A Word on Words; 4216; Ann Markham Walsh

and now from nashville public television's stood in the way of celebrating offers literature and ideas for more than three decades but this is a word on workers' jobs john simko welcome once again to award own words my guest today and markham walsh former teacher been this woman as a lover running life affirming works his unit they were dancing from barton of inspiring story of nazi death camps of others aren't so my angle they met and fellow when forced to dance together for the entertainment of the nazi guard at sobibor death camp in poland in april nineteen forty three welcome and right then here to talk about this to give love story tragic in many ways brought own touches the heart from the first page to laws and i have to ask you at the outset i know i read it the diary was a

magnet but what really fortunate that i didn't even know about the diary at first john golf what pulled me into it weighs the obituary in the atlanta journal constitution a nod two thousand three haim had died on july fourth which as she said was a fitting day because he loves this country so much but i repaired count never had her ripped out an obituary before nor since and azteca back on the calendar and i thought i'm going to call his family and tell him how much admire his courage because it told about his being instrumental in the largest escape from any nazi camp and three years later press nation opened the door and the stillness of the story if you know anybody who is related to call the war that come from where i've always been able to find people despise you know so many degrees

immigration so i'm glee eighty releases from branford connecticut it was a new york times article heavily and so i called information and used his name and got in touch with her and we became fast friends back from jumping about our accents hearst is still unclear is very it the death tax and she swears she can understand me and you know that was one of the surprising things that will surprise anybody who looks at this love story on she's done and she had this does excellent them stale and well and i mean utah southern to me and i thought we have to look with others they lose money but the two of you work it out with a beautiful story now how much role to play in in relating all of this

talk about your soul your telephone balance what's the next step she invited me up and i was going to stay in a hotel and she of course and says he would not would not hear of it so i consented and that was the first of five visits to branford connecticut and we visited a lot of old connecticut towns and to curb out sneakers for walks and just had a really good time and a part of that time was spent she needed to talk because three years and she was stealing degree and i was more than willing to listen her family i had listened all they wanted to listen to her so to have fresh ears she swore that helped her through her grieving process more than going to a grief counselor had and i'm at the time and that we spent together was pleasant she's funny she has a wicked

sense of humor and uses it she's little bit bossy and so we had some times when we were a little bit like this but in a very good way you know i have felt for you real as you were interviewing about tell a story of a woman who had looking death in the face and so now he expected i mean it really is it really isn't an accident of history that the two of them survived get solidly how yes senegal was one of a mystery major camps heavy drilling with iran and also that game kosovo border bank at the treblinka and girls i couldn't

read death camps and though the story is so fascinating you know we revisit the history whenever we need a book like this and we think we know everything there was to know about the holocaust and suddenly you're faced with the reality of somebody who was there and it really becomes like brings all are back to you guys how was it for you though to understand you have great us a minute to sit there an interviewer must've been disconcerting at times upsetting there with overwhelming it was i had been this was a job i was given to do i have always said they excel in our lap and everything i ever needed to move forward shell into my way out but it was so overwhelming and i work with victor judge at vanderbilt in a course called a writing life for two years

now which don't mean handel some of it that i kept saying i'm so inadequate for the task only more adequate well he he can't say no you know this is your you're handling it beautifully and but it was and still is overwhelming time because of the importance of this book and the importance of the book is that is that very trigger that brings us back to where nobody who's part of the younger generation and the talk of sole rights movement and how we forget them the brutality and then the holocaust i mean you're talking about a whole generation of people millions of people six million people die in the death camps and it's shocking it's hard to realize and there's almost more than a story it's a mission it got definitely became that i didn't

anticipate how much it would become but when i was recording i did some recording every time when we get within a lot of time just playing and having fun but i also recorded when she was in the mood for it and one of us would reach a point and say i can't do this anymore we have to stop and we would stop and not go and i did it when i was writing it i would reach a point when i had to get away from it for weeks at a time and i'm trying to get my arms around that it's extraordinarily difficult but one of the reasons that i wanted to do and why the reasons i want to get it in schools is because there has been so much forgotten and there still are people who say that it did not happen no sure that hit three emails to tell me that it did not happen i think two of them were from the same person because they were too similar abbott the third was different and i look at the proof and think how can anyone say this never happened initially people went into

get into this story they've heard about what happened the coming together of these two people became lovers so unusual so extraordinary that it could happen in a death camp and then could have us in the way that it happened then you tell it so beautifully these analyses should not religious jews go for that one actually that is the dancer same way they use calisthenics or running the perimeter of the camp to weed out the people who were no longer strong enough to work so they can send him to the gas chamber the next day out but this time it kind of backfired on them because they created something beautiful virulent is brutal but i'm staying there in the

woods and roads i thought i'm not sure is love at first sight for always advise you know you win but she's also worked with tents or talk about well i she always said that it fell immediately but it took her a little bit longer and it actually was beyond the yeah end of the day she says it took her a week or two but i think it's amazing that for how her seventieth birthday she told them you have never proposed to me and i want you to propose and he weighs six years older but he got down on one knee and they loved her deeply and she was so calm in love with him and so dependent on him just a little bit about your life before that in some years

it's the notes she had a pleasant existence was wonderful lovely life doting mother three older brothers a lab to do about what she wanted singh chomp away you know a biker a hiker just as she said at taras her brother's friends always said a devilish sparkle in her eyes and then i think that's what makes what came later so very difficult to deal with a prize as hitler why was making his plate for absolute power she was still living this ideal weight and a sad young girl life's not aware for a moment never that hollande is going to be overrun by wait has lived here he calculated that size line although it'll would believe and he tells them he would now that he would not ah invade that they could retain their neutrality and they believed him

and then on her eighteenth birthday her country's surrendered to the german troops who come into enemy they use under attack and she's under attack and there are moments when you really come to live the heart and humiliation that those usual course of your book as much as we can i don't think we can get our arms around it and really comprehend how it failed because if we look at everything that was taken from him it was everything and everything they had no rights they had you know that the brutality and the horror that they had to live through talk about a testimonial to the resilience of the human spirit and the fact that they came through and there were others who came through i have this is the record

we've read more into it i have a sense that he maybe has a staple in his mind from the very moment he realizes where he is absolutely she i'm ian author kathi an end and a new she led a note are more likely to have been sheltered very shell ten and loving parents and then suddenly it's all taken away and she's layer it is hard to imagine i think in our world today this far removed from the city has ever gonna happen as has happened and then suddenly and then there and they have a sense of what's going on

why does not have a clear and is way use of humanity began to come in to sew war and then so does appear and you know we'll go back and look at the owner whose roots eliminating troops later come through and uc the court's stacks of corpses and you realize the tragedy in on that was clear but with her and with him the telling of the story mason i think more alive than even those tragic image is the minimum wages well it's for the most part it's in her words and i watched all of his show where tape's rinella first tooth and you said that he had it in his mind to escape from day one he was that kind of mayhem time he was ah he

was tough he was brilliant he already spoke three languages easily he ended up when they traveled later he would study a language for a few weeks before they went where they were going and know enough to converse so he was an exceptional man and he would have survived i think regardless he always knew there was never a question his mind he always knew that he would survive she ah probably would not have been able to she was too young has led to shelter alive but because they are loved gave her strength and have protection then they both survived but it was a miracle after miracle after and then you know if you get in and it was so she and her members of her family was so naive and there's a law meant nothing to them and win one hundred page control he says the messages you know and again but nobody listens and nobody pays attention

oil is going up among teens who could believe it this even though the german heritage you know and and and looking back on it it's hard to realize how they were so close to a deer and you're never really understood and believed in really wanted to believe in until it was too late to not leave and then they face the reality that they were there and that they well might die from being there let's talk about darren and above the ruins of that move beyond what it was low among among among among the dead among illumination they both worked in the sorting shared the end they made what they had to do

work for them i he stole everything he could that they could possibly say how when they escaped because he knew they would i she's still as much food as she could to keep them strong her because they could have survived on camp rations and remain strong so the fact that they have to work they are they had no control over that the fact that they made it work for dan and i helped him survive after their state that they controlled for those who just joining us i'm talking with mr jim walsh about her book dancing through darkness and what a book what a story what a love story what a story of hope and inspiration and i am so so the escape comes and they put off alum talk about the planning the trauma that he must've been integrated into the leadership

of what was about to unfold he was not initially this was a time that the two right people came together at the right time because the yeah the russians came in just a month before the escape and lieutenant alexander for terse kay thatcher it is me and brought the military genius you say the russians were most of them always i didn't say she said it she did it where ever they encountered the russian soldiers whether they were dancing in the street you know it after the war is that they were always treated with nothing but kanis of course she looked again as are her liberal writers is because they are the ones who liberated him i am back in italy and fellow handler and those two were the leaders leon had the complete trust of everyone in the camp who wanted to get out ah and sasha brought the military experience and you know and you know fell and he is almost alone is not so narrow goal is issues of this of the

holocaust yes he is and i was abroad and later he was not on the original plan and then they kept it very very small and head to head to absolutely had to because there were people who would have huge wheel from who would arrange it but then the state comes and they manage to get away and so when boruff for their crass but they're then in this a lot and after ten days and nights of ramadan that's writer fleeing and fearing allies bought know there and they're worried about who's gonna say you'll be hand there is they are protected but they're not really protected nominate constantly in danger of being stars and nor is really not over and that since that were

well they were caught ibm nazi guards didn't take kindly to escapees and they knew what it happen to others time and time and time again which is why i had decided they would not try it on their own they would wait until a whole new printer we had planned the escape and that that's what they did because so many had been brought back and made example solve or talk about this for your the lofty well and amidst afghan know i can a farm originally they began to adam's brother's home and he took about wagon with her win a babushka and to me that was courage in disguise our many insensitive recovery of activity occurred yet arn and then they were going to hide them because they were very fearful

that would mean their debt it would mean their son's death and perhaps the whole village but when she saw that time was watching at the pump and he had money and bandages and they were desperate they were absolutely near starvation themselves and so they decided that they would hide them for a short while in exchange for some of the things that he had stolen to pay for their survival that was amazing to me and he was able to bring with them the means or sustenance if anyone i've heard so much and write about which that could have met him that he had all of that play and he had everything he stole under the blacksmith's fire where it would not be found tried to ration it very carefully when they were running there were some people blind who hid them and we take no money not anything another who would not even give them a glimpse of the honors area have money had found plans had jewelry but you know

all the people who had come to the camps had brought everything that had run into the sorting and so as they went through it they were able to and she said you know we would drop something and then when we leaned over to pick it up when i do something so a lot was brilliant the way he had everything planned and worked out and then the main maritimes there is one time is when they think they're discovered there in the lot there that they're saying in our land choked up again what's happened during the savant and a savant as i say it's our story based on them and that's the reason they spoke out after they came to americans everywhere anywhere anybody we would listen live till a story and know or you heard one shoe ever had a doubt that these people are going to mean that

the nie lot closer return well i you know you had to integrate your own sense of the world as it is into their world is you're going to be successful in writing this book how tough was that it was what was in a real way the jewish culture you've got to understand exactly who they are going and where they came from and what and what drove them and the young man oh what a tribute was still don't understand the brutal hatred i can get our arms around that and i never will shake out but that this task was such a gift because i was able to immerse myself and things

that i have no familiarity with before in order to represent it and the way it needed to be represented in the book i did learn a lot about judaism now learned a lot of air at the un kosher life and that as elmo his family and have really just they were it weighs sam talk a little bit about the diary when we found the diary haram and that would be a new law lets you know was there where we don't know where it was going and when she found a little teeny came to bat for and the amazing thing he and haim had pencil and paper with him after ten days and nights of running and padding and she started that diary as soon as they got in the last ten days after the escape she wrote her first entry

npr caught she tried to translate it for me when we found it but it was too hard it was in the air conditioned but the memories that it dredged up were more than she can handle at that time but i told her it belongs in the holocaust museum either in israel or in dc it doesn't belong in the floor of your closet and she insisted that it was boring whining from a young girl but she finally did consent and it's an ice in the dc how it is in nam what courage it took not only for him to do all the planning to be part of the state to be part of protecting his life enrolling and then and then long way their children alone and with that time but let's just talk for a moment about how it was to discover she didn't have a child i didn't all she'd been through

and suddenly there is great joy in the knowledge that there is going to be a job and then there's another show must have been wonderful to ever recall for you how often reacted when they learn that many parents from firsthand they wore extremely upset town because it would it meant that they couldn't stay there any longer and so heinz letter and it's in the book is telling her maybe it's not the best time that it is still too and he chanted ran so it became a thing of joy rather thing that a thing to be feared it made a huge difference in her courage was evident a wife to i don't want to indicate that he was only one that had courage because when she stepped in front of the line at the camp when she stepped in front of time with the polish partisans when she walked five miles after she had gone into labor i kept telling her you had your own

account you intentionally jihad and every great gershwin i'm sorry your life where you think you're so much for coming to its already watching on johnson of your own words keep ringing bees bees