Journalist Marsha Lederman recounts her journey to Poland – as a second generation survivor

By Regan Lipes

(AJNews) – In the midst of personal grief – and then a pandemic – Globe and Mail journalist Marsha Lederman took on a project: to learn as much as she could about what happened to her parents during the Holocaust, and the impact of that on her own life, one generation later. She will be joining the Edmonton Jewish Community and Federation’s Holocaust Education Committee with a discussion around memory and resonance on Sunday Nov.10 at Beth Shalom Synagogue marking the 86th anniversary of Kristallnacht – the Night of Broken Glass.

A few days prior to the Kristallnacht commemoration the acclaimed author gave an address to students and general Edmonton community members at the Wirth Institute for Austrian and Central European Studies, housed at the University of Alberta. Her talk was well received by a diverse group of graduate students and members of the Jewish community. Hillel members attended to represent the Jewish voice of students on campus. The majority of the crowd was not Jewish, and it was uplifting to see how many people showed up to learn from Lederman’s talk.

Attendees lingered awkwardly in the foyer of the Old Convocation Hall Building waiting to enter; they were shooed away by organizers secretively setting up inside the Student Lounge. When finally permitted entry, patrons were delighted to see that the typically utilitarian space had been transformed into a facsimile of a Central European café – this was certainly apropos since Lederman’s invitation was part of the Wirth Institute’s Central European Café Series.

Eclectic placemats adorned tables at skewed angles with tiny lamps providing the light for the room. Snappy jazz played in the background and attendees were invited to partake of pastries and hot beverages. It quickly became clear that although enchanting, this new set-up would not be appropriate for an event of this size. Chairs were in short supply, and to make room people needed to cram together. This also meant that those with mobility issues struggled to maneuver the space.

Though the talk was engaging, the large disconnect was that Lederman’s topic was ill-suited for an intimate and pleasant café atmosphere and deserved a more dignified forum. Mere hours after Israeli soccer fans had been brutalized in Amsterdam’s recent pogrom a visibly shaken Lederman seemed out of place against a backdrop of mood-lighting and cordial café chatter.

Lederman was barely visible with only the dim illumination of décor table lamps, and the chaotic arrangement of tables obscured her from view for most attendees. She began by addressing the Amsterdam pogrom and confided to the audience that she had been anxious that morning at the airport wearing a necklace displaying her name in Hebrew. This was exactly the jolt of reality that was needed. “I want to talk about my relationship with Eastern Europe, and specifically Poland, which is where my parents came from.”

She framed her lecture, in journalistic fashion, as a story to be shared. Lederman talked about a friend of hers of approximately the same age, born in London and living in Australia. This friend, whose parents were not Holocaust survivors, but earlier immigrants, wanted to know if Lederman thought he should visit Poland. “He doesn’t have living history in his bones the way I have; his family left because of pogroms, and my family was driven out by the Holocaust.” Lederman explained that this well-traveled citizen of the world has never been to Poland. “It’s no coincidence, because Poland is a very fraught place for people like us.”

Lederman’s parents were from Lodz and Rodam not far from Warsaw. “In any other situation I think Poland would be my homeland. For any other family, if you’re from Scotland, or Spain, Jamaica, the Philippines, you would go back to your homeland, and it would be a beautiful homecoming. You would examine your roots, see the places your family was, maybe some of them are still there. For many people like me, going back to Poland is not generally a beautiful experience. It’s full of anguish and grief. There are so many bad feelings that you may not have even realized you had, that are dredged up and the itinerary doesn’t help. It’s not like other itineraries where you are going to beautiful museums, lovely cafes, and shopping, you’re probably going to concentration camps and other sites of mass murder. So, you can’t go to Poland without confronting the elephant in the country.” She continued to confide that when she and her two older sisters were young, their parents talked about Poland as being home, but it was a place attached to terrible memories.

Lederman’s father Jacob was known as Tadeusz (Tadek) during the war when he took shelter as a laborer with a German family of farmers. He hid the fact that he was Jewish though the family now claims to have known he was Jewish all along. He did not go back to Poland until 1978. “My father always had a sense that he wanted to go back. I grew up amongst Holocaust survivors and none of them wanted to go back. They were done with that country, but he wanted to go back.”

During his trip to Communist Poland, Lederman’s father kept a journal in which he wrote: “Found all mass graves, took some pictures of that tragic scene, looked with horror at that huge grave which my gentle brother with sweat and blood over his face helped to dig under the inhuman river of the SS.  Walked from one grave to the other, said a prayer for them, because I knew very many of those fine men and women and little kids buried there in those big piles. My trip through Poland is one big shattering experience, and there is no let-up.”

In 1998 Lederman, her two sisters, and her mother went to Poland together as part of an adult delegation to March of the Living. Lederman described looking for the barrack her mother had been caged in at Auschwitz-Birkenau, but unable to locate it, they entered a similar structure. She describes the wooden stack of bunks as little more than tables and the image lives vividly in her memory. When an audience member asked Lederman about her mother’s reaction to returning to the site of so much trauma, the journalist answered with piercing honesty: “I was afraid to ask her.”

Lederman thought that after their 1998 voyage she would never return to Poland.  She changed her mind in 2016 when her son was young. She waited for the right time and in 2020 she was packed and ready to go, when the realities of COVID grounded flights indefinitely. She finally managed to make her trip to visit the birthplace of her parents in 2023 and found that Poland was not as she remembered it. She saw this as a “healing pilgrimage.”

“This trip to Poland was different, I went alone but I was with a couple of film makers who were following me around there. Being with them, they were Polish, let me to experience the country in a very different way. I was able to immerse myself in the culture, hear about what was going on politically there, you know, not just talking about the horrible things that had happened decades ago. We went to nice cafes, and restaurants, I looked at art. It was really,” she paused, “enjoyable,” she concluded with gravity.  “And I didn’t want to go to any concentration camps.”

This trip was the inspiration for Marsha Lederman’s acclaimed memoire Kiss the Red Stairs: The Holocaust, Once Removed which was awarded the Cindy Roadburg Memorial Prize at the 2023 Western Canada Jewish Book Awards.

To that same friend who asked if he should visit Poland, Lederman answered resoundingly “yes” but added that he should not feel obligated to visit any concentration camps. “Everyone else [non-Jews] should go and visit, but I think we [Jews] have a free pass not to go.”

Marsha Lederman, a career journalist, confided meaningfully to the audience that this is a terrifying time to be Jewish.  She worries about where to send her 16-year-old son Jacob for university where he will be safe and sheltered from the rampant antisemitism infecting so many institutions of higher learning. Lederman is a powerful speaker who can captivate listeners with her words and stories; hopefully this will not be her last visit to Edmonton.

Marsha Lederman will be speaking at the Kristallnacht commemoration in Edmonton on Nov. 10 at Beth Shalom Synagogue.

Regan Lipes is a Local Journalism Initiative Reporter