'Holocaust Anonymous'

PW talks with Bernice Eisenstein

by Debby Waldman -- Publishers Weekly, 5/15/2006

In I Was a Child of Holocaust Survivors (p. 60), illustrator Bernice Eisenstein laughs and cries at her need to grasp her parents' tragic experience.

What inspired you to create the book?

A number of years ago I started doing some portraits of my father, and when I was painting I really loved staying with feelings about him. I'd think of my relationship with him. And then that started leading me to writing some things about him. In a strange way, it began as a dance back and forth.

You've described your creative process as a maze. What do you mean by that?

You hold up one memory and nothing is isolated, it leads you to the next. You put those memories next to each other. There was great excitement in learning to understand that. It gave me back more, in a way, than I could give it. I would think of a drawing that I wanted to do and think of writing that I wanted to do, and they would speak to each other.

Do you worry that people will misinterpret your use of humor in writing about the Holocaust (such as imagining a group called Holocaust Anonymous) as disrespect?

I'm not making light of anything. It's more part of a position, part of a sensibility. I go by the Lenny Bruce form of humor. Anything that's sacred, if you reflect about it in a different form, it doesn't change how sacred it is. There's nothing you can do that changes the essence of the thing.

Where does the humor come from?

There's no singular answer. It's very much entrenched in my sensibility. If something doesn't make sense to me, I'll see the humor in it. Humor is a reflex that helps you out of sadness. It can be partly self-defensive—it's a way of protecting yourself.

Did you set out to write a book that was irreverent and funny?

It was more important to me to be inside and go deeper and deeper. It's like holding up a prism and wanting to see as much light as you can inside it. What comes out is my sense of humor. I think the book is much more like a roller-coaster: funny, sad, funny, sad. They're intertwined.

Your father died 15 years ago. What does the rest of your family think of the book?

I think my mother has an understanding of what I was trying to do. I think she's very proud in a tearful way. My siblings are just reading it now. The beauty of it is, it's theirs; it's for them to go where it takes them.