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History flows through Eva's Eyes
Holocaust survivor's story retold by her granddaughter
Eva Unterman's childhood is portrayed in the book "Through Eva's Eyes" by her granddaughter Phoebe Eloise Unterman. MIKE SIMONS/Tulsa World
By KAREN SHADE World Scene Writer
Published: 11/8/2009 2:20 AM
Last Modified: 11/8/2009 12:07 PM
Tulsan Eva Unterman is a mother of two and grandmother of three. In some ways, though, she'll always be a child.
When she was 6 years old, Nazi soldiers occupied Poland. Miraculously, Unterman emerged from the horror of the Holocaust with both her mother and her father. She's one of the few daughters who did. She's one of the few children who survived.
"It's a common bond," she said. "We were the Kinder."
Unterman never thought that one of her own "Kinder" — German for "children" — would play a part in her story of survival. Phoebe Unterman, her granddaughter, is relating Eva's experience to children today so they will know what happened. At 17, Phoebe has become a published author and illustrator with "Through Eva's Eyes," a children's book about her grandmother's early life in Poland.
The book has just been released by Landmark House, and it will be available 2 p.m. Sunday when the Unterman family visits the Charles Schusterman Jewish Community Center, 2021 E. 71st St.
The Council for Holocaust Education will present the program in memory of Kristallnacht, in which the Nazis declared a day (Nov. 9, 1938) of sanctioned reprisals against Jews in Germany and Austria. Actions to remove and exterminate the people soon followed.
What Eva experienced as a child could only be told by going back to childhood — from a perspective through Eva's eyes, said Phoebe, who lives in Kansas City, Mo., with her parents and older sister.
"It was hard to really
put myself in that situation, to write through my grandma's eyes," she said, "because when I went back and edited the story, I put it in first person. It was hard for me to imagine what was going through her mind so I could write it through the eyes of a child."
The burden
Four years ago, Phoebe entered the National Kids-in-Print Contest for Students from Landmark House, a nonprofit organization created to encourage children to express themselves by writing and illustrating their own books. Winners of the contest have their works published.
The book didn't win in 2006, but publishers selected "Through Eva's Eyes" to be part of the Publisher's Choice Gold Award Line.
Eva has seen proofs of the new book, and she's proud of her granddaughter for creating a work of richly colored and detailed illustrations. Phoebe knew she wanted to write about her grandmother's life in Poland as a child. She'd heard part of the story when Eva visited her school and told the students about being liberated by Russian soldiers. She didn't know where the story began. Eva didn't talk about it much.
"I was very careful not to burden children. My own, for that matter, have never heard me speak about it," Eva said. "As much speaking as I have done to middle and high school students, I don't like to burden younger children. I was very careful speaking to the sixth graders (in Phoebe's school)."
It was that way for many years, even when Eva was a child and asked her own mother about what had happened to them.
"She's done a very good job at telling about my childhood without just scaring kids," Eva said.
The Kinder
"Through Eva's Eyes" opens with a bright image of the country and a small girl picking berries with her grandmother. The girl is Eva at age 6. The place is Zokowice, Poland, where her family stayed in a country cottage during summers.
During the summer of 1939, the story continues, Eva's parents became increasingly worried. Then the Nazi soldiers arrived in their shiny boots and forced the family into the ghettos of Lodz, where the little girl would experience hunger and cold for the first time.
It was in that ghetto, where Jews were forced to live for several years, that soldiers periodically burst in and gathered up children before taking them away. They were never seen by their families again. Eva said families went to great lengths to hide their children when they heard the sirens approaching. Children were viewed by the Nazis as the biggest enemy.
Said Eva: "People can't imagine — Why children? Well, children represent the future."
The story tells how Eva's mother hid her and other children in a dry well with a ladder to escape capture. It then moves to Auschwitz concentration camp, then a cattle car to Stutthof and Dresden where Eva was transported. It ends in Theresienstadt, where Eva and family were marched and, ultimately, liberated.
Liberation
Phoebe remembers how she felt when she heard the story from her grandmother.
"I remember, of course, being amazed with how they were treated but I also remember being proud of my grandma and my grandma's mom for all that they did," she said. "They had to be so strong, optimistic and everything to get through the whole experience."
Her parents, Steve Unterman and Ellen Murphy, never discouraged her from writing about such a heavy and tragic topic.
"I'm proud of them both," Steve said of his mother and daughter.
Murphy is also happy that Phoebe found the best vision and concept to present Eva's experience.
"If you've ever met (Eva), she doesn't see the horror of it," Murphy said. "She sees the story behind it. The fact that she survived it is her story. If she hadn't survived it, it would have been someone else's story about her."
Murphy continued, "I always thought that as terrible as it was, we've never ever, ever not let them (the granddaughters) ask questions or talk about it or read about it or investigate it Eva's one of the few survivors (who) was a child at that time. I think it's so important that they talk with her about it and find out as much as they can. It is kind of weird when you think about what my childhood was like."
Phoebe likes that the project brought her even closer to her grandmother. As she begins applying for college, she also sees the work serving a greater service.
"I think it's something that everyone needs to learn about so that there are people out there who will stop it from happening again," she said.
Eva sees the work as a duty.
"It was my responsibility to tell," she said. "I am one of very few Jewish children who survived in the camps."
Through Eva’s eyes
When: 2 p.m. Sunday
Where: Charles Schusterman Jewish
Community Center, 2021 E. 71st St.
Event is free and open to the public.
Karen Shade 581-8334
karen.shade@tulsaworld.com
By KAREN SHADE World Scene Writer
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