WHY I WROTE “THE TRUTH BETWEEN THE LIES”

Everyone can agree that World War II traumatized those who lived through it. For most of us, it is ancient history. But it is history that still affects many Americans who, like me, have grandparents or great-grandparents or other relatives who came here, the traumas of war and oppression percolating in their souls, people who had already endured so much hardship and had to endure more of it here in America. I have brave ancestors who suffered much and gave me—gifted me—through their sacrifice and suffering, a life of relative comfort and ease. I wrote The Truth Between the Lies, in part, to remind myself how grateful I am for that gift.

Many of the immigrants escaping World War II came to America on overcrowded steamers in harrowing and unsanitary conditions, with the threat of being sunk by German U-boats hanging over them. Once they made it safely to New York, they waited nervously at Ellis Island, hoping to be accepted into the idyllic Golden Land. Little did they know that a new enemy was coming for them. Little did they know that America would accept them only to treat them with the utmost contempt. Most of them would live cheerless lives, laboring like animals, working sixteen or eighteen-hour days, their hands and feet swollen, their aching backs bent to endless factory tasks. Some would be exposed to all manner of poisons and waste, working in steel mills and coal mines, breathing in odious black dust and fumes until their lungs were also black. Some of them would die from overwork and disease, while the Golden Land built up its wealth on their backs.

And, of course, this is not only the story of WWII immigrants, it is the story of many immigrants, old and new, people who are treated little better than slaves, underpaid, overworked, undervalued, oppressed and maligned.

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I knew my paternal grandmother when I was very young, as she partially raised me after my mother left. She had what we now call a mental illness, but back then my father merely called her “high-strung.” When I heard that word for the first time, I envisioned a violin with its strings tuned far too tight, so that when it was played, every note was out of tune, too high-pitched, scratchy and screechy and nerve-jangling. My grandmother was uncomfortable to be around. Everything frightened her. The slightest thing sent her into hysterics. My very first memory, from when I was maybe two or three years old, is of my grandmother flying around the bedroom, waving her arms, screaming and crying—because I had wet the bed.

Much later in my life, I realized that my grandmother had PTSD from the trauma she experienced as a young Jewish woman in Poland and those experiences were a large part of the reason for her inability to cope afterwards. Even after she had been in America for many years, after she had married and had a son who grew up to become very successful, my grandmother still lived an inner life of near-constant terror.

The Truth Between the Lies tells the story of a young woman who escapes war and comes to America alone at fifteen, who endures all of the above hardships plus a troubled marriage. Then, when she gives birth to her first child, she worries that she won’t be a good mother—because she carries so much grief inside her.

I wrote the book in part for my grandmother, but I also wrote it for all the immigrants who come to America, escaping war, poverty and oppression, carrying their grief and trauma with them, but struggling to raise families here so that their children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren can have better lives.”