, the Norse gods have been vanquished by Christendom, have been vanquished by Christendom. And so he's, and because it's an epic adventure, they're running into all these different people with these different faiths and he's trying to find one that corresponds to his personal belief system or something right, yeah, something right.
Michael Hickins:Um, and my father, um, had, um had been very religious at one point in his life, um, but when I was growing up he wasn't at all. We didn't, you know, we didn't. You know we didn't keep kosher, we didn't keep the Sabbath. There was, you know, the high holidays high holidays we observed, and Hanukkah, for my sake, and Passover, but that was basically it. And you know he died when I was very young, so I was 15. So we never had a chance to really have those conversations like you know, dad, why did you stop being a practicing Jew? Um, uh and and and, um.
Michael Hickins:You know, again, it comes down to what happened to his mother. What happened to his mother, you know, it's something I felt on top of, like even more than the material goods that were taken from him, and even you know more than his livelihood and his homeland and where he grew up. And I mean, just think about how attached we are to where we live, patriotism aside, right, I mean we grow up somewhere and it's part of who we are, and all of a sudden that's ripped away and we take it for granted because we're americans. That well, you know. At least he came to america a great place to be right. Everyone wants to come to america, not necessarily right. Some people were very happy where they were, or thought they were, um, but on top of that, you know, they killed his mother, and God let that happen.
Michael Hickins:And that is the thing I think that you know they took the Nazis, took his faith away, and to me that's almost. I don't know if it's almost worse, but it's, you know, and I don't know for sure, but if that's the case, that's really tragic Because at some point it was important to him.
Jamie Serino:Yeah, yeah, I mean so much there that he had to carry, to carry.
Jamie Serino:So you brought up so much, like you know, physically removed from where he was living, right, Killing his mother, taking away his career, his livelihood, his whole identity, and not being in control of any of that. You end up somewhere okay, maybe ended up in an okay place, but not being in control of any of that and having that identity shift on a lot of levels just very sudden and being put in a concentration camp. There's so much that he had to carry and you talked about, you know, getting back to the intergenerational trauma, you know what you were referring to I think might be called epigenetics, where you can actually pass biologically that trauma along, and they actually use the Holocaust to prove that and they used Holocaust survivors to prove the concept of epigenetics, that it does exist, and you were talking about being worried about passing that along to your son. So how did the trip and the experience and now post-trip, how did that affect your relationship with your son? How do you feel about that now, about him and about passing along that trauma?
Michael Hickins:Well, you know it's interesting to me that I've been married to non-Jews, and you know my family. They were all Jewish, jewish and I was told from an early age that it was important to marry a Jewish woman because otherwise that would become a thing and I don't know whether on some level, consciously or genetically, I wanted to diversify my own gene pool. I know that as a father, it became really important to me to become more self-aware and to change my behavior and to be less like my father, in certain ways Consciously. Yeah, I mean it's funny because my dad used to say to me when he would get really mad at me, for whatever reason, he would say my father would have slapped me, which was terrifying because occasionally he would sp slapped me, which was terrifying because occasionally he would spank. He would spank me and on one occasion did slap me. But you know I've never you know we don't spank Max. But there's an episode in the book that I won't spoil. But I've tried to consciously mitigate that with Max and I hope that I'm not passing that trauma along to him. But you know, he was three when we went on that trip, so a lot went on in his life before that.
Michael Hickins:But you know, it's interesting when we were in the factory. So we get this tour of the factory and it's me and Carol and my older son Catfish and Max in the stroller. As we're getting the tour and as it becomes clear that the guy who's the, so the tour is given to me by the current CEO of the company and I'm getting angrier and angrier at him for reasons that I'll leave for the readers to discover. But as I'm getting angrier, max is getting fussier and fussier in his stroller, to the point where Carol has to leave with him so that we can finish the tour without this. You know, squalling kid, basically driving everybody crazy. Um, and you know, I found it interesting that without I mean he was three without knowing, without knowing anything or understanding anything about what was going on, he could just feel it, he could feel the, the vibe.
Jamie Serino:And um, yeah, so you know yeah, and so another thing I wanted to kind of return to is I mean, I think it's wonderful that you know you've written this book. It's a memoir. It's a memoir, but you're also sort of documenting something here, and anytime something can get documented about the Holocaust I'm happy about because, as we know, there are people out there actively trying to say that it didn't happen, right, so anytime you can sort of plant the flag and say here's more evidence that it happened. And you touched upon that with one town saying it happened and another town not really acknowledging it. You know, and you know you try to look at it in both ways, like the German people.
Jamie Serino:When I speak to people from Germany, some of them do have tremendous guilt about it and they want to move on, not necessarily be reminded about it all the time, and then some feel that it should be acknowledged, you know. And then you have people saying it didn't happen. And then you know you have. So my grandfather was in World War II II and he was one of the people who liberated Dachau and he had those stories and I have some documentation and stuff, and so I think it's great that you've written this memoir. You've sort of planted another flag, like this happened. Can you talk a little bit more about that? You did talk a little bit about it in terms of comparing the two towns, but anything else in your experience where now you feel like I have this sort of evidence and there are people out there trying to say it didn't happen. What are some thoughts about that?
Michael Hickins:It's interesting that you should say that, because the box had a lot of things, um, when I started to really look at it, a lot of artifacts, historical artifacts like um, um, well, I can't now think of the word in English, I know it in French because it's in French. It's a document basically set, it's like a hall pass for checkpoints, and basically there are these. Some of them are written in pencil on the back of a scrap of paper, basically signed by a you know notable, saying you know, this person is allowed to go to this place at this particular time. There are, you know, ration cards, there are a lot of documents that help place those events in a particular time, and a very good friend who lives in France, who's French, he read my book and we met up for lunch one day. I was visiting about a year after the book came out and he said you missed a really great opportunity to really go in depth and talk about each one of those artifacts. And I was like, well, I didn't want to slow the narrative down. And he's like, well, you should blog about it. So I did.
Michael Hickins:For about a year I wrote a different piece about a particular artifact, whether it was like something to do with a letter from the prefect saying that my father's wife was not allowed to travel from the concentration camp to the house where they were living in Mayon. She had to go back. Her father could stay, so they would just. And I would write about exactly what the piece was. And you know I took a picture of it and included it in the post and I mean there's more than can fit in a narrative, in a memoir, and particularly, you know you want it to be readable.
Michael Hickins:I mean I wrote it so that people would read it, so I didn't slow the narrative down every time there was a piece of documentation to really. But there are pictures of some of them. But my publisher also was like, you know, people like photos but they don't like pictures of documents. So there aren't as many documents there, but easy enough to find my blog. But it is but easy enough to find my blog. But it was part of what I wanted to do was to counter the narrative of denial. You know, yeah, without explicitly saying hey, deniers are full of it but just to basically say you can't deny this because I've seen it exactly.
Peter Carucci:you know, I'm really glad to hear you say this, having known you for a while, because when I read that in the book your kind of self-discovery journey in your mother's box, I remember feeling kind of like I was there in that room as you're discovering it all and and trying to figure out what happens, and I can't wait to see or check out your blog now. You know that's really great because it's not only just you know your father's trauma, but also how your mother handled it, how you handled her not opening to you all those years that she must have known stuff. And as I was, I remember thinking, wait, what you know, what you know like. And you that's because you're voicing like how could she not have said this to?
Peter Carucci:me and especially because I know we talk often we're both history freaks like your previous book dove into literally the 12th century specific historiographical stuff.
Peter Carucci:Get it right for crying out loud 1057, I know, you know, I know, and then, but to find out that in your own life that history part was kind of missing in a way, I thought was really very powerful, especially, you know. And also I have a second question for you. That's really bizarre and seemingly trivial, but I think it does speak to some of that lack of self-history that I think you discovered, kind of giving yourself your own opportunity to rediscover yourself. Second to that which I would love for you to talk about, that kind of history and your personal history is I remember that you named your son in the book Thurman and I remember the reason. Why. Is that okay to break this? Can you explain that to us?
Michael Hickins:Well, yeah, so my older son's name is Catfish and the reason I named him Catfish in real life is because, while I was living in France, his mother was French. Our relationship was doomed from the beginning, so I wanted to make sure that he had something indelibly American about him and, as a lifelong Yankees fan, I was just. Catfish Hunter was a favorite of mine Not my favorite, but one of my favorites, and the reason I say not. And so I convinced his mother that. So I'm a Taurus not that I'm really into astrology, but I'm a Taurus. She's a Pisces. Catfish is, as everyone knows, like amphibian right Can live outside the water, bottom feeder, one of the oldest species on earth, a survivor. So I convinced her that this was a good name because of that. And yeah, he's also a baseball player. But really, you know this right and she bought into it.
Michael Hickins:My favorite baseball player of all time is Thurman Munson, but the French cannot pronounce the TH, so he would have been Thurman. See, they call him Kekfiche, right? Fortunately he's a big, strong kid, never really had to worry too much about being teased about it, um, but they pronounce it correctly pretty much. But Thurman would have been like torture, it would have been like condemning him to a lifetime of no one ever being able to pronounce his name. So I didn't name him Thurman after Thurman Munson.
Michael Hickins:But when he you know, when he asked me to change his name in the book, I changed it to Thurman and I added in how difficult it was for the French to pronounce, which is probably the only invented part of the book, but it compensates for the fact that there's a section that I had to take out where he talked about how at one point you know as a grownup someone in a bar said to him were your parents like drunk when they named you? And he had to resist the temptation to beat them to a bloody pulp, um and um. And since I had to change that, I changed it somewhat to be Thurman. Did I answer your question, peter?
Peter Carucci:Yes, I love that. I love that Especially. You know he was my favorite player when I was a little kid. I'm a Mets fan, loving Thurman Munson and my baseball card collection, all that. So now all right. So now that's cool. Now, the history that you find yourself uncovering as you're going through this helps you. Did it help you heal?
Michael Hickins:I think so. I mean, it's not so much that it helped me heal, which I think it did. It helped me heal which I think it did. It helped me get more in touch with the roots of my behavior in a way that allowed me to change it, because it's one thing to understand something on an intellectual level and it's another to allow it to permeate you in a way that allows you to. Actually, because no one goes in. I didn't go into a situation being like gosh, darn it, I'm going to lose my temper right now. You know what? In about a half hour, I think I should lose my temper. That's not how it works, right? Like you're going to doop-de-doop-de-doop, bam, you lose your temper. Like you poof and to learn what is underlying your own psyche, in a way that an insignificant incident can cause you to lose your temper. I find that I'm losing my temper much more rarely. Let's say, I haven't achieved perfect equanimity yet, but I'm getting there. You know, perfect equanimity yet, but getting there, yeah.
Jamie Serino:So so the the trip and the experience seemed to like resolve certain things, that that you, that were bothering you, I guess, and some of which it seems you knew and maybe some of which you didn't quite know. So it was certainly therapeutic, but I guess you know if you have any advice for people that you think may have intergenerational trauma or just something that's unresolved for them, besides telling them to take a trip to Germany or something like that, like, do you have any other advice for for someone to you know, have a therapeutic experience like the way you did?
Michael Hickins:You know, I did one thing Towards the end of her life. My mom came to live with us and I probed her with questions and I recorded them. I recorded her answers and I recorded them.
Michael Hickins:I recorded her answers and I would urge anybody who's got any relatives who are still alive who experienced the Holocaust in any way, even if they were kids at the time, ask them about it and record it. And the reason I say record it is because a lot of what my mother said I didn't hear, because the previous thing she said was so shocking that I was still processing it while she kept talking, and if I hadn't recorded it I wouldn't have heard the next part. It's like I'm lucky because I also I'm a writer. I wrote a book, I had this recording that I could kind of refer to, not about anything specifically, um, related to my father, but in her own experiences, right.
Michael Hickins:so yeah um, um, because she happened to live in france too during the war, right, so so there was, there were, there were layers to this, but, um, having access to that, I would say you know absolutely, really, whether you're a writer or not. Record those conversations because, um, you're sure to capture what is said and hear it again.
Michael Hickins:And if you're a Holocaust survivor, tell someone, tell your family you know, talk about it, overcome the reticence and what I think for a lot of people is the survivor's guilt. Right, get over that, because otherwise what you're doing is you're just passing it along and people aren't understanding what's at the root of it.
Jamie Serino:Wow, yeah, that's really powerful and that's great advice. I think that's a pretty strong way, maybe to conclude here Is there anything else that you'd want to add, anything else you'd want people to know? And, peter, if you have any other questions, as we look to conclude here Is there anything else that you'd want to add, anything else you'd want people to know?
Peter Carucci:And, peter, if you have any other questions, as we look to conclude, I just want to say I'm really grateful for the opportunity to have this discussion with you. It's really cool. You know we call this. There's a lesson in here somewhere and really like there are so many lessons just in here, you know.
Michael Hickins:We're just really grateful you were able to join us. Well, I'm really grateful to you guys for hosting me and asking me some thoughtful questions, and I just have to say that there's a lot of internal conflict involved in sort of approaching this, this topic. I mean, this is something that we, you know, we, we we barely touched on, for instance, which is the whole, the whole concept of financial remuneration.
Michael Hickins:Um and there's a guilt element to that as well, which is, like, you know, um, am I just trying to, you know, get my hands on some reparations? What you know? Is that wrong? And you know so, and I think it's. I think that my own case in part, I do feel that reparations are important Because that's the way we acknowledge things. You know, it's like in the go back to the, to the bible. You know, it's like, um, the reason that, uh, the jewish bible has these sort of very specific laws about. You know, um, if you know you accidentally kill your brother-in-law, then you have to provide this and that to. It's because before that, it was chaos and there was blood feuds, and these people came along and said, no, look, we're going to quantify this. It's like, okay, it doesn't make up for your emotional loss, but it makes up for your, you know, loss of income, for lack of a better word but we.
Michael Hickins:It's a way to acknowledge what happened and own own the behavior yeah exactly, and it is a way of it is a way, it is a way that you can atone right as the perpetrator. So I say that because, you know, as Americans and I said this earlier we're not very good at this, but it's like, and it's being discussed now. You know what? What does the United States owe African Americans? And you know, I don't know what the answer is, but I know the answer is there's, it's something.
Michael Hickins:And until there's that acknowledgement and I can speak from personal experience about that just acknowledging that a wrong was committed and being willing to put a value on that goes a long way towards healing wounds that have not healed in over 100 years.
Jamie Serino:Yeah, yeah, putting a value on it, that's a good phrase, all right, well, michael, thanks again and thanks everybody for joining us. Michael Hickins, the Silk Factory. Google that Check out Michael's blog as well for all those things in the box A lot of stuff and a lot of other books from Michael that you can explore, so check them out. All right, Michael.
Michael Hickins:Thanks very much.
Jamie Serino:I look forward to seeing you again, all right.
Michael Hickins:All right, take care.
Jamie Serino:Bye,
