More than a tale of survival Author learns about herself in telling the story of Holocaust survivors

More than a tale of survival
Author learns about herself
in telling the story
of Holocaust survivors

FARRAH MAFFAI Amy Hill Hearth of Little Silver is the author of a new book titled “In a World Gone Mad.”

Telling the extraordinary story of two Holocaust survivors was more than a literary endeavor for award-winning author Amy Hill Hearth. Her latest book deals not only with the horrors faced by its subjects, but also with her own conflicted feelings.

"The way I decide to do a project is that I choose to do things I feel strongly about and that I care very much about, and somehow it becomes a life experience beyond doing a book," explained the Little Silver author.

Hearth’s fourth book — In a World Gone Mad: A Heroic Story of Love, Faith and Survival, the story of two Holocaust survivors — has just been published by Abingdon Press. The author will attend a book signing at Fair Haven Bookstore on Dec. 7.

On Nov. 9, Hearth will speak at a Kristallnacht commemoration in Springfield, where Norman and Amalie Salsitz, the subjects of her book, live. Also, on Nov. 18, she will address the congregation at the United Methodist Church of Red Bank, with which her husband, an ordained minister, is affiliated.

A best-selling author, she measures success not solely by longevity on the bestseller lists.

"It’s hard for my agent to understand what I’m up to," confessed Hearth, author of the critically acclaimed Having Our Say: The Delany Sisters’ First 100 Years, which remained on the New York Times’ bestseller list for a record 105 weeks.

"I’ve been successful, but it’s almost secondary to my main goal, which is to write about what I think is important," she explained. "I love focusing on older people, on people who don’t have a voice. I have a special feeling for them. I’m interested in people who’ve been through something and come through it.

"Everyone is running around trying to find the answers," she continued. "All this searching going on, and frankly, it’s right under our noses — right here! Sadie and Bessie (Delany) living in Mount Vernon (N.Y.) or Norman and Amalie (Salsitz) in Springfield. … These are the people who can give us strength and wisdom."

Hearth said she drew on an understanding of racism developed during her years spent growing up in the South in writing Having Our Say, her book about sisters Sadie and Bessie Delany, centenarians born to a slave, who worked their way through college and became professionals (Sadie was the second black female dentist in the United States) at a time when that was nearly impossible.

A Christian of German-American descent, Hearth faced her own conflict about the Holocaust with the story of Norman Salsitz and Amalie Petranker, Polish Jews who met during the final days of World War II, fell in love and came to the United States as refugees. Both were in their late teens when the Nazi persecution began, and both avoided the death camps and survived the Holocaust by relying on their inner resources and tactics that included posing as Christians.

More than a tale of survival, the story honors their shared history and ability to begin life anew.

"Theirs is a heroic story, a very fighting-back kind of story. They started over with their lives and didn’t surrender to despair when they easily could have," she said.

In the process, Hearth reveals her own personal journey of coming to terms with the Holocaust — a passage that was propelled by the Delanys. She was working as a contributor to the New York Times in 1991 when she heard about two reclusive sisters who were both over 100 and still living independently in Mount Vernon, N.Y.

"I thought they must have remembrances," Hearth said. "I was interested in what they’d done with their lives and their opinions of things. People of that age tend to be so honest.

"I found them and didn’t even know if they would agree to be interviewed. I had to go to their house because they had no phone," she recounted. "I knocked on their door, and Bessie opened it."

That open door led to an article in the Times’ Sunday edition, three books, television and stage adaptations of the sisters’ lives and a close friendship between, in Hearth’s words, "the girls" — she and Sadie and Bessie Delany.

The years following the 1993 publication of Having Our Say were filled with work on these projects, but Hearth was already searching for her next opus.

"I was getting book offers, but none of them interested me," she explained. "I talked to the sisters about it and asked them what I should do. They said, ‘Do something worthwhile.’ I guess I felt I needed a little more guidance and asked again. ‘Do the hardest thing,’ Bessie counseled.

"Right away I knew it would be something about the Holocaust. I’ve always had a lot of confused feelings about it," revealed Hearth, whose mother is a German-American. "But I wondered what I could do that would be useful. So much has been done."

When Hearth read a news article about Holocaust survivors living nearby who had survived by posing as Christians, her interest was piqued.

"I thought that could be a different story, a different experience," she said.

Hearth intended her book to resonate not only with survivors but with all people of conscience and even those who might not accept the Shoah as fact.

"My books are meant for a broad audience," she said. "I hope that by writing about my feelings, (I can give) this book the potential to reach Holocaust deniers. I have instant credibility because I’m married to a Methodist minister. Perhaps people who might never pick up a book about the Holocaust will read it."

While Hearth’s maternal grandparents came to the U.S. in the 1920s, she said she shares feelings common to many Americans of German ancestry.

"Many of us with German blood say we feel that shame even though we’re second and third generation," she said. "I’ve always had a question in my mind. What if they were there? What if I were there? What would I have done?

"I couldn’t understand. I didn’t get it," she continued. "How do I reconcile in my mind these two people (her grandparents) who loved me so much and were such good people? How do I relate that they’re German? How does that fit with the fact that the Holocaust was perpetrated by these people? This was why this was the hardest thing that I could do.

"I had a duty to look into it and grapple with it," Hearth said, acknowledging that it was often difficult to listen to the Salsitz’ stories. "I approached the project with an open mind. I found this unlikely friendship with Norman and Amalie and this Christian girl. The evolution of this friendship had some tense moments, some awkward moments, but by the end of the book it gets to the point where we’re family. And isn’t that the point? No matter how different you are, by getting to know each other as people, that’s how we’re going to get where we need to go."

Giving voice to the voiceless has brought growth, Hearth conceded.

"When I met the Delany sisters, I was a young, ambitious workaholic. I now have a much greater ability to enjoy life, to see what’s important and to appreciate things I didn’t before.

"I’m a much stronger person," Hearth revealed. "I’ve had the opportunity to be surrounded by wise people who really care about me. I feel I have been nurtured.

"There were times when I felt overwhelmed, but I kept going," she said. "I certainly did what Dr. Bessie asked me to do."