Motherland: Growing Up With the Holocaust

by Rita Goldberg

A groundbreaking second-generation memoir of the Holocaust and its legacy by Otto Frank’s goddaughter―“The extraordinary tale is heroic” ( The New York Times ).
 
Rita Goldberg recounts the extraordinary story of her mother, Hilde Jacobsthal, a close friend of Anne Frank’s family who was fifteen when the Nazis invaded Holland. After the arrest of her parents in 1943, Hilde fled to Belgium, living out the war years in an extraordinary set of circumstances―first among the Resistance, and then at Bergen-Belsen after its liberation. In the words of The Guardian , the story is “worthy of a film script.”
 
As astonishing as Hilde’s story is, Rita herself emerges as the central character in this utterly unique memoir. Proud of her mother and yet struggling to forge an identity in the shadow of such heroic accomplishments―not to mention her family’s close relationship to the iconic Frank family―Goldberg offers an unflinching look at the struggles faced by children and grandchildren whose own lives are haunted by historic tragedy.
 
Motherland is the culmination of a lifetime of reflection and a decade of research. It is an epic story of survival, adventure, and new life.
 
“A double memoir that braids her parents’ story with her own, and succeeds in articulating a difficult truth.” ― The Economist

Genres: Holocaust, History, Nonfiction, Biography, World War II, Memoir, War

352 pages, Hardcover

First published May 14, 2014

About the author

Born in Basel in 1949, Rita grew up mostly in the US, with two early years in Germany where her father was a US Army psychiatrist. She taught literature at Essex and Cambridge for nearly ten years and now teaches comparative literature at Harvard, where her British-born husband, Oliver Hart, is a professor of economics. They have two sons and two grandsons and live in Lexington, Massachusetts.

Reviews

[Jim Leffert · Rating 3 out of 5]

Rita Goldberg recounts both her mother, Hilda Jacobsthal’s, story of survival and heroism during the Holocaust and Rita’s experience growing up as a Second Generation child, with Hilda’s life story and the legacy of the Holocaust looming over her.

Hilda Jacobsthal was born in Germany but her family emigrated to the Netherlands in 1929, not to escape persecution, but for economic opportunities. Together with Otto Frank, another German émigré, Hilda’s parents helped found a Liberal Jewish congregation in Amsterdam. Hilda became a close friend of Margot Frank, Anne Frank’s older sister.

Goldberg describes chillingly how after the Nazis conquered Holland in 1940, the status and safety of the Jewish population declined in a series of ominous downward steps. Hilda, a teenager at the time, managed to complete her training as a nurse just as the doors of educational institutions were closing for her people. Soon, she was working at a childcare center where she participated in smuggling Jewish infants to safety under the eyes of the Nazis.

When the Germans started deporting the Jewish population, Hilda fled to Belgium, where she worked undercover with the Resistance, all the time wondering if her parents were safe. After the war, as she learned the cruel fate of her parents, friends, and neighbors, Hilda helped heal survivors and cared for displaced children at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. Later she and her new husband, a physician, accompanied a group of these children to Israel, where they treated the wounded at and near the battlefront during the 1948 War for Independence. When Rita was born in 1949, Otto Frank, a close friend of her parents, became her godfather.

Goldberg’s book, true to her mother’s life, alternates between parts that are gripping and parts that are plodding. Rather than merely telling her mother’s story, at various points Goldberg recounts her efforts to uncover her mother’s story and to separate fact from embellishment. Goldberg is trying to understand what her mother went through, to engage in bona fide research, to come to terms with her mother’s emotionally guarded personality, and to write about the impact of all this on her own identity. At some points this enhances the story; at other points, it leaks some energy out of the tale. At the end, though, Goldberg sums up her experience, and her mother’s legacy, in powerful terms.

[Anne Vandenbrink · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rita's mother, Hilde, was 15 when the Germans occupied the Netherlands. She worked at a childcare center and helped save many children through the Dutch Resistance by smuggling them to farm families. Her nurse's uniform also stopped the Germans from rounding up her parents several times, using her nurse's uniform as a guise for her home being under typhoid quarantine. But one day she came home and her parents had been taken. She hid with friendly families until she could be smuggled to Belgium to join her brother and help working for the Resistance. Her nurse's training led her to care for Holocaust victims at the Bergen-Belsen camp after liberation.

[Laren · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is largely a biography of the author's mother, who survived the holocaust as a teen and followed that up with rather heroic actions in the aftermath as well. The jacket cover promises that the author takes a primary part in the story, relaying what it is like to feel that you must live up to such a legacy. However, that part was fairly brief and towards the end. I never really felt like I understood the author's part of the story, even though I was very interested in it. She did exhaustive research confirming dates, etc. from her parents' recollections, so I feel this matter was far more personal to her than was conveyed on the page. Once I finished the book, I felt like I wanted to call the author and ask her a bunch of questions that weren't answered for me.

So if you are interested in the impact of the holocaust on the next generation, this book minimally touched upon it. The author's mother escaped concentration camps by hiding with various families, and liberation occurs early in the book, so if you are looking for a camp memoir, this is also not the book for you. But I personally found the bulk of the book, detailing the major problems and mass confusion immediately after the war had ended, to be a fascinating account of something I haven't often seen in other memoirs of the time.

[Rachelle Pachtman · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of the best books I have read on the topic, and I have read many as I am obsessed with the history of WWII and the Holocaust. This book was very personal for me because I grew up during the same time as the author and my parents' friends were survivors of the camps. I knew their stories, I saw their tattooed numbers, and had friends whose parents still had nightmares of the camps. Her mother's journey of survival encompassed so many challenges and close escapes, yet her resilience enabled her to be successful and live a happy, full life despite what she endured. In short, her mother was an extraordinary woman and her story is told through her daughter's memories of all the stories her mother had told her many many times throughout her life. I don't want to say too much more and risk being a spoiler, but if this is a genre you read, I highly recommend this book.

[Merissa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ultimately a wonderful story of survival and strength of the human spirit. Bring tissues

[The Jewish Book Council]

Review by Barbara Bibel for the Jewish Book Council.

[Andrea · Rating 4 out of 5]

horribly sad and beautiful memoir.

[Christine · Rating 5 out of 5]

An extraordinary survival story of the author's parents (particularly her mother) during the WWII and their postwar volunteer work. It is incredible to read about their close connection with the father of Anne Frank. The author's reflections from the perspective of the survivors' children was poignant yet inspiring.

[Judy Packard · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well written family history of her parents during and right after the war. Working in the medical field and trying to save those from concentration camps. So many displaced persons. So many with no where to go as they looked for family members. It was interesting the many problems between the European countries right after the war. Many with no official homeland.

[Mary Hite · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very interesting story about Jewish people and events during WWII and after. A couple meet after Bergen-Belsen is liberated, and they are helping the camp prisoners, and later, the refugees who no longer have a home or country. A very good story, but the chapters are very long and the story jumps around a bit. Good WWII true story from a new perspective: the daughter of a survivor.

[Jim Beazley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Required Reading for All Citizens of Today

This book brought to life the ghosts of the Holocaust for this American “Baby Boomer”. The dead told their stories and became us. Through this book I gained the understanding how the survivors LIVED, not just perished.

[Karen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rita Goldberg's memorizing memoir, Motherland: Growing Up With the Holocaust is about courage in the face of horrific circumstances and heroism during one of the most cruel and barbaric times in history. It is about how the author's mother survived the Holocaust fighting with the Underground and working with the war effort and creating a life worth living afterward. But, this book is two-fold for it is also the story about how hard it is watch your mother suffer and bear losses too impossible to withstand when you are a child especially when your life is so safe and protected. How do you develop your own identity and feel worthy? How do you feel proud of yourself when you will never have to test your own mettle in the same profound way? I grew up in Brooklyn during the 50's and 60's and there were many Holocaust survivors in my neighborhood. All had excruciating stories and all had to live with its repercussions as did their children and it was hard. The largest part of Rita Goldberg's book is about her mother's childhood and time in the Underground and I was completely engrossed by the story yet my heart was really with Rita Goldberg's own journey to connect with her mother when this felt fraught and to find herself amidst the struggle for her own identity.

Thank you to Edelweiss for allowing me to review this for an honest opinion.

[Tessa · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a very sad book and at times very difficult to read because of the subject matter and the intense cruelty of people towards those who had already suffered so intensely at the hands of the Germans. I found it very moving and did not realise how anti Semitic so many of the countries were. When the author meets Germans after the war at a conference the so typical answer was they knew nothing of what was happening and all had a good Jewish friend.

[Lynn Wolfson · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is very intense. Unfortunately, it is written in small print and takes a while to read due to the print. The story is very intense and interesting. I can feel the author's emotions as I read the book. The book is the author's family story of before, during and after the Holocaust. The author is the daughter of Holocaust survivors and writes as if the memories of the Holocaust were her own. She carries a very heavy burden of the past.

[Amy · Rating 3 out of 5]

A bit dry at times, but still a good read, this is part biography of [author] Goldberg's mother (and later, her father) and an analysis of what it was like to grow up as the child of a Holocaust survivor.

I found the story about Hilde's survival during the Holocaust to be of most interest and the rest sometimes fascinating and other times of no interest at all.

[Martje · Rating 4 out of 5]

Voor mij extra bijzonder omdat Hilde mijn buurvrouw was. Prachtig verhaal.

[Denise Jo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Books like these are very hard to read knowing that monsters existed and feeling the emotions of the people that are involved in this true story. It is about tragedy and love.

[Lauren · Rating 4 out of 5]

I like the way this Holocaust book brings in the effects on the next generation, as well as the after-effects on the survivors.

[Beth Drabik · Rating 2 out of 5]

Blah..couldn't finish it , sadly . Her writing was tangential and I felt that the character development was poor . Nope,this book was a miss.

[Cheri]

What a wonderful book.....a tribute to her parents! I especially loved the Epilogue, so thoughtfully written!

[Diane · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent story,

[Maureen · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good telling of the author's mother's history but tedious to read. I think it could have done with more editing.