Passages Press

IN THE LATE 1990s, Dr. Noemi Ebenstein attended the annual conference of the American Group Psychotherapy Association, as she had done for many years. In the course of one session’s exercise in retrieving early memories, she was overwhelmed by her earliest
memory as a very young child: standing barefoot on a hard
wooden floor, shivering in the freezing cold.

A man in uniform is screaming at her: “Raus! Raus! Raus!” As furious winter winds howl, he forces her out of the barrack into the snow. She looks down and realizes she is wearing only her underwear. Thus begins a unique saga. Noemi became determined to tell the stories of her early life: those of her mother, her father, and her own. With rare foresight, she kept comprehensive diaries, and later, before their deaths, recorded lengthy interviews with her mother and father. She has woven these rich resources together to produce this unusual memoir. Unusual, because Noemi uses her psychological insights in trying to understand the motivations of the very many different people she encounters while growing up. And in understanding the often-astonishing decisions made by her parents in order to survive, and to save her, against all odds.

Noemi takes the reader back to Yugoslavia and Hungary of the 1930s, and to her family’s experiences during the Shoah. Her remembrance of a dramatic life passage: the voyage to Israel aboard the famous ship, “Kefalos,” is vividly detailed. Noemi’s memories of growing up in the new State of Israel are enriched by placing them in context of the political, economic, and social realities of the time. And finally, she illuminates her family’s pride as she achieves the high honor of becoming an officer in the IDF.