Life Lessons From A Holocaust Survivor Who’s Seen 10,000 Deaths | Hannah Pick-Goslar

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 0:00 Dina, you obviously spent a lot of time with Hannah writing this book with her. I wonder if you could outline her story for us, because maybe people listening or watching, they won't know her story, and there's so much I wanna unpick within that story. But, you know, do you feel able to give us a bit of an overview?

Dina Kraft 0:21 Sure, sure. So Hannah was born in 1928 in Berlin. Her father was a prominent journalist who had actually at this point, um, become part of the Weimar government. Um, that was the government that was formed after World War I, and this, this idea for like a socialist democratic, um, uh, government. Um, but it was of course in the throes of after World War I when Germany was sort of tearing itself apart over what had happened and of their, their terrible sort of humiliating defeat in the war. And, uh, her father was one of the few Jews in the government, and he happened to have to also be a religious Jew, which is sort of unusual for the time to have a religious Jew in such a high post. Um, but it was a very privileged life that she first was born into. Um, her family lived across from a beautiful garden in central Berlin called the Tiergarten. She'd walk along the rose gardens with her father and go to the zoo and look at the elephants, and she would visit him at the, um... visited him at his office near the Reichstag, the seat, the, where the government was. Um, he was observant of Shabbat, so he couldn't drive on Shabbat or, uh, take public transportation, so they would walk together sometimes when he had work to do there. And in the evenings, they'd go to, uh, you know, her, her mom would whisk off in, in, in beautiful, um, velvet dresses with her father to important occasions and, and, and parties and whatnot. But the world suddenly became darker and darker and darker outside her door. Um, the Nazis were rise- the, the Nazi movement was rising in power. Um, through her bedroom window, she could smell the smoke of, um, books being burned. Um, she could, um, hear the sounds of, um, boots on the ground as they were marching through the town, shouting anti-Jewish and anti-foreigner slogans.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:00 So, so this is many years before the war actually started.

Dina Kraft 2:04 Yes, yes, this is-

Speaker 2:05 Yeah, '33.

Dina Kraft 2:06 This is-

Speaker 2:06 1933.

Dina Kraft 2:06 Yeah, this is, no, this is like '32, '33.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:08 When she was still in Berlin.

Dina Kraft 2:09 She was this-

Speaker 2:10 Yeah

Dina Kraft 2:10 ... tiny little girl, three, four years old. Um, and you know, her first memory is basically of her, of her h- of, of, is, is of the sounds outside and sort of her parents' worried voices and then watching the house being packed up, this beautiful grand apartment being packed up, and the family, um, her, um, had to become refugees. Her father had been speaking out very prominently against Hitler on the radio, in newspaper columns. Um, and it was, and he'd been fired from his post in the government. Like all Jews at this point had been fired from their posts in the government, and he felt they had no future in Germany. And their par- her parents felt incredibly connected to Germany, like so many Jews living in Germany. You know, they were active in culture and in medicine and in teaching, and they felt they were much very p- fabric, and all of a sudden the country was turning against them as this hatred was rising.

Speaker 2:56 They were thousand years in Germany, the family. So-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 3:00 A thousand years.

Speaker 3:01 Yeah. So they were more Germany, German than the Germans.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 3:05 Right.

Speaker 3:06 And they felt like this.

Dina Kraft 3:07 Right.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 3:08 And so it must have been heart-wrenching to suddenly feel in your-

Speaker 3:11 To be a refugee

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 3:12 ... homelands that-

Speaker 3:13 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 3:13 ... you're no longer welcome.

Speaker 3:14 Yeah.

Dina Kraft 3:15 Yeah, her father had been a, a soldier in, in World War I. Like so many, so many Jew- Jews, so many Jews fought in the World War I-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 3:21 H- this is Hannah's father-

Dina Kraft 3:22 Hannah's father, yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 3:23 ... so your granddad.

Speaker 3:24 Yeah.

Dina Kraft 3:24 Goslar.

Speaker 3:24 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 3:25 Wow.

Speaker 3:26 And also my great-grandfather, he was one of the leaders of the, the Jews in Germany.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 3:33 Yeah.

Speaker 3:33 And the, as leaders, they took care of the Jews in all the world, like in Morocco, like in Su- the, uh, Ethiopia, like in Russia, like in Warsaw, in Poland. They were really around all the Jews in all the world-

Dina Kraft 3:50 Yeah

Speaker 3:50 ... to help them, to help really the poor people of them.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 3:53 Yeah. So, so the family are living in Berlin. Things are starting to change-

Speaker 3:58 Mm-hmm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 3:58 ... dramatically. And you write at the start of this book, I think in the early chapters, basically about the family having to pack up and leave and take refuge in Amsterdam.

Dina Kraft 4:11 Yeah. Yeah, and it's, and it's interesting, you know, they, they, they briefly touched down in England actually, but ended up ultimately in Amsterdam. And like a lot of, you know, refugees from, from, from pl- places of conflict or war, they kinda think they'll wait it out, right? They'll wait out the, w- you know, Holland borders Germany. They thought, you know, y- you, you know, in the early, in the early time, in the, in the early days, they could even still visit Germany before the war. So they thought, you know, the way you see today, people fleeing Ukraine, where do they mostly go? Poland. You know, they're close by. They'll go back. That's what they hope. Um, and they began to build a new life in Amsterdam. It was extremely difficult. They didn't have much money. Um, um, and they didn't speak the language. Hannah, um, Rutie's grandmother, uh, described Dutch as a throat condition, not a language. [laughs]

Speaker 4:56 [laughs]

Dina Kraft 4:56 Um, and, um, and, uh, they basically, she, Ru- Ru- um, Hannah's parents, uh, created a sort of a, an agency for fellow refugees out of their, in their living room.

Speaker 5:06 'Cause he understood that the Jews will come there.

Dina Kraft 5:09 Yeah. He-

Speaker 5:09 They will have to fly from Germany.

Dina Kraft 5:11 Right, and there was n- there was, there wasn't a lot of support inside the country for helping, um, German refugees inside Holland. So he and, uh, a, a colleague and friend named, um, Mr. Lederman, created this like two-man agency basically in the living room. And, um, Hannah's mother helped out as the typist and secretary. And, uh, and they were just sort of beginning to settle in, and they had just arrived, and Hannah was, um, um, terrified of going to school. She didn't speak a word of Dutch. She didn't know anybody. Um, she had to be sort of pried off of the door of, of, of the family, um, front door to, to get, to get her to go to nursery school. And, um, at nursery school, um, this big beautiful Montessori school which still exists in Amsterdam-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 5:54 Does it? Wow.

Dina Kraft 5:55 Yeah.

Speaker 5:55 With the same play, uh, plays that the children play in the same places.

Dina Kraft 5:59 The same games.

Speaker 6:00 Nothing changes there

Dina Kraft 6:02 You know, these sort of high ceilings and beautiful doors leading out to a garden. It was, at the time, sort of a new idea of progressive education, and her parents were progressive, and they wanted her to have a progressive, liberal education. And, uh, she was sort of a shy, she was a shy, a shy child, and she was clinging to her mother's skirts, and she was terrified, and, uh, speaking to the teacher and looking around at the, at the s- children all busy with different sort of games and places. And she sees a little girl with shiny black hair playing Silver Bells.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 6:30 Yeah.

Dina Kraft 6:31 And the girl turns around, and they look at each other, and they have this moment of recognition because just the day before in the grocery store, um, Hannah and her mother had overheard another woman and her daughter speaking in German, and they had exchanged a couple of words at the grocery store, and that was the little girl from the grocery store. And, um, this little girl playing bells turns around, sees the very shy Hannah, looks at her, they recognize each other, and they run into each other's arms with a big, big hug, chattering away in German, two little refugee girls, and that little girl's name was Anne Frank.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 7:02 The Anne Frank, who I actually, I'm, I'm now learning that her name's actually Anna-

Dina Kraft 7:07 Anna

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 7:07 ... Frank.

Dina Kraft 7:07 Anna Frank.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 7:07 Not Anne Frank, as it's often said. So Anna and Hannah.

Dina Kraft 7:11 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 7:12 That was the start of this beautiful, poignant friendship that is detailed-

Dina Kraft 7:19 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 7:19 ... so wonderfully in the book.

Speaker 7:20 It's also with the parents. The parents became very good friends. The- every Shabbat, every Saturday, they used to eat together. So it's very-

Dina Kraft 7:31 So Shabbat is a-

Speaker 7:31 ... traditional, um-

Dina Kraft 7:33 Right. So Jews have-

Speaker 7:34 ... meat meal

Dina Kraft 7:34 ... Jews have the, the Jewish Sabbath begins on Friday night, and there's a traditional meal that goes with that.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 7:39 Yeah.

Dina Kraft 7:39 You have challah. You have, uh, this, this traditional egg bread called challah, and you bless the wine, and you have a nice meal together. And Hannah's family, that was more religious, would host this meal on Friday nights, and Anna's family would come. Anna's family lived in the building just next door to theirs.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 7:53 So, so what's really interesting as w- as we sort of unpick this story is, I think the similarities, at least at the start, from what happens when people flee a certain country. Like, it's really interesting that they, they left Germany and found other Jewish families in Amsterdam and then shared that sort of cultural experience with them to almost, I don't know, keep some sort of connection going. And, and I think about, and again, circumstances very, very different, to be clear, my parents were immigrants from India to the UK. And, you know, I think now back to my childhood, and they would have other Indian friends, and they would do things that they used to do back at home as a way of sort of holding onto that culture. So it's interesting-

Speaker 8:43 Exactly

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 8:43 ... to hear that similarity, right?

Speaker 8:44 Oh, they were holding on to what they were used to, especially the mother. She really wanted all the time, r- if she could, to go back to Germany because she loved all the culture there. It was very hard for her-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 8:58 Yeah

Speaker 8:58 ... to get used to the Dutch, uh, culture.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 9:01 Now, w- what's interesting is it for me, um, is that we go through in the book the, i- in the first person beautifully, Hannah writing about her experiences in Amsterdam, meeting Anne Frank, um, going to school. You know, the things that other little girls go through, you know, the things they were talking about, the things they were getting teased about. It's, it's... It feels like you're reading a really good fictional novel, yet it's actually real. It's all real. And what's striking to me is that as the war started closing in in Amsterdam, you know, the rising of the Nazis there, the, the restrictions being put on Jewish people there, she, she comes across as really upbeat. You know, like an optimist. Like, even though they couldn't go to certain cinemas or no Jews allowed-

Dina Kraft 10:06 Mm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 10:06 ... at that swimming pool, in what she considered her home, certainly as I read the book, I read a story of someone who is optimistic and positive. Is that-

Dina Kraft 10:16 Mm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 10:16 ... is that fair to say?

Speaker 10:17 She was very optimistic, I think, till the end of her life. Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 10:20 Really?

Speaker 10:21 And I think maybe because of this she had good life. But she, what they did, the Germans, it was every day another thing. So you say, "Okay, I cannot go to the swimming pool? I will not go. I cannot sit on the bench in the park? Okay. I cannot see a, a film? I will do it at home. I cannot go to sandbox? I will do it at home." So every d- every day a new law, but you wanted to get used to it and say, "Okay, I cannot go with a bicycle. I will go by foot. I cannot go with a bus. Okay, I will..." E- everything, they tried to get used to it and said, "If this is what it is, it's not so bad," you know? They didn't know in that time that all the Jews are sent to being killed in Poland, you know?

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 11:15 Yeah. They didn't-

Speaker 11:16 So-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 11:16 Yeah.

Dina Kraft 11:17 So they, so it's really interesting the way the Germans handled the, the Dutch story. When they ended up, um, invading in May, uh, 1940, it was, they called it a, a velvet conquest. So at first, everyone was terrified. I mean, imagine Hannah is in her bed. She hears the sound of what she thinks is thunder. It turns out it's planes. It's Nazi war planes flying overhead. The invasion has begun.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 11:41 So let's just, let's just get a timeline here.

Dina Kraft 11:43 Yeah, yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 11:43 Okay, how old is Hannah at this time?

Dina Kraft 11:45 She's 11 years old.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 11:46 Okay. So, uh, that just gives me shudders that when, when I think about how old my children are at the moment, right? So she's 11 years old. She's living her life, her new life in Amsterdam, having her and her family have, have fled from Berlin-

Dina Kraft 12:02 Mm-hmm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 12:02 ... because they're scared and worried, and now they're getting scared and worried. And she, despite all the restrictions, she just goes to bed one night, and she, she hears what she thinks is thunder. But it's actually planes.

Dina Kraft 12:14 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 12:14 Okay.

Dina Kraft 12:15 And she runs to her parents' bed, and she jumps into her bed with her parents to be comforted. And they also think it's thunder at first, and then the father draws back the curtains. The first light of morning is beginning, and they see plane after plane after plane. According to some accounts, the planes were flying so low that they could actually see the swastikas on the wings. Um, am- Rotterdam at the time was being bombed into basically oblivion. [laughs] Um, Amsterdam was not bombed, but, um, the planes were coming in, and her father, who was a very calm man otherwise, very sort of fastidious, flies into a panic. He's convinced the Germans have come. He's gonna be a public enemy number one because of his past government, government job and, um, being a critic against Hitler, and they start trying to destroy any evidence they might have in the house that they were, that, you know, of, of his connection, of, of his past life. So, um, out of the drawers come files and files of papers, and Hannah's job is to take the papers which they're tearing up and toss them into the toilet and flush them down the toilet. Um, at the same time, um, her mother sees a bronze statue, a bronze statue of her father's former boss, who had been the president of Prussia, who was one of, I guess, uh, Otto Brown, who was one of Hitler's rivals-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 13:27 Mm-hmm

Dina Kraft 13:27 ... I guess you could say. And they think that's incriminating evidence. So they start hauling down the stairs of their apartment building the statue of Otto Brown, and they put it, they sh- um, shove it on the sidewalk, and they look around them, and all around them are other German Jews. Th- this neighborhood was in South Amsterdam. It was a new neighborhood. A lot of German Jews, refugees, had moved into this neighborhood. And they were also trying to get rid of whatever they thought might be incriminating, and people were burning papers and files that they thought might be problematic. Um-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 13:54 So people are in a panic.

Dina Kraft 13:55 Complete panic.

Speaker 13:55 He will also, he left the house. He left the house for five weeks. He thought maybe he will find some-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 14:00 This is Hannah's dad, your grandfather.

Speaker 14:02 Yeah, yeah. He left the house because he was afraid when the Germans come, they will take him for sure.

Dina Kraft 14:07 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 14:07 So just, again, I don't mean to keep pausing the story.

Dina Kraft 14:11 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 14:11 It's just because obviously people may not have read the book yet.

Dina Kraft 14:15 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 14:15 I hope everyone reads it. It's, it's so, so... It's so compelling and engaging, and I really think it will help everyone. But I'll be honest with you, I couldn't put that book down when I started reading it. I was on holiday with my wife and kids, and I, I, I just couldn't stop reading it. And every time I stopped, I would just hug my kids a little bit more. I was just a little bit more grateful for my life, honestly. Like, it's one of those books where I, I, I don't think I quite see the world in the same way anymore. But I'm, you know, my kids at the moment are 13 and 10.

Speaker 14:54 Exactly the-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 14:55 Right

Speaker 14:55 ... the age.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 14:56 So now you're telling me there's an 11-year-old girl who is now trying to help her dad hide incriminating evidence because the Nazis are coming. That is a completely different childhood to the childhood my kids are currently experiencing, that's for sure. So there's fear, uh, anxiety, watching your dad probably change overnight in terms of character. I don't know. I mean, tell me, what was that like?

Dina Kraft 15:19 Yeah.

Speaker 15:19 Mm-hmm.

Dina Kraft 15:19 He, he was, he was very scared, and what he did was he tried to come here to this country. He tried to come to England. Like thousands of others people, he rushed to the shores to, he ru- he rushed to a port city, um, about an hour outside of Amsterdam, hoping to catch a boat to England. And although thousands and thousands of people went to that shore, I think in the end 200 people were able to somehow secure passage to England. Um, so it was this complete time of panic, and as, as Rudi said, he lived in hiding for weeks and weeks until he finally came out.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 15:48 Yeah. C- can I ask, o- one thing that has been, I've been thinking about a lot, the, the, the title of the book is My Friend Anne Frank. Hannah's story herself of this move, her going to concentration camps, her surviving it, what happened afterwards, which we're definitely gonna get into, that story has full merit of its own, right?

Dina Kraft 16:14 Mm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 16:15 So why the title My Friend Anne Frank?

Dina Kraft 16:19 Yeah. I think the title comes from this idea that the through line of her entire life was her friendship with Anne Frank. You know, she moved, she, you know, by chance she happens to befriend a little girl that becomes the face of Holocaust victims.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 16:32 Yeah.

Dina Kraft 16:32 Anne Frank has become sort of an icon, a symbol. Um, you know, the, the numbers are too much to grasp. Six million is too much to grasp. 1.5 million children were killed.

Speaker 16:42 Yeah, and she's the face of the children of the Holocaust.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 16:46 And there's a certain, you know, heartbreaking irony where by, you know, we, we hear these exchanges in the book between Hannah and Anne when they were little, and Anne wants to be famous, right?

Dina Kraft 17:02 Exactly.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 17:03 And her name is known all over the world. Um, it's quite something, isn't it?

Dina Kraft 17:08 Yeah. And to think that Anne was writing in that, uh, writing in captivity. You know, for over two years she was living in this prison, which was called the, she called it the Secret Annex, this attic above, above her pa- her father's work. Um, but what's remarkable about her, you know, the first, the first, uh, title of the diary was, um, Diary of a Young Girl. She was 13 years old when she begins the diary. She's, you know, just after, just, uh, she gets it as a birthday present. Um, but she's 15 years old when, um, about nine months before she's arrested, a minister from the Dutch government in exile- In, based in London, has a broadcast. By the way, it's illegal to listen to this broadcast, but they're in hiding and they're listening to it. And he says, "Dutch people, save your diaries, save your letters, save any kind of first-person accounts of what this wartime is like, because after the war, people are gonna wanna know and need to know how we survived this moment." Everybody in the attic turns to Anne and says, "You, your diary. You have to keep your diary for after the war." And from literally that day forth, she starts revising her diary with an eye to it being published after-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 18:10 Oh, wow

Dina Kraft 18:11 ... the war. So it's not just a diary, the musings, the, um, blossomings of a 13-year-old girl. It's a 15-year-old girl who's, as, as Avrutti has said before and, and as Hannah would always say, you know, was in a sort of a hothouse, intense experience. She sort of, she, her, her, her, her maturation, you know, uh, increased exponentially because she couldn't go anywhere, right? And she has this incredible depth, um, uh, of understanding and of, of her, of her own, of self-awareness. And she writes, and in her, and her editing is where the real genius comes out. She sort of takes some things out. She moves things around. She added sus- she adds suspense and tension.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 18:43 Wow.

Dina Kraft 18:43 She adds background about the anti-Jewish laws, for example, about what's going on. And while she's writing in h- in this diary, she's also writing about her beloved friend Hannah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 18:52 Yeah.

Speaker 18:53 But therefore, a lot of people said, "Oh, there was no Anne. It is not right. It is, it is not, uh, written really." Because she changed, you know? There are some ways that it is written.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 19:07 I see.

Speaker 19:07 Then in the end, Mr. Frank saw that everybody's talking about this and he said, "I will put everything inside."

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 19:16 Yeah.

Speaker 19:16 "Whatever she did," even if she wrote something about her mother, and even she wrote even about my, my mo- my mother, that she had two left hands. [laughs] So he put everything inside-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 19:27 Like a raw-

Speaker 19:27 ... that people will know that this is real

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 19:31 ... this was real.

Speaker 19:31 That's it.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 19:31 What's, you know, is that what, what's striking for me is that I think it's when they rather fortuitously meet, well, they don't see each other, but they, they hear each other in the concentration camps-

Speaker 19:45 Mm-hmm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 19:45 ... a couple years later or so. Um, I think, if my recollection serves me, that Anne told Hannah that, "Look, I, I was, we were in hiding for over two years. I didn't go outside the entire time." And I just thought about that. That's a, a 13-year-old girl, Anne Frank, in the attic, not going outside at all. Like, it's, again, when I put it through the lens of being a dad of kids, I think, well, I know what happens when a kid doesn't go outside for, for, like, one day.

Speaker 20:21 It's not easy. It's not easy, but you know, in the Holocaust, people had gone over very, very worse than what happened in the attic, you know?

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 20:31 Yeah.

Speaker 20:32 Because they were just suffering their life and humiliated and whatever. So let's say in Israel, people say, "Okay, so she was not, uh, going out," but that's not the point. Really, the point is what happened afterwards, what she suffered afterwards, the moment she was caught. Yeah?

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 20:53 Yeah.

Speaker 20:53 Of course, to live with this fear that you will be caught, it's very dreadful, but then to be caught, it's much more worse and-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 21:01 Yeah. So, so let's go then to, maybe we could pick up the story when Hannah and her family have to go to the concentration camp.

Dina Kraft 21:14 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 21:14 I mean, can you tell me about that moment?

Dina Kraft 21:17 Yeah, so it was June 20th, 1943. Until this point, they had been, they, they were lucky enough to postpone deportation. Hannah's mother, for a couple of reasons. Hannah's mother was pregnant with what would have been her third child. Um, she's afraid to go to the hospital, um, to give birth there because she's heard, heard terrible things. It's German occup- uh, occupied Amsterdam, and she's not, she doesn't feel safe giving birth in a hospital there.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 21:40 Because she's Jewish.

Dina Kraft 21:41 Because she's Jewish.

Speaker 21:41 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 21:42 So she's Jewish.

Speaker 21:42 Because the Nazis would come to the hospital and take people.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 21:46 Yeah.

Dina Kraft 21:48 Yeah, would take them, would, would deport them. So she was concerned about that, so she decides to give birth at home with a Jewish doctor and a midwife, and unfortunately, the, there were complications with the delivery. It was a breech delivery, and she gives birth to a stillborn boy. Um, and, uh-

Speaker 22:03 And then she dies-

Dina Kraft 22:04 And then she died

Speaker 22:05 ... after two days.

Dina Kraft 22:06 Yeah, then she died shortly after, and this is all happening in the house with Hannah there, you know? Hearing her in childbirth, um, hearing, and then, you know, um-

Speaker 22:15 Seeing the father praying that everything will be okay, and then it is not okay.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 22:21 So my understanding of the story is that one of the reasons that your mother Hannah, um, and her, and, and her father and the family were not being deported, were able to stay in Amsterdam, from what I understand from the book, there was two reasons. One was they had some sort of, some sort of official papers because of the, the role of, um, Hannah's dad.

Dina Kraft 22:45 Exactly.

Speaker 22:46 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 22:46 But then later on when that seemed to not mean that much at all, there seemed to be something, because, uh, Hannah's mother was pregnant-

Dina Kraft 22:54 Mm-hmm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 22:54 ... you couldn't be deported when pregnant.

Speaker 22:57 On that time, they didn't take pregnant woman, on that time.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 23:01 Why, why she... Was, you know, that's, that sounds like a re-

Speaker 23:05 You, you never understand what the Germans did.

Dina Kraft 23:08 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 23:08 But for whatever reason, so, so whilst Hannah's mom was alive, they couldn't be taken. Well, assuming that the laws or the rules were gonna be followed.

Dina Kraft 23:16 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 23:16 But after the stillbirth, after her mom died, suddenly you don't have that reason anymore. Is that right?

Dina Kraft 23:23 Well, it's, it's not-

Speaker 23:23 Exactly

Dina Kraft 23:23 ... it's not, it's, it's not entirely clear, and I think this is actually an important point to say. We talked, the, the Nazis sort of ruled at first with, in, in, uh, in, um, the sort of velvet glove approach. You know? They sort of slowly, at first things seemed okay, and then slowly, slowly, the, the restrictions on Jews got more and more intense. But what also was going on all the time is that it was really unclear what their policies were. You know?

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 23:43 Right.

Dina Kraft 23:43 So you never really knew, you know, um, if you were safe or if you're not safe. And so you would s- follow certain rules and think you were okay, but then, and then you would still get caught. You know, you would still get sort of deported. So for example, um, Hannah's parents, her grandfather and her father were on what was called the Jewish Council. So they got a special stamp in their papers saying that they were to be spared. But, um- But, uh, and then they thought, and then at a certain point, the, the German Jews thought that they were gonna be safer, the, the German Jew- the German refugee Jews. Another point, the Dutch-born Jews thought they would be safer. And the Nazis constantly played on

Dina Kraft 24:13 this sort of divide and conquer and the sort of, um, rivalries even within the community. Um, and, uh, actually, what, what started, what, what got Hannah's father and grandfather involved in what was called the Jewish Council was because, um, in July 1942, the first call-up orders, the first mass call-up orders began in Holland. And who were they taking? German, uh, mostly teenagers. 15-year-olds, 16-year-olds were getting call-up orders to be deported to the East. Again, w- they didn't know what the East-

Speaker 24:42 For a working camp. And my mother said, "Oh, 16 years boy, he goes to a working camp. This is what they need." And they never, never came back.

Dina Kraft 24:53 Right. So they didn't, well, they didn't, at this point, they didn't know they weren't coming back. But they, um, but they knew it was not good. No one wanted to see their 15 or 16-year-old girl, um, child being sent off. And it's ex- it's ex- exactly that order. The Frank family got an order that Anne's older sister, Margot, who was 16, was gonna be, have to get called up. At this point, imagine the Frank family had been planning for, for over a year, I think, to go into hiding, but they weren't quite ready to go into hiding yet. But they move up their plans once Margot was called, the order for her is c- called up comes so that she will not be taken away.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 25:24 The way it's written in the book is very much that one day Hannah just goes round to-

Speaker 25:29 Yeah, exactly

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 25:30 ... to Anna's house just-

Speaker 25:30 This is how it happened

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 25:31 ... for whatever, to, to play or i- co- but-

Dina Kraft 25:33 Exactly.

Speaker 25:34 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 25:34 ... and actually they're just like, "So, no, they've gone. They've gone to Switzerland."

Dina Kraft 25:36 Right.

Speaker 25:36 Exactly.

Dina Kraft 25:37 Only later on does she, does she sort of connect the dots and realize that Margot had been called up, and that's why they-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 25:42 Yeah

Dina Kraft 25:42 ... the, the, the timing was, the, the, yeah, and of course, it was a complete surprise. It, when, when you-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 25:45 And of course, they had to be told that-

Speaker 25:46 And Anne left them

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 25:46 ... because you couldn't share these things with anyone.

Speaker 25:49 And when my mother was going back from this house of Anna, she saw her friend Alfred Bloch, and he got the same calling from the German, and he had to go-

Dina Kraft 26:00 Yeah

Speaker 26:00 ... because he couldn't go in hiding, and he was killed in two months.

Dina Kraft 26:05 Yeah. So just to back up a minute, I mean, so that night in July, if you were in that, if you were in those apartments overlooking this beautiful green square, at 2:00 AM, if you pulled back your curtain, what would you see? You would see a scene of dozens and dozen of 15 and 16-year-old Jewish teenagers, I'm gonna cry, sorry, um, um, with their rucksacks and their bed rolls. They were told very specifically what to bring, and they were walking quietly in the darkness to the central train station of Am- of Amsterdam. Their parents were not allowed to come with them because there was a curfew. Jews were not allowed out of the house after 8:00 PM. So these, imagine these parents sending out their 15 and 16-year-old children into the darkness, and what would eventually become their doom. They didn't know that yet. Um, and, uh, and, and most of, and, and anyone who saw that, you know, would've seen them going out, um, and this sort of these sort of ghost-like figures walking across the green.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 26:59 Yeah.

Speaker 26:59 And they never came back. No one.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 27:02 So Anna's family have gone into hiding. No one knows that. It's kept secret.

Speaker 27:08 Mm-hmm. My mother was sure they are in Switzerland.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 27:10 Yeah. So Hannah thinks, "Oh, great, that they've escaped," gutted that she hadn't gone with them.

Dina Kraft 27:14 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 27:15 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 27:15 Um, how soon after that does Hannah, her little sister, Gabi, and her father get on one of these trains to, is it Westerbork they went first?

Dina Kraft 27:26 Westerbork.

Speaker 27:26 Yeah, it was one year later.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 27:27 One year later.

Speaker 27:28 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 27:28 So in that one year, they're still living-

Speaker 27:30 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 27:30 ... fear, the screws tightening even more.

Speaker 27:32 Exactly.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 27:32 And then what, what actually happens in that moment?

Dina Kraft 27:34 It's, uh, in, in complete secrecy, um, the Germans have blocked off every single bridge to South Amsterdam. As you know, Amsterdam is a city of bridges. And so if you block off the bridges, you, there's no route to escape, and there are, um, tanks, and there are trucks, and there's no way to escape, and there are loudspeakers in the street saying, "All Jews come down to report, to report to, you know, such and such square."

Speaker 27:58 20 kilograms, five minutes.

Dina Kraft 28:00 You have to go.

Speaker 28:01 That's it.

Dina Kraft 28:01 And so actually, Hannah's family, her father said, "We're okay. We have our stamps in our passport. We are protected."

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 28:07 Mm-hmm.

Dina Kraft 28:07 "We don't have to go." Um, and then lo and behold, there's a knock on the door, and they're told very quickly they have to, that, you know, their, that their stamp means nothing, and that they have to go and report down to the square below. And, um-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 28:20 So, so how many are, so it's, it's Hannah-

Dina Kraft 28:22 It's Hannah, her little sister, who's just two and a half years old.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 28:24 So her sister, Gabi.

Dina Kraft 28:26 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 28:26 And the grandfather and grandmother.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 28:28 Her dad and her grandfather and grandma, so five of them-

Dina Kraft 28:32 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 28:33 ... head down to the main station.

Dina Kraft 28:35 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 28:35 Yeah.

Dina Kraft 28:35 Well, fir- yeah, first they c- first they go down to, like, a, another sort of square area where the Jews are be- are being assembled. And imagine people are bringing, you know, their bags again and their, and their bed rolls, and they're bringing winter coats because although it's June, um, they don't know, they know they're going east, and east can be cold.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 28:50 They don't know if it's a different country, or they just know on the compass we're going east, basically.

Speaker 28:55 They know it is not good, but they don't know.

Dina Kraft 28:56 Right.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 28:56 It's not good.

Dina Kraft 28:57 But, but what's interesting, at that, that very, that same morning of June 20th, 1943, um, at 6:00 AM, just a block or two away from them, we talked about Mr. Lederman, who worked together with, um, with Hannah's father. He had a daughter named Sana. Sana was-

Speaker 29:11 Zanne

Dina Kraft 29:11 ... Zanne. Zanne, short for Suzanne. She was good friends also with Hannah and Anna, and they were a threesome. And tell us, how, how do you think-

Speaker 29:18 Anne, Hannah, Zanne.

Dina Kraft 29:20 Three, and she was a beautiful little girl with, with dark hair, braids, very musical.

Speaker 29:25 Sweet.

Dina Kraft 29:25 Her parents were musicians, and they were also from Berlin. Part of that milieu I was talking, we were talking about before.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 29:30 Yeah.

Dina Kraft 29:30 They would have Sunday afternoons of-

Speaker 29:32 Concerts

Dina Kraft 29:32 ... con- concerts in their home, very cultured people. Her father was a lawyer. Um, and, uh, she had an older sister. Her name was Barbara. And so, uh, Barbara had a boyfriend who was in the underground, who had warned her, "Do not get rep- or do, do not get deported. Because if you get deported, what's happening, what we're hearing in our underground sources, is you will be killed. Do not go." And, uh, in the end, Barbara goes underground and gets fake papers. Her parents refuse to do so. Her father, like so many other of these German Jews that were kinda sticklers for just doing everything the right way, he said, "I have never broken the law. I will never, not, I am not gonna break the law now. If I'm called up, I will go By chance, that night before, she had snuck out of her hiding place, had come back to the family home, 'cause she missed her parents, you know?

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 30:19 Mm.

Dina Kraft 30:19 And she missed her little sister. And she, again, pleads with them, "Come underground with me. Come underground with me."

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 30:23 Oh.

Dina Kraft 30:23 And they say, "No, we can't do it." That morning at 6:00 in the, 6:00 in the morning, before, before anybody else knows, um, and someone from the underground has been sent to collect her, to tell her, to warn her-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 30:33 Yeah

Dina Kraft 30:33 ... to leave. What is that person's name, their code name? Cassandra, of all names. Cassandra, the Greek, you know-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 30:39 Yeah

Dina Kraft 30:39 ... the warning, the, the doom, the, the person giving the word of doom. And she's, and she tells her parents, and they say, "No, no, no. We're, we, we are going to go." And they're sort of pleading and going back and forth. And, um, and he's, and, and the father at one point says, "My child, you have my blessing. Go. Go." And she goes, and she goes across-

Speaker 30:56 But she couldn't take Zani

Dina Kraft 30:58 She couldn't take her little sister. Her parents didn't want to part ways.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 31:00 So, so, so, um, she's gone.

Dina Kraft 31:02 She's gone.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 31:03 The older daughter.

Speaker 31:05 She's still living in the United States.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 31:07 She's still alive.

Speaker 31:07 She's 97.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 31:09 She's 97 and still alive, and she-

Speaker 31:10 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 31:10 ... so she was living underground-

Speaker 31:12 And I think-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 31:12 ... in hiding

Speaker 31:13 ... her husband got such a Nobel Prize.

Dina Kraft 31:17 He was a Nobel Prize winner in chemistry years later. Anyway, she, she-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 31:20 And the, the, the other three in the family?

Dina Kraft 31:22 All murdered in Sobibor. But they left behind letters. The family left behind letters, and those letters were very helpful for me when I was wr- working on the book.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 31:29 How did you get the chance to even write this book?

Dina Kraft 31:31 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 31:31 How did that come about?

Dina Kraft 31:32 So by chance, like, 20-plus years ago when I was working as a journalist for the Associated Press in Jerusalem, I was assigned to interview Hannah. And I-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 31:38 Oh

Dina Kraft 31:39 ... and, and, and I, I was so delighted. I was so nervous. I was so excited to meet this... Here, as you described, like, I felt like Anne Frank was one of my friends after reading about her.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 31:47 Yeah.

Dina Kraft 31:47 And then I was gonna meet a real-life friend. And I was so moved, and I was so taken. Always, I always remembered her story. And, um, in January last year, I got a phone call from a literary agent saying that Penguin Random House was looking for a ghostwriter. Um, and they didn't know who the person was, they just said it was a Holocaust survivor and she was 93 years old. And just by some strange chance, three weeks earlier, Hannah's name had, like, popped up into my head.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 32:13 [laughs]

Dina Kraft 32:14 And I googled Hannah Pick-Goslar [laughs] to see, honestly, if she was still alive. I just wanted to know if she was still with us. And I was so relieved. "Oh, she is." [laughs]

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 32:23 Yeah.

Dina Kraft 32:23 And then three weeks later, I get this phone call asking, ba- basically asking, um, to, if, if I'd be interested in throwing my name in the hat to, uh, to help write this story.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 32:31 So you get the gig to, to, to write the book.

Dina Kraft 32:34 Mm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 32:35 Um, and look, it sounds like you were familiar with the story of the Holocaust c- in, in quite a lot of detail from your work as a journalist and-

Dina Kraft 32:44 I'm also the daughter of, um, of a family that were refugees from Nazi Europe. So it was-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 32:49 Oh, really?

Dina Kraft 32:49 Yes. So it very much felt like a, a, in some ways sort of a, a pers- like, uh, it, it felt almost, like, called to this story in a way. [laughs]

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 32:57 Yeah, so you, you already know a lot of the, um, facts-

Dina Kraft 33:02 Mm-hmm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 33:02 ... right, of what's being presented about what happened. But then there's logical facts, and then there's emotional experiences, and often they're two very different things, right? So I guess, has something changed in your outlook on what happened in the 1930s and 1940s from your conversations with Hannah? 'Cause you knew it all before, I guess. You knew a lot of it before, but, but, so what, what changed in you?

Dina Kraft 33:28 Because suddenly I was walking in Hannah's footsteps. I was, like, thinking Hannah's thoughts. I was trying to get into Hannah's emotional state of being. I sort of had to sort of, like, become a vessel for Hannah, as it were. And I, it was so intense and so involved that after Hannah and I would have a session, I would, we would both say, "Oh, we're so tired." But, um, I remember a few, a few mornings we would sort of come back together and she would say, "Oh, I, I was having bad dreams again." And I was like, "Oh, I was having bad dreams again last night, too." It was almost sort of like our dream worlds kind of intersected, because I was sort of living and breathing her experience so intensely-

Speaker 34:02 So involved

Dina Kraft 34:03 ... yeah, so, that I, I sort of took it on almost as my own.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 34:06 I know you heard this conversation before you came on the show. I spoke to, um, Edith Eger-

Dina Kraft 34:12 Mm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 34:12 ... a few years ago now, a, a conversation that truly changed me. Um, and she was in Auschwitz concentration camp. And, um, I know she's given a, a wonderful, um, front cover quote for this book. Did you, have you ever met Edith?

Dina Kraft 34:27 No, but I would love to. She's a hero of mine after reading her book.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 34:30 Yeah, I mean, she calls this book heartbreaking and life-affirming. And that, there's something about that. That's how I feel about it. There's something harrowing about the story, but beautiful at the same time.

Speaker 34:46 The great, uh, friendship that, you know, when you are starving and you think to bring food to your friend that is starving, or you think she's-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 34:57 Yeah

Speaker 34:57 ... even more starving than you.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 35:00 Well, the humanity really shines through, right? And, and le- so let's jump to that part-

Dina Kraft 35:05 Mm-hmm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 35:05 ... of the story maybe whereby, um, Hannah, like, Hannah thinks that Anne Frank and her family have managed to escape and they've gone to Switzerland. She doesn't know that they were actually hiding up in the attic. So she thinks that her friend Anne is safe. Hannah then, with her family, is in the, is, uh, in a concentration camp, not eating much. They're starving. They're having to do the most just horrendous things. [laughs] Um, and then she gets word that her old friend-

Speaker 35:37 Is over the fence

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 35:38 ... Anne, is just over the fence. Let's pick up the story there.

Dina Kraft 35:41 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 35:41 What, how did that come about?

Dina Kraft 35:42 Yeah. So Bergen-Belsen, um, at this point in February-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 35:46 So Bergen-Belsen's the name of this second concentration camp.

Dina Kraft 35:49 Right, yes. It's, it's a, it's a massive complex with all sorts of camps and subcompounds and-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 35:54 And this is still in Holland?

Dina Kraft 35:55 This is, no, this is actually in Germany.

Speaker 35:56 No, no, it's in Germany.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 35:57 In Germany.

Dina Kraft 35:57 It's in East Germany, right. So at this point in the war, the war is going very badly for the Germans, and Bergen-Belsen is suddenly swelling with prisoners. It's expanding, like, uh, exponentially the numbers of people coming in are being crammed in in larger and larger numbers. Um, but the- Germans don't want the Russians to see what's happening in camps like Auschwitz, so they're taking the Jews on these terrible death marches westward towards Germany so they can sort of basically kind of warehouse as many of the other Ge- Jewish prisoners inside Germany and not inside Poland. And among the people that came from Auschwitz, whether by foot or by train, were women who were housed in a camp next to the camp that Anna was in, that Hannah was in. So it's, imagine it's a huge complex of a camp, but there are different camps within the camp. Hannah was in a slightly more privileged, quote-unquote, part of Bergen-Belsen because she had, um, two things going for her. She was, uh, had, uh, a foreign passport that was basically bought by her family. Um-

Speaker 36:51 Paraguayan passport

Dina Kraft 36:52 ... a Paraguayan passport, and she also had something called a Palestine certificate. This meant that she was part of a group called the Exchange Jews, that the German government hoped to be, hoped to exchange for British, uh, prisoners of war. So they were gonna-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 37:05 British prisoners

Dina Kraft 37:05 ... British pr- yes, exactly. So the Germans and the British had this sort of slight, this plan going on that they would do some sort of swap. So, um, that is partially also what gave Hannah and her family hope when they were in Bergen-Belsen, that they would be eventually swapped as part of this exchange. So because of this, unlike the other prisoners in other parts of Bergen-Belsen, um, who had their hair shorn and were wearing black and white prison garb, they were allowed to keep their hair and their clothes, and they got a l- they had a little bit better conditions with food. And anyway, there's this group of women that are being moved into this camp next, and they see them in this sort of tent camp, and they, they're very, they're, most of them are, like, sort of rail thin and wearing the, again, the black and white prison garb. Um, pretty soon the Germans don't, decide they don't want the, the, the women from the both camps looking at each other or exchanging information, so they cover the fence with, um, with straw so they can't look through. And it's still, it's very dangerous for any kind of communication between the fence because, you know, you would be dead if you were caught. But women being women, wanted to com- they wanted to communicate. They were desperate for information. And one day they started hearing some Dutch on the other side. Some Dutch women had come on the other side. And so s- words were exchanged in Dutch. Somehow it filters through back to one of the women who was a neighbor back from this neighborhood, that she'd come from in Amsterdam, and said, "Listen, Anne Frank, she's on the other side of that fence." And Hannah says, "How can that possibly be? Anne is safe in Switzerland having hot chocolate with her grandmother." You know, she had this very-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 38:26 Mm

Dina Kraft 38:26 ... sort of idyllic vision of her in Switzerland being safe.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 38:28 Yeah.

Dina Kraft 38:28 And she's so confused and so upset, she decides she has to go find out for herself, because if Anne is there, she needs to know. And the women who are in the barracks with her are, say, "Don't do it. You have a little sister here that you're taking care of inside the barracks," who's only, you know, at this point about three years old. "You can't, you can't risk it." And she says, "No, I must go see my friend." Again, this, this loyalty to Anna sort of runs throughout the entire, her entire life. Um-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 38:51 Well, this was what one of my questions was. Why do you think, either one of you, I guess, why, when it is so dangerous to leave the barracks and go to the fence, right, why did she risk it all to try and find Anne? Because it isn't just her. She's also looking after her little sister, who's what, three or... Three?

Dina Kraft 39:17 Three. About three and a half at this point.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 39:18 Three and a half at the time.

Speaker 39:19 Um, I think it is-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 39:20 Right

Speaker 39:20 ... the connection to the former life. Mm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 39:23 Have you spoken to this? Have you spoken about this with your mum? Like, why did you go? Why? Why did you not just stay in your relative safety? Why did you risk it all?

Speaker 39:32 You know, first of all, she never thought herself as a hero. You know, whatever she did in the Holocaust, including to help her sister and her father, she even brought him, uh, medicines, and she, she didn't eat and she bought medicines. She didn't do as if she's a hero, but I think she, she wanted to have some connection with what the life was before.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 39:59 So she'd heard that her best friend's there-

Speaker 40:02 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 40:02 ... and she thought, "I'm gonna see her."

Speaker 40:03 And she was shocked. She was shocked. She was sure she's drinking [laughs] hot chocolate in, uh-

Dina Kraft 40:09 Hot chocolate

Speaker 40:09 ... in Switzerland

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 40:09 So go, so, so, so she hears that-

Dina Kraft 40:11 So she hears this

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 40:11 ... so what happens?

Dina Kraft 40:12 And she comes out, and it's, imagine this, you know, it's, it's February, it's cold, it's this icy rain. She's wearing the same jacket she'd been wearing for two years, so at this point it wasn't at her wrist anymore. It was probably up to her elbow.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 40:22 Wow.

Dina Kraft 40:22 And she goes to the fence.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 40:23 This is at night, right?

Dina Kraft 40:24 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 40:24 So dark has fallen.

Speaker 40:26 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 40:26 You're meant to be locked up in your barracks.

Dina Kraft 40:28 Correct.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 40:29 And she then creeps out.

Dina Kraft 40:31 She creeps up very quietly and shivers.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 40:33 Avoids the spotlights and what you-

Dina Kraft 40:34 Mm-hmm. Shivering both with fear and with cold, [laughs] you know, and approaches the fence, and in a very small voice goes, "Hello. Hello. Anybody there?" And by chance, a voice replies. It's a m- It's a woman named Mrs. Auguste van Pels, a Dutch, a German woman who had also lived in the neighborhood and who had, by chance, been in hiding with Anne Frank and her family. And she says-

Speaker 40:57 The parents of Peter. The, the mother of Peter

Dina Kraft 41:00 ... the mother of Peter, who, the, the boy she had a cr- like, had a relationship with in the, in the attic, her sort of friend/boyfriend. And she says, "Oh, you must be here for Anne. Margot is too sick to come, but I will bring Anne."

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 41:10 Margot is Anne's-

Dina Kraft 41:10 Margot's sister

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 41:11 ... big sister.

Dina Kraft 41:12 Right. But it's almost like in a voice like, "Oh, I will come bring her down," as if it was, like, normal times, you know? "I will... You must be waiting for Anne."

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 41:17 "Oh, you... Oh, yeah, no, yeah, yeah, sure. I'll go and get her."

Dina Kraft 41:19 Exactly.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 41:19 Yeah.

Dina Kraft 41:20 Like, it's very sort of a casual tone. And she brings Anne to the fence, and remember, we, she can't see her because it's with, with, with, uh, with, uh, with the barbed wire.

Speaker 41:27 Sure.

Dina Kraft 41:27 But she hears her and she recognizes her voice, and she knows her, it's her. But it's sort of like a, it's, it's, it's a, it's a voice that's sort of weak and raspy. And she quickly, s- like, like, the first thing they do is they just start crying. Two little, two girls on the oppo-side, opposite, opposite ends of this, this fence under this dark, rainy, freezing night, you know, in tears. Um, but they quickly, they don't have a lot of time. [laughs] Through the tears, they tell each other, they update one another. Hannah tells her her mother had died in childbirth. She didn't know that. She told her that her father is very weak in, in the, in the Bergen-Belsen hospital.

Speaker 42:04 In the hospital.

Dina Kraft 42:04 That her sister Gabi is still with her. Their grandmother is still alive. And Anne wails, "I am all alone in the world. I have no one. You at least have your father and your sister and your... I have no one else in the world."

Speaker 42:16 "And I am very hungry. I have nothing to eat." And then my mother said, "I will go and fetch you something."

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 42:25 Oh.

Speaker 42:25 I don't know how she promised this because nobody had anything-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 42:28 Nobody had food

Speaker 42:29 ... to eat.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 42:29 No one had any spare food.

Speaker 42:31 Nothing. Nothing.

Dina Kraft 42:31 And, you know, Hannah w- and Anna described that she, you know, her, her, her... Anna's most beloved feature was her hair. She had this dark brown chestnut hair, and she used to, like, spend all this time to make it have a little curl and a wave, and it was, she loved her hair. And she said that her beautiful hair was gone, that, you know, her hair was shorn. She was, you know, she was wearing these pajamas. She had a blanket to kind of, she had a, sort of a, a, a, a, a f- a f-

Speaker 42:52 A lot of lice, maybe

Dina Kraft 42:53 You know, a lice-infested blanket around her. I mean, it was a broken shadow of this incredibly vivacious, dynamic friend.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 43:01 And you, you've obviously spoken to Hannah about this at length. What, when Anna said to her, "I need some food. Can you, can you get me some? I'm starving," and she said, "Yeah, I'll, I'll get you some," given that there is no food, and they're in a concentration camp, and, you know, she can't get enough for her and her little sister, let alone for Anna on, on the other side of the fence, what was going through her mind? Like, when she spoke to you about the story-

Dina Kraft 43:31 Mm-hmm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 43:31 ... was it like a inner resolve, "I am going to get her f-" I mean, what, what was going on?

Dina Kraft 43:35 I think she said she had no idea how she was gonna do it, but she just had to say yes to Anna. She didn't wanna leave her, she didn't wanna l- let her friend down. It just broke her heart to s- to refuse her, you know? And, and she, she didn't, she didn't have a plan at hand. I think it was just a spontaneous, generous answer of, "Yes, my friend is broken. My friend is in need. I'm gonna help my friend." She didn't have the how yet, but she knew she was gonna do it.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 43:56 And then how would she arrange to re-meet up? They, they're, you know, they're on different sides of the fence.

Dina Kraft 44:02 Right.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 44:02 It's like, it's, they probably, they, they don't have watches-

Dina Kraft 44:04 No

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 44:04 ... or anything.

Speaker 44:04 She said, well, they talked about it. "We will come, let's say, in three days, and we'll see then."

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 44:08 Oh, God.

Dina Kraft 44:08 She said, yeah, she said, "Come back to the fence," I think it was at the, two nights later. "Come back and I will, I will get something together for you by then." And she creeps back, you know, through the mud, through the ice, through the cold. She goes into the barracks, and the women are all, and, you know, she, are surrounding her in the barracks. Um, and this is in a, in a story of, like, supreme, I could say, like, female solidarity. [laughs] They come together and say, "We're gonna help this child. We're gonna help this girl on the other side of the fence." They don't know her, you know? But they, but they know Hannah, and they love Hannah, and, um, and if you remember that, you know, in the barracks, so many people had been separated from their own family members, and they kind of created new families-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 44:46 Yeah

Dina Kraft 44:47 ... and new connections. And there was a woman named Mrs. Abraham who had seven children, who took on, um, Hannah and her little sister Gabi as her own. And they created their own sort of, like, you know, nest, as it were, of, you know, within the-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 44:58 Yeah

Dina Kraft 44:58 ... within the barracks. And she had a sister, and it, it was remarkable. And I think in other times in history, think back to the story of, um, of African Americans in, in America, uh, when they lived in slave cabins, and so many of their members of their families were being sold by the owners to different people, and they had to create their own families to survive.

Speaker 45:16 You had a family or you had someone, you had strength. The moment you were alone, you really had no chance. So this Mrs. Abrahams with her seven children, you know, let's say today you want a babysitter from a neighbor and they have seven children, they will say, "Oh, we cannot take your child." No, she said, "Your father helped everybody. Now it's my turn."

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 45:44 The humanity, the kindness, the, when you're, you're starving and everyone's starving, "Hannah, we'll help you. We'll help you get some food to your friend." Wh- when I spoke to Edith Eger on the, on the podcast a few years ago, there's so many things I remember from that conversation, but one of the things she said to me, or one of the stories she relayed, was about how kindness ended up saving her life. She once got given, from memory, like, a, a little rusk of bread, and she said, "It would've been so easy just to eat that myself. No one was around. I could've just had it all, and I was starving. But I didn't. I broke it into six or seven pieces and shared it." And then at some point in the future, when they were on what she thought was their death march just before liberation, Edith shared how she just didn't have the energy to go on, and she was just lying there on the ground, and those same people who she shared the bread with-

Speaker 46:41 Came to help her

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 46:42 ... came to help her.

Speaker 46:43 Mm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 46:44 And so I think there's a beauty in, in the midst of this, um, torture and dehumanization-

Speaker 46:52 To see the humanity of the people

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 46:54 Humans can still be kind.

Speaker 46:56 Mm. Yeah.

Dina Kraft 46:57 And they kept that, and that's what I think kept them together. They could, that they could say, "We're in the midst of complete barbarity. We're being whipped and tortured and killed and left like less than dogs on the road," you know? I mean, again, imagine outside of their barracks, there were piles and piles of corpses.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 47:13 In the book, when you, when Hannah's father has-

Speaker 47:16 Mm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 47:16 ... just died, she didn't wanna look anywhere where she previously had seen trucks where you'd see, uh, the, the-

Speaker 47:23 The legs. The legs of-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 47:23 The legs of dead bodies

Speaker 47:24 ... the dead people.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 47:24 She said, "I don't wanna see any of that, 'cause I don't wanna see my dad's legs."

Speaker 47:29 Exactly.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 47:30 And it's unimaginable, unimaginable to someone like me what that is like. Completely unimaginable. I can read it, I can hear it from you, and it wasn't that long ago.

Speaker 47:43 Mm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 47:43 That's the, that's the, the, the really profound, scary, worrying, um, sort of message for me. You know, and that, that, uh, that's a question I have for both of you, actually, and I wonder what your mother, Ruthie, Hannah, would say if she was here. Given what she went through and overcame and the beautiful life that she lived afterwards, right-

Speaker 48:07 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 48:07 ... which I wa- I definitely wanna talk about, is there a feeling that this could happen again?

Speaker 48:14 Exactly. People say, "What you as the second, uh, generation of the Holocaust say," and I think really the feeling- That everything, everything can be nice and lovely, and it can be broken in one moment.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 48:33 I guess the wider question is then why is it so important that this book was written? Why are survivor stories like Hannah's-

Dina Kraft 48:45 Mm-hmm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 48:45 ... so important?

Dina Kraft 48:47 Millions and millions of people were slaughtered in the Holocaust, right? And the world was completely silent. Her neighbors were, for the most part, completely silent when they saw those kids and rucksacks going across the square, when they saw the call-up orders of the Jews in their neighborhood, like Hannah's family, being loaded into trucks and on, and on to the, on to, on to, on to what they went on to. People were mostly quiet. When good people stay quiet, terrible things can happen. When racism goes unchecked, h- it can lead to hatred. Hatred kills. Hannah saw that in front of her own very eyes and, and by chance she survived that hell, and she's able to tell us. Throughout her life she never stopped telling the story, right? Um, and in this book, it's all sort of in one place. And, uh, we need books like this. We need books that tell people not just what Anne Frank went through in the Holocaust. What Anne Frank told- tells us all takes place in the confines of the attic. She didn't get to write the book about the horrors that came after.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 49:44 Mm.

Dina Kraft 49:44 This is the book that Anna didn't get to write.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 49:46 Yeah.

Speaker 49:47 But my mother saw also good people, let's say the woman of the Rabbi Koretz that gave her, for, for Gabi, two glasses of milk. Now, Gabi was three and a half years old, and they only gave till three years old. But these two glasses, this is between death and living. Yeah? Such a... And this woman could take it for herself, for her children.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 50:15 She gave it, in the camp she gave it to Gabi.

Speaker 50:16 She, yeah, to, she gave it to Gabi. She, sh- she was in charge of, uh, giving milk because she, her fa- her husband, uh, knew the mo- the father of my grandfather.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 50:29 Yeah.

Dina Kraft 50:29 There's a lot of, there's a lot of sort of like paying forward. You know, Hannah's father was a very giving person and a very helpful person in the community, and to see how even when he was not there physically anymore to help his daughters, his sort of the memory of how he had helped others helped others help his daughters.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 50:43 It's, it, it's interesting. We talk a, a lot on the show about kindness and the importance of kindness and compassion, and the health benefits of kindness and compassion. But it strikes me as though a lot of people, let's say Hannah's father, were being kind because it's the right thing to do, just because that's who we are. You know, we have a strong faith.

Speaker 51:03 Yeah. This was the way of living.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 51:04 That's the way of living. That's what you do. And I guess that's a message we can all take. Like, you never know when the kindness you give out to people will be repaid. Like, don't do it for that reason.

Speaker 51:16 Yeah, exactly.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 51:17 Right?

Speaker 51:17 Do it because you have to do it.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 51:18 Do it because it's the right thing to do. And so i- in a world now, particularly because of the online world, where many people are seeing division, hatred, racism, bigotry, and intolerance to people with different views, I'm interested-

Speaker 51:37 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 51:37 ... was there anything Hannah saw over the last few years, over the last 10, 15 years-

Dina Kraft 51:42 Hmm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 51:43 ... that reminded her of the, you know, the march up to the concentration camps? Is there any-

Dina Kraft 51:50 Mm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 51:50 Because what's really interesting about the story, looking at it [laughs] now o- o- you know, in hindsight, is the many years where this was building and building and building and things were getting worse and the walls were closing in, before the actual war and concentration camps. So was there anything Hannah would observe or you guys observe in society-

Dina Kraft 52:13 Mm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 52:13 ... and go, "W- this is on a slippery slope"?

Speaker 52:17 Yeah.

Dina Kraft 52:17 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 52:17 She was very much afraid of what the Iranians want to do to Israel because they say, "We want to sweep Israel," and this made her very, very frightened.

Dina Kraft 52:29 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 52:30 So hearing that language was triggering for her?

Speaker 52:34 She was afraid of it because they say, "We want to s- sweep you out" and she said, "How can it be after the Holocaust that country can say something to, to kill others-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 52:46 Yeah

Speaker 52:46 ... and to, that they will not be anymore?"

Dina Kraft 52:48 Yeah. I was really struck by Hannah's, um, interest in the world. She was a very curious person and very, very much focused on the news and what was happening in the world. And, um-

Speaker 52:57 Till the end

Dina Kraft 52:57 ... till the end.

Speaker 52:57 Till the end.

Dina Kraft 52:58 And, um, when we, t- in, in the last months of her life there was, it was, it, it was the same time that there was an, the uprising of women in Iran. So she was always very aware and attuned to sort of injustice in the world, no matter where it was happening. Um, and, uh, and I think, yeah, I don't think she felt like the, the, the, this, the coast was now clear. The whole reason she kept telling her story from 1957 onwards, f- 1957 is when Otto Frank kind of anoints her and says, "Will you go speak about your story?" And imagine, 1957, most Holocaust survivors were not telling their story yet.

Speaker 53:28 Nobody was talking in Israel. They would say to them, "Oh, you went like sheep to slaughter." And the survivors were a little bit ashamed, you know?

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 53:39 Ruthie, can I ask you, you said there's, there was a guilt with the survivors. Was the guilt that they had survived whereas others had died, or was there-

Speaker 53:48 A-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 53:48 ... a guilt and shame that they'd actually ended up there?

Speaker 53:50 Bo- both, both of them.

Dina Kraft 53:51 And other people-

Speaker 53:51 It was very complicated

Dina Kraft 53:52 ... but other people would look at them and say, "What did you have to do to survive in the camps?" You know? And they would say, like, "My father or my family didn't survive. What did you, like, what bread did you steal out of someone's hand?" You know, she, she came to Israel, it was a brand-new country, and there was this sort of this founding idea that we know we are strong, we are, you know, we have to be strong and mighty. And the idea of, of the, of the victims of the Holocaust that felt like they had done something sort of almost shameful by not surviving and not, by re- and by not rebelling. A remarkable thing is that, you know, a few years later, you know, after 50s, in 1961, um, Adolf Eichmann, the, one of the architects of the Holocaust, is apprehended. He's in hiding. He's living in hiding in Argentina. And, and, and one of the most amazing thing to me about Hannah's story is how she touches on so many historical Turning point moments. You know, she happens to, like, move in next door to Anne Frank, who becomes the face of the Holocaust. She herself survives the Holocaust. She's in the early days of the founding of the state of Israel. And then one of her cousins, by chance, is the chief interrogator of the Mossad, um, and is, and apprehends Eichmann and brings him back to trial

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 54:56 If you don't believe in fate or some higher powers, then this story really makes you think about it. Even the fact that by chance, amongst tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of prisoners, she's somehow just across the fence from her best friend, Anna. I mean, let's just go back to that story for a minute.

Dina Kraft 55:17 Yeah. Yeah, sure.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 55:17 So we've, we've, we've got to the point where she gets word that Anna's next door. She's shocked because she thinks she's in Switzerland. She has that little conversation with her, comes back, tells her, the women in her barr- like, "My, my friend's starving. We need to get food." So they, they somehow get some food together.

Dina Kraft 55:35 Yeah, yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 55:36 Then what happens?

Dina Kraft 55:37 Yeah, they somehow... And, and they, again, like, like you mentioned with Edith, like, people have food and they usually save it for themselves, right? So a couple of weeks before, one of the only Red Cross packages had actually arrived to her side of the camp. So everyone got a little small, little shoebox, uh, size of, of, of dried fruit and a few rusks, like, not very much. And they'd, some of them had squirreled little bits and pieces of it away for themselves. Um, but when she came and said, "Listen, I need help," everybody started going back to their bed and tucking things out from under pillows and bringing a little bit of this and a little bit of that, and they put it inside of a sock. [laughs] And, um, and, uh, and, and Hannah went off again in the cold, in the bitter-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 56:15 So she snuck out-

Dina Kraft 56:15 She snuck out again

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 56:16 ... risking her life again-

Dina Kraft 56:17 Right

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 56:17 ... to throw it to Anna

Dina Kraft 56:18 And she, and she goes to the fence and she calls out, "Anna." Anna comes to the fence and she says, "Hi." Doesn't waste any time. "I'm throwing you, I'm throwing it to you now." And all of a sudden she hears, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, she hears footsteps and she hears a scream, a primal scream. It's Anna screaming and crying and sobbing because that fir- those footsteps belonged to a woman who'd come and stolen the food package out from under her.

Speaker 56:42 She was also hungry, and she took it

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 56:44 Yeah. So this is really interesting. So there, there is kindness and humanity, but there's also self-preservation.

Speaker 56:51 But you cannot-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 56:52 Right?

Speaker 56:52 You cannot judge it

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 56:52 You can't blame them.

Speaker 56:53 You cannot-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 56:54 You can't judge it. Exact- I get it. I get it. N- n- and I think anyo- any of us who think we know what we would do-

Speaker 56:59 We don't know what we would have done

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 57:01 We, I, I agree.

Speaker 57:01 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 57:02 We just no idea when that sort of pressure is exerted on us, how we're going to act.

Speaker 57:09 We don't know ourselves.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 57:11 We don't.

Dina Kraft 57:11 No. It's a test you never want to have to undergo, right? [laughs]

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 57:14 Yeah.

Dina Kraft 57:14 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 57:14 So, so Anna doesn't get the food.

Dina Kraft 57:17 And she is inconsolable. And Hannah incor- i- in, in order to placate her says, "Don't worry, I will come back and I, I will come back tomorrow night. Just come back to the fence tomorrow."

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 57:28 Okay.

Dina Kraft 57:28 "I will find you food." And again, she has no idea how she's gonna make this happen again, how she's gonna make something out of nothing.

Speaker 57:33 Because she has already gotten from the people what she could

Dina Kraft 57:36 But she just, again, another act of friendship, another act of giving and loving and caregiving. I mean, Hannah, after the war, becomes a nurse. [laughs] And, um, she is, in her very being, she is a caregiver. And so she says, "I will bring you something. Just stop crying. Just stop crying. I will come back."

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 57:51 And so she does get some food together

Dina Kraft 57:53 She goes back to that amazing group of women and their solidarity and their friendship and their kindness. Again, they scrimp and scrave whatever they possibly can find. A, um, and she goes back, creeps out into the dark night again. Again, imagine every time this is risk of being shot and killed on the spot, and she comes out and she creeps. And this time they're a little bit more strategic. [laughs] She says, "I'm throwing it to you." You know, she says, where, they sort of say where they're standing so they can, because they can't see each other, remember?

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 58:20 Yeah.

Dina Kraft 58:20 They make sort of a triangulation kind of a plan. She throws it over the fence. Boom. Anna catches it.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 58:26 Oh.

Speaker 58:26 Wow.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 58:26 And that's the last time they-

Speaker 58:28 Yeah, because then the-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 58:29 ... see each other

Speaker 58:29 ... grandfather was very ill, and he-

Dina Kraft 58:33 Her father, Hannah's father

Speaker 58:34 ... he died. He died. And then-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 58:36 Who, who? Sorry, Hannah's-

Speaker 58:37 Hannah's father.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 58:38 Yeah.

Speaker 58:38 So she stayed some days, you know, as if to mourn, mourn.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 58:44 So when she left Anna Frank for the, well, what is now the last time-

Dina Kraft 58:49 Right

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 58:49 ... right, so I'm just interested what was going through her mind. So she's got some food this time for her, for her friend.

Dina Kraft 58:57 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 58:57 Her friends will leave, but she's got it. How did they leave it then?

Dina Kraft 59:01 It was very, very rushed because they were, you know, and they knew that they had, the time was limited, so it was a very rush. But the fact that they were able to say to each other, "Maybe we'll see each other in the fall at school," here they were, you know, again, completely like, you know, dehumanized to the ultimate degree, their families, you know, they're basically both orphaned at this point, you know? [laughs] Um, or on the verge of being orphaned for Hannah. Um, and yet they could still imagine a better place. They could still imagine a normal world outside of this planet called hell, called Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp. They can imagine going back to school in the fall, which to me is actually very inspiring that they could still imagine some sort of real normal life.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 59:37 Well, I've written in my notes, one of, one of the things I've, I've circled is the words imagination because it's, it, it strikes me throughout this entire... And I, and I'm aware the book can only detail [laughs] certain moments of a long story, right? So there's many days of probably tedium, heartache, torment, seeing people be murdered-

Speaker 1:00:01 Torture

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:00:02 ... torture that we just, you can't write. It would be 100 times the size, right, to, to detail every day. But you would need imagination to get through, right?

Speaker 1:00:13 Mm-hmm. I think imagination helps you stay normal, as if to go to another world for at least some minutes, some minutes not to be tortured, just to be in another place.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:00:26 Helps you stay alive. Yeah.

Dina Kraft 1:00:28 Yeah. Very much so. And I think Hannah always, there was a roadmap for her and her life. Her father kept saying, "We are gonna be exchanged one day, and we are gonna go to Palestine. We are going to go," what they called Eretz Israel, the land of Israel. At this point, it was British Mandate Palestine. And so they always had that hope and that imagination, and she could sort of imagine a life, you know, living on a kibbutz, becoming a nurse. She, she had a, she had a, she had where to go, and she had an idea of how she was gonna get there

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:00:55 This idea of, um- Hope, again, is something I think about a lot. There's many famous, uh, people who have survived the Holocaust who have written books.

Speaker 1:01:07 Mm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:01:07 Well, but maybe not enough actually, but there's a few, right? So Victor Frankl and his book-

Speaker 1:01:13 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:01:13 ... Man's Search for Meaning, he talks about purpose-

Speaker 1:01:16 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:01:17 ... and about this-

Speaker 1:01:17 Exactly. This is what she had.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:01:19 Yeah. And-

Speaker 1:01:20 She had a meaning, first of all, to take care of her sister.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:01:24 Well, this is it. I've... This, this is a bit in the, in the book, page 236. Um, and, and, and it's, it's this, it's this idea that they go to sleep together each night together. They wake up together, her with her little sister, Gabi, who's what? Three at the time, three and a half. "Everything about us was intertwined. We fell asleep next to one another every night. It was seeing Gabi when I woke up in the morning that had forced me to move forwards in even the blackest of moments. I had done all I could to keep her alive, which in turn had stopped me from giving up."

Speaker 1:02:06 Exactly.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:02:06 Yeah.

Speaker 1:02:06 It was from both sides. This she took care of her sister really made her stay alive because she had a significant for her life, like Victor Frankl says.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:02:19 Now, I wanna draw, not a comparison, but I just wanna share something, not in any way to trivialize this. Uh, honestly, I, I, I'm not saying it's the same thing at all. But one thing as a doctor that I see-

Speaker 1:02:34 Mm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:02:34 ... and there's good research on this now, is that when we do things for others, when we volunteer, it can be so powerful for our inner wellbeing.

Speaker 1:02:47 Exactly.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:02:48 You know, many people who suffer with depression, actually volunteering and getting out in a community where you have to do things for others, where you feel that people need you and they rely on you, I have seen transformative changes. Now, I'm not at all comparing that to being in the Holocaust-

Speaker 1:03:04 Yes

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:03:04 ... being in a concentration camp. But it's interesting that there's a theme there that when you have hope, when you have to do something f- for, for something beyond who you are, you can get through stuff.

Speaker 1:03:16 Yeah. The principle is the same-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:03:18 Yeah

Speaker 1:03:18 ... that you take today old people that come and help other old people, it gives them hope and significant to their life. They are not useless.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:03:29 Can, can, can I... I was gonna ask about Gabi. So Ga-

Speaker 1:03:32 I have to tell you about Gabi

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:03:33 So Gabi is your, uh, let's-

Speaker 1:03:34 My aunt

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:03:34 ... is your auntie, right? So, so-

Speaker 1:03:36 My great-aunt. She's something.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:03:37 So how old is she now?

Speaker 1:03:39 82.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:03:39 Okay.

Speaker 1:03:39 Full of life, like, like my mother.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:03:41 Now, I c- now, I cannot imagine this. If I ever come to visit in Israel-

Speaker 1:03:45 Mm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:03:45 ... which I hope to do-

Speaker 1:03:46 [laughs]

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:03:46 ... I'd love to meet her because I-

Speaker 1:03:48 Oh, you will meet her. You will be impressed. She is something

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:03:50 I, I read about her as a little girl, and one of the most profound things in this book for me, I mean, I could give you a list, but when they are liberated, and Hannah talks about it- I think it's spring, and there's flowers and she goes, "Oh, I don't think Gabi knows if-

Speaker 1:04:09 She doesn't know what it is

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:04:10 ... what a flower is."

Speaker 1:04:11 Not what chocolate is.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:04:12 And that just hit me-

Speaker 1:04:13 Not what cookie is

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:04:14 ... that just hit me-

Speaker 1:04:14 Nothing

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:04:15 ... right in my heart, like a, a maybe four years old.

Speaker 1:04:17 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:04:18 She has no idea the colors of a flower, and it, it just dawns on you how, I, I don't know, ridiculous, how, how crazy this whole situation was, how dark it was.

Dina Kraft 1:04:31 How people did that to other people.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:04:33 How people did that to other people.

Speaker 1:04:36 But you know, so-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:04:36 That's the, that's the remarkable thing, isn't it? There's other humans are doing that to other people. Why?

Dina Kraft 1:04:40 Yeah. Right. Hatred. It, it, I mean, it goes, it just goes to the old, you know, people talk about antisemitism as the oldest hatred. We look at, you know, racism and, and prejudice around the world. Um, and, and Jews have been experiencing it since time immemorial. And at, and at a time like today when antisemitism is again resurging and hatred is again resurging, and the way leaders speak, the, the, you know, iin, in, in the, in the sort of the, the rise of the far right and the rise of the-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:05:05 Mm

Dina Kraft 1:05:05 ... sort of incredible, sort of divisive and cruel language, and outsiders and insiders and foreigners and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and nationalism. I mean, a lot of the echoes of what we heard, you know, at the, the dawning of, of, of the Second World War, even the, or in the First World Wa- World War that led to the Second, we are hearing again today, those messages.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:05:24 Mm.

Dina Kraft 1:05:24 Things that we never thought we would hear before. The fear, I think about my own grandparents who were living in Italy in 1939 and had to flee and imagining them in their, in their kitchen trying to, you know, and, and trying to find somewhere in the world to go to, and that always felt so abstract to me. But in recent years, it feels much less abstract.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:05:41 Yeah. It, it's interesting. Recently, I'm not sure how much of this you're aware of, um, and, and, and I must be honest, I'm not, you know, we're, we're, we're all biased in terms of what we're exposed to, and so what we see. So the whole issue of refugees in the UK is a political hot potato, let's put it like that. And recently, and this is not really a political show at all. Like, uh, it's, it's a health podcast, but I think this is really, really important 'cause I think this absolutely impacts health. Like, the media and politicians often like to other people, 'cause that's ultimately what we're talking about, isn't it?

Dina Kraft 1:06:21 100%.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:06:21 We're talking about just othering people, and it's when you other them, that's when you can start this slow decline and, um, discrimination and prejudice and dehumanization.

Dina Kraft 1:06:37 We're seeing so much, uh, division and it feels really urgent, you know? That, like, these, when people, you know, especially with social media and people don't feel any real ac- um, accounting for their own words. They feel-

Speaker 1:06:48 I agree with this

Dina Kraft 1:06:48 ... sort of throw things out.

Speaker 1:06:49 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:06:49 That's right.

Dina Kraft 1:06:49 And the cr- the level of cruelty and the level of bashing, um, is, is, uh, it-

Speaker 1:06:54 You know, the way of talking, when you write it on a paper or in the computer, you don't see anybody that you, you talk to, so people really write things very, very dirty, very not good.

Dina Kraft 1:07:07 And people, and people can also sort of hide behind the word. And, you know, and you see people being, you know, uh- You know, especially even to the, to the refugee issue you mentioned, you know, the sort of dehumanization and the language of sort of like cancer and vermin. And, and again, like, those, those are the words that we, we heard back in the 1930s

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:07:23 So the message being words matter. And I think a take-home for, for everyone listening or watching this-

Speaker 1:07:29 We say words can kill. If you are not saying the right words, it can kill someone.

Dina Kraft 1:07:36 And not saying a word can also kill, right? I mean, as we- words can be deadly, but silence can sometimes be even more deadly. When the, when the sort of fanatic m- minority takes control and sort of reason is flo- flo- flies out the door, when good people stay silent, 'cause it's too inconvenient for whatever reason, when people stay silent, that's, that's when you look, the story of Hannah, when you look at the story of the rise of Nazism, including in, in Holland, is too many people stayed quiet. Too many people did not protest.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:08:06 You know, in, in the section in the book on, uh, liberation after they, they get off that train, I think the chapter is The Lost Train.

Dina Kraft 1:08:14 Mm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:08:15 And I mean, there's [laughs] there's so many things in that chapter which, um, whi- which are just incredible. One of them is then they're going round these, I think the Russian soldiers say, "Look, go and find some food here. Get some shelter here." And I think, I think Hannah was talking about this, this idea that the Germans who they saw were looking at them with almost hatred, and she was confused and saying, "Why are you looking at us with hatred? Why not look at your government or the Nazis with hatred?" Uh, you know, maybe can you just elaborate on that?

Dina Kraft 1:08:53 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:08:53 It's quite striking to read that.

Dina Kraft 1:08:55 Interesting. Yeah, I mean, they had been so indoctrinated that these, that these Jews were parasites upon the nation, that they were the danger, that they were, you know, taking over the country. Um, and, uh, they had forgotten that, that they were people. And even if they saw them coming off of the train, this train that was liberated by the Russians in the end, and, you know, Ha-

Speaker 1:09:16 And then they really looked so bad. They were like-

Dina Kraft 1:09:18 They were skeletal. I mean, you know, Hannah-

Speaker 1:09:20 ... mummens. They looked like going to die on the spot.

Dina Kraft 1:09:24 Yeah, I mean, they were basically like sort of walking, living skeletons.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:09:26 Yeah, she was 30 kilos when she came out.

Dina Kraft 1:09:29 Yeah. Exactly.

Speaker 1:09:29 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:09:29 I mean, it's incredible.

Dina Kraft 1:09:31 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:09:31 This reminds me of something that Edith Eger also said to me i- in the conversation with her, and I think it kind of speaks to these themes. She says, "When a..." I think she was referring to someone else, but she said, "When a lie gets repeated enough times-"

Dina Kraft 1:09:47 Mm-hmm

Speaker 1:09:48 It, it becomes true. Uh-huh

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:09:49 ... becomes the truth, right?

Dina Kraft 1:09:50 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:09:50 And, and it kind of speaks to this.

Dina Kraft 1:09:52 Right. Right, and I think they... Yeah, I mean, it's, it's, it is, it is a, an, uh, an incredible image when you, when you think of it, you know. Like, here they are, they had been sort of protected in their homes in Germany, and they had been, um, you know, this is, this is a farming village that they came to. Their pantries were stocked with food. They were, they were, they were fine, right? Um, um, but, uh, I don't know if, I don't know if it triggered some sort of guilt in them as well, that they suddenly-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:10:16 Yeah

Dina Kraft 1:10:16 ... saw these, these Jews that they had seen as these, some sort of, like, uh, interlopers, um, and, and dangerous figures, and now, like, and, and as, and as looking as weak as possible, [laughs] you know, as weak and sort of, um... And I wonder if in some ways it, it pricked their conscience in some ways. I, I don't know.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:10:32 There's also this section, again, in this, in this chapter o- on liberation, where I think her and someone called Robert from the train-

Dina Kraft 1:10:42 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:10:42 ... go into, uh, a house, and there's a German mother with her baby, and they've got, I think, cheese and jam and meat. And the German lady, I think, maybe, may be quite scared at seeing what they're gonna do to, to... Is like, "Please, this is all the food I have for me and my baby." And Robert and Hannah left it, even though they were starving, even though they'd been on a train, I think, for 13 days.

Speaker 1:11:10 13.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:11:10 Right? This, this lost train. They didn't know where they were going. Like, they didn't even believe they were free.

Speaker 1:11:14 They didn't get any food. Nothing.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:11:15 They still didn't take it. And, and, and I thought that that theme of humanity comes through. It's like, wow. Wow, you still didn't take it when you were literally starving. You're weighing only 30 kilos. You have every right, most people would say, to feel bitter, if you wanted to, and to take that food when they're probably well-fed anyway. Like, that was incredible. The other incredible thing was this cruel irony where people who had survived the concentration camp, survived the train journey, and they were so excited to see the foods, they ended up dying from gorging on the foods.

Dina Kraft 1:11:54 Mm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:11:54 Like, I, I just couldn't get my head around that. What [sighs] just a cruel irony.

Speaker 1:12:00 They, they were starving, and they saw all this food, and they just ate it, and they died immediately.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:12:06 Mm. Yeah. And Hannah actually explai- says literally, "We were lucky the house we went to-"

Speaker 1:12:10 Yeah, they had only potatoes

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:12:11 ... didn't actually-

Speaker 1:12:11 That's what she had

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:12:11 ... they didn't have much.

Dina Kraft 1:12:13 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:12:13 So we, the, there wasn't the risk there of gorging-

Speaker 1:12:16 Exactly

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:12:17 ... and killing ourselves on food.

Dina Kraft 1:12:18 Right.

Speaker 1:12:18 She was lucky in this, uh-

Dina Kraft 1:12:19 But you, you, you asked me earlier about, like, one of, one of the things that changed me writing this book. I feel like I look at food really differently now. You know, when I see, when I, I have children that are about the same age as, actually as Hannah was, um, during the course of the story, 13 and 15-year-old children, and they often leave food on their plate. Um, I really have a hard time throwing it away, you know? I really have a hard time, you know, not sort of packing it up for leftovers or gobbling it down myself. [laughs]

Speaker 1:12:44 I have it all my life.

Dina Kraft 1:12:45 Yeah.

Speaker 1:12:46 People from the Holocaust cannot throw food.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:12:50 I wanted to talk about, particularly with you, Ruthie, I guess, was this relationship with food. Because having been in a concentration camp and having food rationed, if you can even call it that, what then happens to how you view food? Like, you didn't have it. You, you'd literally eat anything that was given to you. How does that then change you as a person? Like, it- maybe explain to us what was your mother's relationship with food like, and how did, how were you brought up around food?

Speaker 1:13:30 First of all, we would not throw food. Food, you, you never-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:13:36 You don't throw food

Speaker 1:13:37 ... you have to finish. You have to finish. But I know that a lot of people from the Holocaust, they would give their children to eat and to eat and to eat. Now we know that [laughs] we don't have to eat too much. Yeah? S- but my mother, she really was normal with it. She-

Dina Kraft 1:13:55 One of her fantasies, though, of course, throughout the war, you talked about imagination before. Sorry. You know, she talked about, like what... And, and, and a lot of times people in the, in the barracks would talk about food, and they'd go through preparing elaborate meals in their mind, and they would talk about the recipes and what this and that, and she didn't have much patience for that. Um, but what she did think about constantly was, uh, toasted egg with butter and a poached egg. That's- [laughs]

Speaker 1:14:18 And hot chocolate

Dina Kraft 1:14:19 And hot, and hot chocolate as well. But that's what sort of, sort of sustained her, was that, was what-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:14:23 Yeah

Dina Kraft 1:14:23 And, and, and a clean bed with clean sheets.

Speaker 1:14:26 My Aunt Gabi, she's crazy with cleaning. She's crazy with cleaning.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:14:32 Why do you think that is?

Speaker 1:14:33 Because of the Holocaust. Because all her childhood was with-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:14:37 Dirty clothes

Speaker 1:14:37 ... dirtiness. Everything was dirty.

Dina Kraft 1:14:40 I mean, imagine in that, in that train, for example-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:14:42 Yeah

Dina Kraft 1:14:42 ... just the, the level of filth that they descended into

Speaker 1:14:45 Oh, this killed her, almost

Dina Kraft 1:14:45 Yeah. I mean, she, she, they were in, they were in this train that was meandering through the German countryside just in the very last days of the war, uh, dodging bombs and whatnot. Um, and at one point, the man who was very sick next to her in the train had some sort of, um, diarrhea, and he basically spi- he had, he collected his... I have to say this politely. But he, he had, he had a, he had a, a bowl basically, uh, where he was sort of collecting his own refuse, and it spilled on top of Hannah and her dress.

Speaker 1:15:13 This made her crazy.

Dina Kraft 1:15:14 And, um, she was completely soiled

Speaker 1:15:15 This-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:15:15 And, and she tried her best to keep that clean the entire time

Dina Kraft 1:15:18 Yeah, to keep the blanket, the blanket clean

Speaker 1:15:19 Yeah. Was the only blanket

Dina Kraft 1:15:19 And try to cle- keep the blanket she was on-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:15:20 So basically diarrhea all over her, and-

Speaker 1:15:22 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:15:22 ... there's no, there's nothing you can do this day

Dina Kraft 1:15:24 Coating her

Speaker 1:15:25 After 10 days that you don't eat and don't, uh, clean yourself at all

Dina Kraft 1:15:28 Yeah. So, um, so anyway, her sister, you know, who was so little and has very, claims to have no memory of her time in Bergen-Belsen, at, in the concentration camp, and no memory of the train. She, um, must have some sort of very visceral memories because, you know, she was an OC- she is to this day like an OCD level cleaner of her home. When I went to interview her at her house, which was spotless, she told me, when I, when I remarked on how sparkling clean her home was, she says, "I've been trying to clean up from the filth of the Nazis ever since we came out of the camps."

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:15:57 And she's now in her 80s.

Dina Kraft 1:15:59 82.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:15:59 Yeah.

Dina Kraft 1:15:59 She's still cleaning.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:16:00 And, and what's so striking when I hear that, we know from the medical science that early years are important. But Hannah went into the camps when she was 13, 14?

Dina Kraft 1:16:14 14. Mm-hmm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:16:15 14 years old. Okay. So although it's early, it's not as early as Gabi. So those years, we know naught to three, naught to seven are formative. So much of who we are and how we think and, and our behaviors are laid down or, or, or are strongly influenced by those times. So it's interesting just hearing this, that actually Gabi was so little, and she's got no l- she's got no conscious memory, but her whole behaviors are, are basically showing that there is a memory. As you say, a visceral memory.

Speaker 1:16:46 Yeah. I think all the psychologists can throw all their theories when they see Gabi, because Gabi had really a very bad childhood and with evil and all this torture, but she grew to be a, such a good human being.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:17:06 Oh.

Speaker 1:17:06 All her life, she's doing good. She's volunteering. She's w- working. She was a very good teacher with the very hard children, with a lot of, uh-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:17:18 Difficult

Dina Kraft 1:17:18 The tough cases

Speaker 1:17:19 ... difficulties. Yeah. She was the teacher for these children, and then she had the, for old woman, for old people, like a club, that she was taking care of them, that we would laugh in the family and, and we would say, "Oh, we would be, we would love to be old people in her club." And now she's all the time volunteering with, uh, Alzheimer. She's going, even in the corona, she went to people with Alzheimer, and she's making with a flute, and she's singing for them.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:17:55 Yeah.

Speaker 1:17:55 And she's talking to them. She's, and then she was volunteering in hospitals to bring food to the people that are waiting for the ill people. And for everybody, you know, she would come with good things, with chocolate and whatever. But for years, she's only doing good. And I say, "Wow. What, what happened from a child that saw only evil in the very-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:18:22 Yeah

Speaker 1:18:22 ... very significant years?"

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:18:25 What was the relationship like between Hannah and Gabi? I read that passage from the book clearly showing how close and how much they would have bonded in the concentration camps. But when they are free, when they've made their new life in Israel, they're mothers, they're grandmothers, what was their relationship like?

Speaker 1:18:43 Yeah. They, they were very, very close.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:18:46 People can be close. Siblings can be close, for sure. One might imagine after such an intense experience, there would be, not that you can compare these things, but a closeness almost on a different level.

Speaker 1:19:01 Mm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:19:01 Did you detect that, that there was something about that bond which was, this is more than just a regular sisterly bond?

Dina Kraft 1:19:09 Yeah. I mean, I think also, their, their bond, I mean, Hannah basically became a surrogate mother-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:19:13 Yeah

Dina Kraft 1:19:13 ... for, for, for Gabi, even before they were arrested and deported, because the mother dies-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:19:18 Yeah

Dina Kraft 1:19:18 ... in childbirth. So she's instantly, the father's overwhelmed. The grandparents are older. She becomes sort of like the caregiver of her little sister from... And, and, and there's actually a photo of her before the war in a sandbox sitting next to her sister, and she looks sort of... She's 14, but she also, she, she has-

Speaker 1:19:33 Like a mother

Dina Kraft 1:19:34 She looks like a mother. Like, it's hard to put, it's hard to put into words, but she just has that, like, look of responsibility and love in her eye already, even before she's, you know, in the camps with her. Um- I think there, there was a little bit of tension, you know, uh, after the war, and this sort of relates back to your story about connection to food. Um, they're in Switzerland after the war recovering, both of them. Uh, Ha- um, and Gabi is put into an orphanage, and the orphan- people who run the orphanage mean well, but they know nothing about children in trauma. They know nothing about children who come out of a cer- a, a concentration camp. And Gabi, who had sort of wasn't the best eater even before, before, uh, before she was deported-

Speaker 1:20:13 Yeah, she wasn't at all

Dina Kraft 1:20:13 ... um, she would sometimes throw up her food, and as a, quote-unquote, "punishment" for this, the people at the orphanage made her eat the food she had just thrown up.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:20:23 Oh.

Dina Kraft 1:20:24 And that traumatized her even further. So, um, you know, there was just, again, there was no, there was no, um, there was-

Speaker 1:20:31 No understanding-

Dina Kraft 1:20:32 There was, yeah

Speaker 1:20:32 ... the children that came from the-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:20:34 Yeah

Speaker 1:20:34 ... Holocaust and went to orphanage.

Dina Kraft 1:20:37 Yeah. And then when she rejoins, when she ends up, they both end up, um, in, in, in Israel in the early years of the state, but at this point, Hannah has, uh, gotten engaged and gotten married, and she sort of starts her new life with her husband, who is, who is Ruti's father. And Hannah and, and Rut- and Gabi is adopted by another family, and I think there was this s- because they were so close and so intertwined, I think Gabi felt a little con- you know, sort of, I don't know, baffled or confused that she was not gonna be living in their home with them.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:21:03 Yeah, I ca- I can believe that. And-

Speaker 1:21:05 Because my mother was learning all the day in the hospital. You know, in hospital you have not to be at night, at, at daytime, so she couldn't be at home.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:21:14 Yeah.

Speaker 1:21:14 So then she went to a very good family.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:21:18 Yeah. You know, this, this relationship to food's fascinating.

Speaker 1:21:22 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:21:22 This sort of question has two parts. One part is relating to what I've just said about do you know, um, other Holocaust survivors, other concentration camp survivors, and what their relationship with food-

Speaker 1:21:34 Mm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:21:34 ... is like. And then I guess related to that is this wider question that we all like to be around people, at least from time to time, who've had similar experiences to us. Because you know they know what you've been through, you know what they've been through. So the second part of this question is would your mother, would Hannah want to get together with other survivors, or is it something you don't wanna talk about? "I don't wanna see other survivors. I wanna get on with my life." You know, it's, do, do you understand what I'm getting at?

Speaker 1:22:03 Yeah, I, I would say she was quite normal. She would go with everybody.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:22:08 Right.

Speaker 1:22:08 She would talk with everybody. She was so open to know new things, to know new people. Sh- she was very open, very spontaneous.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:22:19 Yeah.

Dina Kraft 1:22:19 You know, as did Anna, I think, very much so. You feel that in, when you read the diary, you feel that. But, but she also, I think, this appetite for life and always, you know, as she said, sort of being up for anything. But to, to your question about food, I think other survivors, you hear a lot about, um, survivors who would hoard food, and I think also, yes, this idea of not, never throwing anything away. And I see that even my, my mother's own family, who was a refugee family, who never threw things away. I mean, Hannah did have friends, including Dutch, uh, fellow Dutch friends who'd, who'd come over to, um, to Israel after the war, that she spent time with. Um, and she, but, and then she, and, but what's interesting to me is that sometimes she would, there were other Bergen-Belsen survivors, including she worked with a doctor who was a survivor from Bergen-Belsen. She told me there was a neighbor in, in, in, in your, in that very, in, in your comment, who was also from Bergen-Belsen.

Speaker 1:23:03 Mm-hmm.

Dina Kraft 1:23:03 But they didn't really talk about it very much.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:23:05 Right.

Dina Kraft 1:23:05 They didn't really... I, I think, you know, now we would think there'd be support groups or some sort of way to kind of come around, around the trauma together. Um, there were a lot of survivors just, they were in the ether. They were there, um, but you didn't necessarily know their backstories.

Speaker 1:23:18 More than half of Israel was survivors. They didn't talk for years of what they had-

Dina Kraft 1:23:24 Yeah

Speaker 1:23:24 ... gone through. They-

Dina Kraft 1:23:25 Those early years were very much about, like, okay, one foot have, o- one foot in front of the other. We have to marry. We have to create new families. We have to s-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:23:34 Yeah

Dina Kraft 1:23:34 ... we have to create careers. I mean, she didn't, she was always very worried about money when she first came, because she was an orphan.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:23:39 Yeah.

Dina Kraft 1:23:39 She didn't have anybody. And interesting, M- Mr. Frank tried to help her out, you know?

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:23:42 This is Anna's dad.

Dina Kraft 1:23:43 Anna's father, yeah, Otto Frank, um, helped her out with some money, um, originally with, with, with, and al- and always made sure to sort of... And, and she had an aunt and, an aunt and an uncle in the States who also, you know, were there sort of for moral support and also, I guess, financial support if she, if she really needed it. But she, um, you know, she was sort of starting from scratch.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:24:01 Yeah. There's, there's two things about her, her sort of life in Israel-

Dina Kraft 1:24:08 Mm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:24:08 ... which s- I guess they seem like almost trivial things, but they've really stood out to me. One is that you said the cold never left her, and the way you write about it in the book, or the way it's written, is that even on a hot, boiling summer's day, she would still have a cardigan on. And that, that was really striking. Also, that she would give all of her, I think, grandchildren or great-grandchildren the gift-

Speaker 1:24:39 Oh, she gave all of them a-

Dina Kraft 1:24:42 Mm-hmm

Speaker 1:24:42 ... um-

Dina Kraft 1:24:42 She never wanted her-

Speaker 1:24:43 ... a puch, a puch, a-

Dina Kraft 1:24:44 It's a eiderdown quilt, that she wanted to make sure they would never experience-

Speaker 1:24:48 Coldness

Dina Kraft 1:24:49 ... a s- yeah, a smidgen of the, sort of the cold, the terrible, gnawing cold.

Speaker 1:24:52 Blankets. She gave all the grandchildren blankets, good blankets.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:24:57 There's two clear things which, I'm sure there'll be much more in her adult life that was influenced by, by, by this experience, but one of them is not wanting everyone to be cold. Anyone that she loves, "I don't want them to be cold or hungry, and we're not gonna waste-

Speaker 1:25:11 Exactly

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:25:11 ... any foods."

Dina Kraft 1:25:12 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:25:12 Which of course makes complete logical sense, doesn't it?

Dina Kraft 1:25:15 Mm-hmm. And just also, just her ca- I mean, you know, the, the one book she had throughout the entire time she was imprisoned, um, was a biography of Florence Nightingale, the first registered nurse, and that is a book she paged through, you know, the entire, repaged and paged through and reread many times over. And, and indeed she was, you know, she basically was her sister's nurse in a way, you know? And, and she was a caregiver, and she becomes a nurse after the war and after, uh, in, in, in her early years in Israel she becomes a nurse. And who does she work with? Children, young children. I mean, she described to me when she first was in, in Jerusalem, in the Old, in somewhere near the Old City, and she saw children, I think they were, um- ... uh, young Palestinian children, and she saw that they, some of them, you know, uh, you know, running noses and didn't have enough money, and, and it, it hurt her heart. Like, all these years later, there were certain images of children suffering. She couldn't stand the sight of children suffering. And, um, and who did she work with, um, for a good many, many years? She worked with, um, immigrant children. And although she herself was a brand-new immigrant, relatively, she was teaching the newer, even more brand-new immigrants from other parts of the world.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:26:20 Yeah. Can I just touch on gratitude and appreciation for life? Now I'm so interested and curious as to what Hannah's approach to life was with respect to gratitude or things not going her way. From your time with her, did you notice anything about gratitude and appreciation? Was there something there that was like, "Yeah, I c- I can see that," or was it, didn't it, was it not that obvious?

Dina Kraft 1:26:54 I think it was pretty obvious. I think there was sort of this heightened appreciation for very small things. Like when I would bring her, like, tulips or, or she would share with me her, her favorite chocolates. I mean, she really, really liked the chocolates, you know, and she would talk about the chocolate and the chocolate cookie. Like, it was just, um, again, this sort of like, kind of like heightened appreciation and awareness for, for small, for small and big. I think most of all she appreciated, um, her family. She was incredibly close with her three children and her grandchildren, and now her great-grandchildren. The house was always brimming with a different relative or con-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:27:27 Yeah

Dina Kraft 1:27:27 ... combinations of family members. You know, the way so many people in the West, they grow older alone, that was not the case for Hannah. Um, and I think she really sort of thrived h- being the head of this incredibly large, bustling, um, loving brood.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:27:41 And as, as she writes-

Speaker 1:27:42 She was admired but, uh, by all my children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren. She was the big mama.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:27:50 Oh. I mean, I love that phrase, "a heightened appreciation for the small things." And I, and I, and I remember from the book her and Gabi saying that all these great-grandchildren. How many, how many is it?

Speaker 1:28:02 More than 30.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:28:03 More than 30 great-grandchildren was their greatest revenge [laughs] on Hitler.

Speaker 1:28:07 And Gabi, and Gabi has something around this number of grandchildren, you know, before the great-grandchildren.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:28:14 Wow. Just absolutely incredible.

Speaker 1:28:17 So they really-

Dina Kraft 1:28:18 There's also-

Speaker 1:28:18 ... had good families, big families, and all of them so good, so willing to do good. This is what I say psychologists cannot explain that-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:28:29 Yeah

Speaker 1:28:29 ... after what they have, uh, gone through.

Dina Kraft 1:28:32 And I think, it feels so steeped in the story of the, the family life back in Berlin and Amsterdam, and I know that her father and her mother very much wanted to have a large family.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:28:40 Yeah.

Dina Kraft 1:28:40 And very much really loved the idea of family life, and, and to see, like, this couple generations later, there's a lot of, a lot of descendants.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:28:47 How would she deal with stress, when things happen in life that I guess you wouldn't want? A- and I guess, you know, where, where's my thing, my thinking is that in, you know, y- the concentration camp was stress on a different planet, right?

Dina Kraft 1:29:04 Mm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:29:04 The, the sort of stress most of us will never, ever have to experience, but yet you manage it and you get through it.

Speaker 1:29:10 Oh, yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:29:10 So therefore, how do you then manage-

Speaker 1:29:12 I have to, I, uh-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:29:12 More r- yeah, please.

Speaker 1:29:13 Yeah. Uh, I lost my husband 26 years ago, and my mother was the only one that really functioned on that time. This I remember. She said, "Now we have to do this, and you go here, and you do that." She was the only one that was-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:29:32 Nice

Speaker 1:29:32 ... functioning. But maybe it's also the education in Germany. You are very much, uh, you, you cannot say, "Oh, now I am, uh, I'm mourning, so I'm not doing so and so." No, no. You have to be a human being and to do what you have to do, no matter what happens to you.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:29:52 Yeah.

Dina Kraft 1:29:52 But I think it speaks to this sort of, I mean, unfortunate education she had [laughs] in the concentration camps, with just chaos is swirling around you, but you kind of have to keep focus on the task at hand. In the concentration camp, the task at hand was staying alive and keeping her sister alive, and the task at hand when Ruth's husband suddenly died in a car accident, leaving her a widow with eight young children, was how do I get things together, how do I, how do I be the solid, you know-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:30:15 Yeah

Dina Kraft 1:30:15 ... pillar of support.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:30:16 And even before the concentration camp, when her mom dies after giving birth-

Speaker 1:30:20 On the spot, she, she became a mom.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:30:22 And-

Speaker 1:30:22 She became a mom

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:30:22 ... she becomes a mom. She has to deal with it, deal with the grief, deal with the fact that the, the walls are closing in. So it's interesting that when you can manage and get through those stresses, I guess you can get through anything. I would have loved to have met your mother.

Speaker 1:30:36 Mm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:30:36 I really would have.

Dina Kraft 1:30:37 Mm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:30:37 Um, I feel like I know her from, from reading the book. I really do.

Dina Kraft 1:30:41 Mm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:30:41 You know, to-

Dina Kraft 1:30:41 You know, you know what she would have said about you? She would have called you a mensch. A mensch is Yiddish word that means, um, a human being.

Speaker 1:30:48 Human being. [laughs]

Dina Kraft 1:30:49 And it's sort of the highest accolade you can give somebody if they're a mensch, if they're a good person. [laughs]

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:30:54 Oh, well, that's, yeah.

Speaker 1:30:55 [laughs]

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:30:55 I, I really would have loved to have meet her. Hey, look, I, I could talk about Hannah's story, this book, for hours. It, it's, it's had a profound impact on me. It really has. Uh, and I, and I really hope everyone listening picks it up and reads it, because it's, it's, it's beautiful, it's life-affirming, it's heartbreaking, it's tragic, but it's a human story. It's a real human story. This happened. This could happen again, right? So we need to hear these stories. We need to embody them. We need to think about our own actions in the world. Where are we contributing to-

Speaker 1:31:34 Not happen again

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:31:35 ... bigotry or hatred? Where are we contributing with our words and our language to prejudice? You know, and-

Speaker 1:31:43 And to make the world a better place.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:31:46 Yeah. And so what can we do in our own mini worlds, in our own communities, that embodies these qualities of kindness, of compassion, of treating everyone the same? I mean, I, I've said it before, I'll say it again, the, the number one thing I teach my kids- ... is about how they treat other people. I, I, I literally this week said, "I don't care about your grades. What I care about is that you treat every single person you come across with respect. It doesn't matter who they are." And reading this book affirms to me that that's the right thing. That is the most important message to teach my children. To finish off then, and I'll go to you both individually. Ruthie, if I could start with you. To finish off, this podcast is called Feel Better, Live More. When we feel better in ourselves, we get more out of our lives. You are one of Hannah's children. You know her story inside out. What final words of wisdom would you give to my audience? What's important?

Speaker 1:32:56 To be a good human being. Just to do good to other people. This what I learned from my mother and from my aunt. Just to do good, and you can fill all of, of, of your life with doing good to other people, and it makes you so happy.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:33:17 And Dina, if I put that question to you, what would you say?

Dina Kraft 1:33:19 I mean, Hannah used to close her remarks to children and to others she spoke to s- um, using the words of her own religion, saying, you know, "We are all created in the image of God. We are all, we were all created in the image of God." Um, so I would want to, in her name, repeat those wor- that wisdom as well. But I would add to it, [laughs] to speak out when people are not treating other people in the, like they are in the image of God as well. I guess if I could just add one more thing [laughs] from my, from my little... to an- answer your question before, is, um, you know, you asked bef- if it brings us back to the very first question you asked about sort of what changed. In, in, in living and breathing Hannah's story sort of in real time, um, the idea that things can change very quickly, and just that we all have to be very vigilant [laughs] to make sure, um, that we're good to each other.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:34:11 Yeah. She sounds like the most incredible lady. I wish I'd had a chance to meet her, but I'm delighted I got a chance to meet both of you. It's a wonderful book. Thank you for coming on the show.

Dina Kraft 1:34:24 Thank you so much.

Speaker 1:34:24 Thank you.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:34:25 [upbeat music] If that conversation resonated with you, please do check out this one, the most powerful conversation I've ever had on this podcast, with Auschwitz survivor Edith Eger.

Speaker 1:34:36 I have discovered my inner resources in Auschwitz, and they could never murder my spirit. It's not what happens, it's what you do with it