2nd Generation Stories at the Museum

In January, the Museum of Jewish Heritage embarked on a storytelling workshop for children of Holocaust survivors. This blog was written by the instructor, Terence P. Mickey.

As a child, I would relentlessly tug on my father’s pant leg and beg him to tell me once again the story of the grey and blue pocked scar on his left shoulder. He’d hem and haw at first, but eventually he’d settle into the story, relishing the details of how his Highland Green 1968 Mustang GT fastback (the identical car from “Bullitt,” with Steve McQueen) hit black ice and flipped, how the driver’s window and windshield blew out, how 1968 was the first year for shoulder seat belts, but neither of my parents had worn them that night, and how my mother shot over the hood, while my father dragged his shoulder along the pavement until a snow bank stopped him. The story of the accident was filled with one dramatic detail after another, but the most surprising and amazing fact he saved for the end, when he said, “And that was your parent’s first date.”

As is often the case, that story answers one question, how my father got his scar, but begs another one: What happened next? Or how on earth did my parents fall in love after that catastrophe? From an early age, I was aware of how my favorite stories deepened mystery as well as sometimes satisfied my curiosity. And throughout my life, I’ve craved well-told stories, which is how I made my way to teach in the MothShop Community Program.

The MothShop Community Program, launched in 1999, specifically offers storytelling workshops to the community at large, focusing on high school-age teens and adults from underserved populations. The workshops teach participants how to use the key elements of narrative to shape their life experiences into well-crafted stories. The mission of MothSHOP is to help uncover, craft, and produce stories that might otherwise have been lost. The stories, as with all Moth stories, are true stories. (Read more about the history of the Moth and its programs.)

While not the Moth's classically underserved population, the 2nd generation is underserved in the sense that their stories of childhood spent in the shadow of the Holocaust have not been widely told. The experience of growing up as a child of survivors has all the essential elements of storytelling: structure, character, moral, humor, suspense, conflict, and resolution. The Museum, working in conjunction with the MothShop Community Program, hopes that through participating in the Moth storytelling workshops, the 2nd generation will learn how to use the key elements of narrative to shape their life experiences into well-crafted stories, and that these stories will then be used in educating future generations about the Holocaust.

For the past five weeks, I’ve been working with two volunteer story coaches to prepare our ten participants to share their stories on March 10th at 6:30 p.m. The hardest part of teaching storytelling is asking your students to be vulnerable since the art form is based on revealing and sharing an intimate part of yourself, but everyone in the group has risen to the challenge.

While all of the participants share the common thread of “Second Generation,” and they relate to one another with similar details from their lives – “We never waited on lines either,” or “We had enough food stockpiled in our cabinets to last us a lifetime” – all of the stories have the stamp of the singular on them. While each story may remember a mother or father, they’re equally revealing of a son or a daughter. We have two more classes before March 10th, and I’m looking forward to the surprises and discoveries we’ll unearth in the meantime.