Leila Levinson

How does one combine memoir, ethnography, self-discovery, and history, while contributing to two important bodies of literature—Holocaust and psychotherapy—in an eminently readable book? Do what Leila Levinson has done in Gated Grief: The Daughter of a GI Concentration Camp Liberator Discovers a Legacy of Trauma (Cable Publishing, 2011). The breadth of her project is evident even in the awards it has won—one for women’s memoir and the other for military writing. But its reach is greater than that. Anyone interested in post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and trans-generational trauma, especially as it affects veterans and their families, should find this book valuable. I gave my copy to my cousin whose father, like Levinson’s, was among the troops that liberated Hitler’s death camps.
Levinson begins her story with the discovery, after her father’s death, of photographs he took at the liberation of Nordhausen—an experience he never told his children about. The photos of stacked corpses, latrine-type graves, and walking-dead prisoners were kept in a cardboard box in a trunk in the office of the formidable father’s medical practice, guarded by a Nazi helmet he had taken as a souvenir. One photo is blurred by the photographer’s hands, shaking from the shock of the horror before him.
The discovery of photos leads Levinson on a journey to find the father behind the camera—how he and their family were all affected by his traumatic witnessing. She interviews a dozen elderly subjects, living in different parts of the U.S., who were also camp liberators, asking how they responded, what they did with those memories, and what they told their spouses and children. Many had remained silent throughout the years, yet had spoken up to renounce Holocaust deniers. Many cried in recollecting what they had seen. Many repeated the same thoughts and themes about feeling overwhelmed, burdened, and angry. Levinson gathers up and repeats these themes, for the benefit of the reader and herself, as she awaits a revelation.
Revelation comes to Levinson, which I will not disclose here. Her story is graciously focused on her subjects and their travails more than on herself. Still the message is clear: trauma will be passed from one generation to the next unless we explore our hurts honestly with the intention to bridge the chasms that human suffering creates. This book is Levinson’s personal exploration of those hurts; it offers a fine example of how to reconcile with and understand parents who have failed us. It also offers a fine example of writing memoir and ethnography.
Indeed, there is “me-search” in Levinson’s research, but her skills as a writer keep the personal and the universal in proper balance. A teacher of English and Holocaust Literature at St. Edward’s University in Austin, Levinson has studied good writing and learned her lessons well. She knows how to bring a scene to life with rich detail, both visual and emotional. She knows just how much information to reveal and when, so that her discovery of trauma’s legacy becomes the reader’s. This is a memoir with plot and pace. I can’t help but marvel at her craft, evident even in the title—Gated Grief—which captures both the iconic images of concentration camp gates and the notion of pent-up grief, summarized poetically with alliteration.
Gated Grief is Leila Levinson’s only book. She is the founder of www.veteranschildren.com, a website that invites veterans and children to share their stories. I thank Ms. Levinson for sharing her story so selflessly and effectively. I also thank her interviewees for digging down deep to places where, understandably, no one would want to go.… (lisätietoja)

I love German history; it was one of the reasons it was my major in college. The country has had such a unique perspective on its place in the world, to put it mildly, that I have always been intrigued by the thought process behind their actions. I decided a long time ago that if I were to ever have obtained my PhD as an educator, I would have studied WWII and the impact of the concentration camps on the local populations. So, when Tolly at PR By the Book approached me about reading Gated Grief, I jumped at the chance.

Ms. Levinson's takes the reader on her very personal struggle to understand the trauma experienced by the liberators of the camps. Her desire to get to the bottom of their experiences and how they related to their interactions with family and friends is heartfelt. As the daughter of a liberator, much of her insight is through her own childhood with a father who never discussed what he saw. These personal observations guide her through interactions with other liberators, granting her empathy as each veteran delves into memories that still moves him or her to tears or rendered him speechless in fear.

The novel is divided into chapters, focusing on one particular veteran's memories, complete with photographs taken either by the veteran or by others at the camp being discussed. Each veteran has his or her own experiences but even sixty years later, the fear and horror each person felt is palpable. Some shut down; others break down into tears. The reader knows without a doubt that while sharing his or her experiences, each veteran is experiencing the visions, smells and sounds of the camps all over again.

Ms. Levinson's father once stated to her that we are all the Nazis' victims. Upon first glace, it is a sentiment that is easy to dismiss. Yet, as the reader shares the grief and guilt experienced by the veterans as they tell their stories, one begins to understand that the trauma of the camps did not stop there. In fact, the horrors discovered by the U.S. soldiers came back with them because what occurred in those camps was something that changed every single person who was witness to them. This change went down to their very psyche and had profound impacts on relationships with their spouses, their children and even their grand- and great-grandchildren.

Ms. Levinson's travels and discussions with veterans lead her to some very interesting conclusions about the legacy of trauma. While her focus is on liberators of the concentration camps, her conclusions can be extrapolated to anyone who experiences senseless killings, including soldiers in today's conflicts. Her insight into this idea of trauma completely changing a person, with the idea that the soldier comes back as half a person, is profound and forced me to consider my own relationship with my grandfather.

Be warned - Gated Grief is not for the faint of heart. There are images that were completely new to me and that left me profoundly affected. One photo in particular will haunt me forever. I had nightmares if I read the book too close to bedtime and often had to put down the book to get away from the feelings of profound despair and guilt I felt while reading it. Still, either in spite of or because of all that, I absolute loved Gated Grief for the fresh look it gave me on the camps and the U.S.'s handling of them and for what the soldiers experienced. It reminded me anew of the absolute horror that occurred across eastern Europe during World War II and how those horrors have completely changed society for better or for worse. If ever one needs a reminder to be vigilant and never forget what happened, Gated Grief is that reminder.… (lisätietoja)

After their father's death, the author and her brother come across an Army trunk with memorabilia from their father's WWII experience. Included in this trunk are photos of the war, and, most disturbingly, photos obviously from a concentration camp that are labeled "Nordhausen".

Although Ms. Levinson's brother initially took possession of the trunk, it found it's way back to the author. When she summons up the nerve to open it again and look through the photos, it starts her on a path to chronicle military witnesses of the death camps. She proposed a Holocaust literature course at the small Catholic university she taught at. She read many works of literature on the Holocaust, and viewed interviews of both survivors and liberators. She found that of all of the questions asked of the liberators, no one asked how their lives were affected since.

Through her interviews with 59 veterans, a recurring theme is that they did not want people to forget. In the days before PTSD was recognized, many of them coped by keeping their emotions and feelings about what they witnessed suppressed, by emotionally detaching themselves from it, and by not acknowledging their own grief. Many lost their faith, and even more lost a pure and innocent piece of their soul.

As the author chronicles her quest to better understand her own father, who never spoke of the war, the author discovers other truths, too, including the truth about Boelcke Barracks, located in Nordhausen, which is where her father worked with survivors for two weeks before suffering a nervous breakdown that she only learned of after her father's death.

In this author's search for her father's truth, she discovers her own truth as well.

Recently, I've read a few books that are set in this period (The Book Thief among them), but I hadn't recently read a story that dealt with the Holocaust itself. It had been so long since I saw pictures of the camps, and seeing the photos in this book was jolting and emotional. Photos paired with words evoke so much more of the horror of the camps, and prior to reading this title, I had never really thought about how the liberating soldiers themselves had been affected.

As the author finds, even 60 years later, many of the surviving liberators refuse to talk about it all. Of the liberators she interviewed, many had not spoken at length of what they witnessed for years and even decades after they came home. Most of them slipped into second-person when describing what they saw upon entering the camps. With the liberators' psyches being so damaged, their damage also transferred to their loved ones, including their children, in myriad fashion. I was surprised to learn that none of them really knew about the concentration camps; they knew the existed, but they equated them with our own Japanese internment camps (not that THOSE weren't horrid, either .. taking citizens away from their homes, work, and schools based on their ethnicity is not something that we in America can ever repeat). But we didn't KILL the people living in them or force them to do hard labor or use them in our twisted medical experiments.

It's difficult for me to rate a book like this. I can't say it was enjoyable; it was very difficult to see the included photos. It DID make me think, and it DID make me finally take the time to sit with Bebe Boy James and explain the Holocaust and other horrible periods that happened based on non-acceptance. I think it's important for all of us to let our children know that these things happen - we don't need to show them pictures (James is only 10, and I didn't feel comfortable showing him pics), but we have to let them know. History can't be allowed to repeat itself, and if we forget, even with something that's as hard to think about as the Holocaust, we do an injustice to the victims and to the liberators.

QUOTES

Perhaps his set jaw evidenced his effort to compartmentalize the horrors he had witnessed in Nordhausen: The countless rows of disfigured, unrecognizably human bodies; the walking corpses covered with lice begging for a cigarette or a drop of water; the barracks saturated in excrement, the tunnel in the mountains from which walking dead emerged, after having excavated tunnels with no more than pickaxes.

Although there had been rumors about concentration camps, which we dismissed as exaggerations, we were stunned by what we found - an absolute abomination. When I got there I just couldn't believe my eyes. I got sick to my stomach because of what I saw and smelled.

No photo has ever shown what the soldiers encountered when they walked through the camp gates.

BOOK RATING: 3.5 out of 5 stars… (lisätietoja)