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violsva · 7 years

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Notes on Devices and Desires: A History of Contraception in America by Andrea Tone

Part Two: From Smut to Science (Part One)

America was the only country in WWI which did not supply its soldiers with condoms. Instead they got education on moral hygiene and post-exposure chemical prophylaxis, which didn’t work (and was also extremely painful).

That said, about 5.6% of drafted men entering the Army had VD. Before the war this would have disqualified them; once they started drafting people and realized the disease rates that rule was quietly discarded. The propaganda, of course, still blamed licentious European prostitutes.

Soldiers were required to seek prophylaxis after exposure, so contracting VD was punishable by court martial. As a result, most of them just used condoms anyway. (They could get them from the rest of the Allies ... who were buying from American manufacturers.)

The Bureau of Medicine and Surgery claimed until the 30s that chemical prophylaxis had a nearly 100% success rate - this and the inaccurate gynecological knowledge from earlier make you wonder what modern doctors are getting horribly terribly wrong.

What I’m getting from this book is that abstinence-only sex ed is a specifically American idea, and a very old one. I guess because everyone else exported their Puritans there. (Not saying that other countries don’t discourage nonmarital sex; just that they are willing to acknowledge it happens.)

Tone argues that the fact that WWI made people actually talk about VD led to greater acceptance of (male) sexuality, and in 1918 physician-prescribed birth control was legalized for the prevention of disease (and life-threatening pregnancies) only. This was in the trial of Margaret Sanger’s first clinic; she tried to argue that women had a right to have nonprocreative sex but this was ignored (there was also an earlyish example of eugenic thought).

Anyway, the immediate result was a whole bunch of condoms for sale (to men) everywhere, labelled “for the prevention of disease only,” which V. F. Calverton called “an intelligent adaptation to an unintelligent morality.” (108)

And eventually in the 1930s the army started distributing condoms to soldiers, having changed its sex ed philosophy from “Real Men are chaste and continent” to “Obviously Real Men cannot be expected to control their sex drives.” As of 1937, the FDA started quality testing them.

I found out why Dutch caps were called Dutch caps! Dutch physician Aletta Jacobs’s work promoting the made-in-Holland Mensinga diaphragm. I still don’t know why condoms were “French”, except of course that everything to do with sex was French.

Wow, you can just watch Margaret Sanger and other medical professionals (in this area mostly female) building up the authority of the mainstream medical profession. I’m not saying it’s necessarily a bad thing, but it’s certainly a thing.

“Feminine hygiene” was a term coined by advertisers who still couldn’t legally say “birth control.” And it made up 85% of American contraception sales in 1938. Tone seems to assume that “feminine hygiene” always mean birth control in this period, and does show that the idea that it was needed comes from Victorian and later reframing of sperm as germs to get past the censors, but lots of people today use douches for “hygiene” and I don’t think that’s entirely an invented desire.

In the 1930s 70% of Americans supported medical birth control.

But birth control clinics were understaffed, concentrated in urban areas, and completely incapable of keeping up with the demand. And also lots of women were uncomfortable discussing it with doctors, but mail order was discreet and Lysol had lots of non-contraceptive uses. (Also, doctors were frequently untrained in contraception and unlikely to help unmarried women.)

That said, advertisers were totally happy to use spurious medical authority. Door-to-door saleswomen claimed to be nurses, and Lysol published a series of “Frank Talks with [Nonexistent] Eminent Female Physicians.” Again, respectable periodicals refused to publish advertisements for actual birth control, but “feminine hygiene” was okay, even if the ad copy was not at all subtle about its purpose.

And, this being the mid-20thc, the hypothetical tormented wives in the ads weren’t worried about economics, or careers, or their physical health. No, it was how will you appeal to your husband, once the “natural strains of marriage” take their toll on your appearance? And if you’re worried and irritable all the time, well, no wonder if he leaves you.

And since the manufacturers never actually said they were selling birth control, once it failed or caused horrible chemical burns you couldn’t sue them. At least, you couldn’t sue the huge companies, but regulators were happy to shut down small businesses.

Both the AMA and the FDA refused to condemn Lysol etc., even after the FDA started testing condoms. Pregnancy wasn’t a disease, so prevention of it wasn’t the FDA’s business. The AMA told women who asked them about birth control to talk to their family physicians, because they couldn’t discuss it through the mail.

“It is a common saying in the drug trade that the sale of condoms pays the store rent.” (Norman Himes, 1936, qtd. on pg. 190)

In 1882 Julius Schmidt was a homeless disabled German Jewish immigrant. In 1890 he was prosecuted by Anthony Comstock for selling condoms. In 1940 he was one of the largest condom manufacturers in the country and his products were endorsed by the US Army.

Youngs Rubber (Trojan) emphasized their reputability by saying they sold only to drugstores (as opposed to other condoms, which were offered by shoeshiners and bellhops and street peddlers) and tested all of their products. However, they had all this merchandise hanging around that had failed the tests ... so they sold those to whoever wanted them as manufacturer’s seconds.

And a lot of customers didn’t bother paying extra for first quality manufacturer-tested condoms, and just tested them themselves at home.

All of these companies employed large numbers of women. The factory workers, and especially the saleswomen pretending to be nurses - and thus middle class - who were they? How did their jobs fit with the expectations that “nice” girls didn’t know anything about sex?

#contraception #birth control #condoms #devices and desires #andrea tone #books #reading log #medical #history

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enkelimagnus · 3 years

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Bucky Barnes Gen, 2618 words, rated M for Hydra shit

Jewish Bucky Barnes, pre TFATWS, post Endgame

Bucky goes to get his haircut, and ends up talking about his and his hairdresser's dating lives.

TW: homophobic language/terminology typical of the early 1900s, mentions of past rape and abuse

Read on AO3

Part 9 of Making a Home - the Jewish Bucky series

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The only reason he makes it out of his house on Tuesday morning is because Charlie’s a nice girl, and he doesn’t want to be rude.

He even manages a shower, but it’s probably obvious to anyone he bumps into that he’s just crawled out of a proverbial hole. He’s going to have to deal with being in front of a mirror during his haircut and he’s dreading it.

It’s been three days since the Target incident.

Three days of forcing himself to eat, of no shower and barely any sleep, an endless loop of misery and darkness as he sat on the floor of his living room and waited for days to pass.

When he sleeps, he sees the deaths of Arkady Shostakov and his wife. It hadn’t been a good kill. It had been sloppy, with a boot print in the puddle of blood and brain matter on the apartment carpet. It had made for a good message sent to his handler’s other political enemies, however. He’d been punished for the sloppiness, with a whip. His handler, his обработчик, called himself traditional. He liked the whip. Bucky’s still surprised he healed without a trace from those days.

Needless to say, he’s barely functioning, but he has an appointment, and Charlie always puts time aside and lets him come early so he can be okay. She goes through so much trouble for him. So he’s going to show up, even if he would rather eat glass than stare at his own reflection for any length of time.

The sun is pale and hesitant as he reluctantly walks away from the locked door of his house. It’s less cold than it was a couple days ago, and the wind has subsided a little. His breath still forms clouds in the air.

He pulls out a cigarette and smokes one on the way to the salon, adding to the clouds he breathes out. He hates the new packages with their pictures of charred lungs on them. He gets why they’re there, but he also hates it. Too little too fucking late.

They got the American people hooked on cigarettes during the first world war, and have kept pumping it out ever since, under the guise of trying to make soldiers’ lives a little less terrible. His da didn’t smoke before the war, at least that’s what his ma used to say. They supposedly didn’t have many cigarettes in Romania when they were growing up. The reason why lungs like that exist in the first place is their own desire to make a profit. That kind of greed is the root of all fucking evil.

He crushes the butt of his cigarette against a wall two blocks from his destination.

The salon is small, modern. There’s a lot of dark wood, a lot of metal and white walls. There’s a crack in the wall behind the entrance desk, but they don’t seem to want to fix it just yet. It’s the kind of crack that might hide structural issues and he gets it. It’s not cheap to get that work done.

Charlie is not standing behind said desk when he walks in. He clears his throat a little loudly to announce he’s there but stays dutifully in front of the register, looking around the room. It’s half plunged into darkness, the timid sunlight not enough to chase the shadows of the deepest parts of the place.

The lights aren’t all on. They’re not officially open yet. It’s a privilege for him to be there. God Almighty, he doesn’t deserve that sort of kindness. He’s a broken shell of a man with a kill count that would make anyone kick him out without a second thought.

It takes a couple minutes before Charlie walks out from the backroom. Her hair is incredible, one side shaved so close to the skull it’s practically bold, the other flowing and beautiful, the back braided to keep the delimitation clean. A work of art, really.

“Sorry for making you wait,” she calls out and walks up to him. “Good to see you, James.”

He nods at her. “No worries.”

She shows him to his usual chair, gives him that weird robe to put on, grabs the spray bottle to wet his hair and her tray of things. He sits down on the leather, swallowing hard, staring down at the stack of magazines in front of him rather than the mirror.

Tension knots his shoulders high, he can feel it. He knows he looks like he’d rather be anywhere but here. He doesn’t want her to think he’s not thankful, but he can’t really bring himself to relax right now.

“Everything okay?” She asks as she walks back to him, putting everything in order by her side. She’s precise in how she moves, almost surgeon-like. He likes how she doesn’t move recklessly. When she does, it’s for a good reason. It’s comforting. “So the usual scissor haircut? Is there anything else I can do for you today?”

Bucky nods at the first and second question, but pauses at the third. He hesitates long enough that she feels she has to justify her questions.

“You look a little worse for wear, buddy,” she explains. “I just want to make sure I’m doing everything I can to make you comfortable.”

Bucky opens his mouth and closes it. He looks up at her reflection for a second, trying to ignore his own face in the mirror. She looks a little tired, but kind and genuine. He’s going to leave her the biggest tip he’s ever given.

“I don’t mind accommodating you, okay? As long as it’s doable for me, I’ll do it, I just need you to communicate with me.”

Fuck, this is the nicest anyone has been to him in months. Sam talks to him like that too, sometimes, when he’s putting on the counsellor persona.

“Do you need the mirror to work?” He asks quietly.

He can almost hear the grinds in her head turning as she looks around, thinks through things… It takes a moment, and he’s about to open his mouth to say it’s no big deal when she smiles at him. “I might need it at the end, to make sure everything’s looking good together, but for most of the haircut, I can put something over it. Does that work for you?”

Bucky nods. The flood of relief and thankfulness unleashed into him rises up to his eyes. They prickle with tears. He immediately swallows them down as Charlie walks off to grab another of the robes. He’s not going to cry in public.

He immediately stands up when she comes back and helps her drape the robe over the mirror. She’s tiny and he’s already asking for so much. The least he can do is help.

They go back to their earlier position. He’s sitting in the chair, she’s standing by him, arranging her tools. He sees her slip off the ring that’s on her left ring finger and puts it on a chain that rests around her neck. She’s married.

“I’m going to start now and touch you,” she warns. “Let me know if you feel uncomfortable any time, okay?”

She’s asked that every time he’s been there. Granted, it’s the fourth time. But it’s more courtesy he’s been given within the last two months than he ever was for seventy years with Hydra. No one usually asks if he’s okay with being touched.

“Yes. Thank you,” he says quietly as she lays her hands onto his head, running her fingers through the strands and starting to figure out where and how she’s going to cut.

Her fingers are gentle but firm. Her touches are never too light. When she touches him, he can feel it, and he can feel when she doesn’t. There’s a clear, obvious difference.

Within minutes, he’s relaxing into the chair, eyes half closed, the exhaustion of the last couple of days weighing his eyelids down.

“You can’t fall asleep on me, James,” Charlie says softly. “I need you to hold your head up.”

He hums and shifts, opening his eyes to stare at the black fabric draped over the mirror. He straightens up a little. He’s going to fall asleep if he doesn’t have a conversation, so he tries to find a topic.

“You take off your wedding band for work?” he asks after a moment.

“Ah, yeah. I got tired of having bits of hair getting stuck between my skin and it.” She explains.

He doesn’t nod, because he doesn’t want to disturb her work. “So who’s the lucky fella?”

The energy of the room shifts. She has a small sigh and hesitation before she goes. “It’s a woman actually. My wife.”

“Ah, fuck,” he blurts out. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to assume.”

It’s been a struggle and a half to figure that part of the world out. He’s sucked more dick than most people alive can say, but seeing two people of seemingly the same gender kiss in public makes him want to run and hide.

“It’s all good,” Charlie mutters, and she seems a little less hesitant now.

“Really, I got… I don’t have a problem with it,” he says, and realizes how terrible that sounds. He closes his eyes with a grunt. “I sound like an asshole.”

Charlie chuckles behind him. Her scissors work lightly against his ears.

“Really, I’m happy for you. The whole marriage thing, it’s awesome. Back in my day, we couldn’t imagine that kind of thing.”

He’s pretty sure she knows who he is, how old he actually is. Hopefully, she’ll get what he means.

The last time he tried his hand at dating, sodomy was illegal. It could get him in prison or in a mental institute getting tortured to try and ‘cure’ him. He couldn’t even look at a guy too long, in case they’d take it badly, or worse, in case it was an undercover cop sent to find sodomites and arrest them.

When he was growing up, there were a few big name celebrities who were openly homosexuals, but by the time he hit his teenage years, they had been booted out of Hollywood and the world had turned even more oppressive against anyone they saw as different or wrong.

The only place a guy like him could perhaps get some action safely with another man was the YMCA. Bucky went there even if he was a Hebrew, and they famously turned the other way when it came to homosexual acts commited by their members. He’d never been with any guy there. With a few girls, once or twice..

Like Dorothea, the daughter of some rich donor who’d sponsored some of his matches. A spitfire sort of girl, who played coy and poked his bruises and went ‘oh, these must hurt so much’, then shoved him against the wall and wrapped him around her little finger so tight she almost had him calling her mistress when they did it.

“It’s been a lot to get used to,” he admitted, out loud this time. “Sometimes, I see two men kissing and I… it feels like I’m going to see them get beaten up on the spot. Or arrested.”

Charlie sighs softly. “New York’s nice, but it can still get pretty dangerous for people. Depends on the neighborhood, depends if you’re white or not… but it’s not perfect yet.”

For a second, he wishes they hadn’t covered the mirror, so he could look up at her.

“I’m sorry,” he says quietly. “You’d think that kind of shit wouldn’t happen anymore, in 2024.”

She huffs behind him. “We take it one step at a time. We could get married, so that’s already that. At least the laws are less against us than they used to be,” she mutters. “The people… all we can do is keep existing.”

Bucky likes her a bit more every time she opens her mouth.

“May I ask about your wife?” He says after a moment of silence.

Charlie chuckles. “My favorite topic of conversation.” She starts a stream of information, their marriage date, how they met, and Bucky lets her talk, smiling slightly at the obvious tenderness in her voice. It’s nice to hear someone talk about their loved ones like that.

Her name is Katherine, she’s a psychology student at NYU, pursuing a PhD. They’ve been married for about four years. Neither of them got snapped, and they pretty much exchanged vows the second they found a working administrative structure.

They keep chatting about Charlie’s wife for a moment until she starts working on the fading hairs into his collar.

“So, what about you? Did you end up finding a partner?” She asks and he swallows.

He’s no good for dating right now. Who’d want a guy like him as a partner? Sure, the girl from Izzy’s, Leah, is cute and sarcastic and makes him smile more than a lot of people do but… He’s 106, with more trauma-related issues than anyone alive.

“Nah,” he mutters. “I’m not the dating kind. There’s a lot I gotta figure out first,” he says quietly.

Besides, it would be hard for anyone to exist in his world with Steve’s shadow hanging around every corner. ‘Yeah, the last person I was in love with is Captain America’. That would be unfair to anyone.

And there’s the whole issue of sex too. The last time he’s had sex was in 2014, if you can even call it sex. It’s not a problem of looks or opportunity. He’s aware he’s attractive, or at least desirable. He’s been made well aware of that fact, thoroughly, over the course of decades. He knows all about his eyes, his lips, his hair, his ass, his dick, his chest, his thighs, his prosthetic arm, his flesh one, his throat, his fucking feet.

He knows. He just has no idea what sex with someone that doesn’t hold pain over his head would be like. His fantasies are fucked up half the time, either violent or way too fucking sad. And he just doesn’t fucking trust anyone. He can’t. Charlie’s pretty much the only person he trusts to touch him.

“Yeah,” he adds. “I’m not in that place yet.”

Charlie nods. Her voice sounds like she’s smiling next time she speaks. “Take care of yourself first. That’s the smartest way to go about this.”

“It’s the only way,” he admits.

They fall to silence after that. Bucky feels self-conscious pretty much immediately. That hairdresser knows more about his personal life than anyone alive, including his therapist. It’s a horribly vulnerable position to be in, and he shudders at the realization of how much fucking trust he’s putting in this girl he’s barely ever met.

She’s a complete stranger and he just unpacked a lot of his shit to her, easily. She gently pulls his head until it’s tilted to the side and allows her to finish out the edges of his cut and he lets her. He lets her move his head around without complaint, barely tensing. What the fuck is wrong with him?

It’s not incredibly long until the cut’s over and he can pay for it, leave her twice the amount in tips, and hightail it back home, both cursing himself for his stupidity and more relaxed than he’s been in a long time.

His house reeks of sweat and misery when he comes home so he opens the windows to let the air flow through it. It’s vulnerable like this, anyone could get in, but it feels good. Sometimes, opening a little is what you need to chase away the misery.

#jewish bucky series #jewish bucky barnes #bucky barnes #marvel #mine #fic

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cinephiled-com · 5 years

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New Post has been published on Cinephiled

New Post has been published on http://www.cinephiled.com/interview-powerful-doc-reveals-young-israeli-jews-heading-back-fatherland/

Interview: Powerful Doc Reveals Young Israeli Jews Heading ‘Back to the Fatherland’

Gil Levanon and Kat Rohrer, both filmmakers, struck up a friendship during their time at college in New York 10 years ago. Gil comes from Israel, Kat from Austria. Their families’ history is strikingly different. Gil is the granddaughter of a Holocaust survivor, Kat’s grandfather was a Nazi officer. The exodus of many young secular Israelis to Germany and Austria prompt Gil and Kat to embark on a journey: to find other grandchildren of Holocaust survivors who had moved to Germany and Austria and learn how their grandparents reacted to that decision. Could returning to the site of their pain decades ago create reconciliation between generations?

Back to the Fatherland follows the journey of three families in transition; Israeli grandchildren from the “Third Generation” and their respective grandparents. The film deals with both sides of the historic tragedy and the attempt to build their own future without ignoring the past. I so enjoyed talking to Gil and Kat about this riveting documentary.

Danny Miller: Gil, did the whole idea for the film start from your grandfather’s reaction to you wanting to go from Israel to Austria, or had your thoughts on this topic been brewing for a while?

Gil Levanon: It started before that. I’ve known Kat for a long time, we met at the School of Visual Arts in New York and we stayed very good friends. She is Austrian but she ended up staying in New York after school and I went back to Israel. I persuaded her to come visit me there, and I remember one day we were talking on the boardwalk in Tel Aviv and she saw some people with a German Shepherd. She was surprised because she couldn’t understand how an Israeli Jew could own a German shepherd. Even for her these dogs represented Hitler, Nazis, and concentration camps!

Kat Rohrer: And that led to a discussion between Gil and I about the growing number of young Israelis who were moving from Israel back to former Nazi countries, because that was starting to become a big thing. Gil’s sister was already living in Berlin at the time.

Gil: Yes. We decided to go there and ask them about that. What it was like to physically live in a place that their grandparents had to leave in such a horrible, violent way. Then we wanted to hear what the grandparents had to say about it. My own grandfather left when he was 15, he lost his entire family there. At that point we were so interested in this topic that we embarked on a year and a half of research and ended up finding the people that we profiled in the film, in addition to telling our own story.

I love the two guys you feature in the film, Dan and Guy. Their stories are so interesting, and their grandparents such compelling characters.

Kat: We were very lucky that both of them agreed to go on this adventure with us, and that Dan’s grandmother, Lea, and guy’s grandfather, Uri, both Holocaust survivors, were willing to as well.

They were so great. Frankly I would’ve loved a two-hour documentary on Lea alone, she was so compelling

Gil: I know!

Kat: We were very careful about who we picked. We didn’t go looking for grandparents who had the most horrible Holocaust stories, to be honest, it was much more about their relationship with their grandchildren. We fell in love with Uri and Lea right away. Uri had this old-fashioned Viennese charm, he was very charming, very open. And we also fell in love with Lea very quickly, how could we not? But I’ll tell you a funny story. The first time we met with her, she was welcoming, but when I asked her anything about her history, her answers were very short: “yes” and “no” interspersed with very long pauses. Gil and I were looking at each other. I mean, we wanted her to be in the movie but if she was going to be like that in interview situations, that just wasn’t going to fly. We were very worried, but you know what happened? The minute our camera man walked in, Lea never stopped talking! (Laughs.)

You could see how much she loved her grandson, but the tension about his living in Germany and speaking German was so interesting to watch. I love the scene where he’s so excited that they can talk German together now, her native tongue, and she’s like, “Well, we can also talk in Hebrew.” It’s fascinating because you can tell part of her was happy to speak that language again with someone she loves, but that it was still a little painful for her, maybe it reminded her of all that she lost with her family members. I love that part of the film and yet I’m glad you didn’t dwell on their lives before the war. I so appreciate movies about that time period, but that’s just not what this film is.

Gil: Thank you for saying that, because we were very clear from that start that we didn’t want to make another Holocaust movie. That’s why we were focusing on this third generation, which Kat and I are a part of, not the second generation that was affected by their parents’ generation in a much different way. We wanted to examine how the third generation was looking toward the future and figuring out how to move on from this painful period. Well, “move on” isn’t right, I’m not sure how to say it in English—

Maybe to transition to a new kind of awareness?

Exactly, that’s much better, thank you!

It was amazing to see the grandparents go back to their home countries in Europe to visit their grandchildren.

Kat: Yes. With Uri, you kind of get the feeling that he thinks his grandson is fulfilling the life that he wasn’t allowed to have there. And with Lea, we had hoped that she would visit Dan but were convinced that she would never go back, she had said that she was done with that place. But to our great surprise, she agreed to go when he asked her to.

Which was such a moving part of the film. I have a lot of Israeli relatives who have left Israel for other countries — sometimes temporarily for financial reasons and sometimes for good. Do you think other Israelis sometimes feel a sense of betrayal towards the people who move elsewhere, particularly to countries like Germany and Austria?

Gil: Oh, it’s definitely frowned upon. You know the term “making Aliyah” for Jews that move to Israel, which means “to go up,” right? The opposite of that, when people leave Israel, is called “yerida,” which means “to go down.”

Which is used in a pejorative way, as an insult?

Yes, it has always been like that. I mean, Jews are such a small group of people, in general, and it’s considered that anyone who leaves the home base makes the group weaker. But I think it’s changing with this generation because we are fortunate to live in such a globalized world. The fact that we can physically move around so freely is amazing. So people leave for all sorts of reasons. When Kat left Austria, it was no big deal, she may end up back there, who knows, no one really cares. But when you leave Israel, it can be very uncomfortable, almost like you’re some kind of traitor.

I thought it was very moving when Guy’s grandfather said, “Well, at least you have somewhere to come back to if it becomes necessary.”

Which is absolutely true, and which is a testament to what has been accomplished with Israel in creating a safe space for Jews. I mean, look, I’m going to open a parentheses here and say yes, we know that Israel has lots of problems that we need to solve. But at the end of the day, we have something today that our grandparents didn’t have when they needed it so desperately.

Yes. And I wish people in the rest of the world would stop painting all Israelis with the broad brush based on what its government is doing, just like I would never want anyone to assume that I support what our current administration here is doing.

Exactly.

Of course, those assumptions go both ways. Kat, I admit that when I was growing up, whenever I heard that someone was from Germany or Austria, I would immediately start doing the mental calculations: hmmm, how old were their parents during World War II, what were they doing? What about their grandparents? I probably still do it on some level. Is that something you felt when you left Austria and started meeting Jewish people? Did you tend to share anything about your grandfather’s story, or would you keep that to yourself?

Kat: For me, making this movie was the culmination of an 18-year process, it was like a catharsis. During my first week in New York, we were having all of these getting-to-know you experiences at school. I remember I was standing outside one day, and this guy came up to me and said, “You’re Austrian?” I said yeah and he said, “I’m Israeli, so I guess your grandparents killed my grandparents.”

Whoa, that’s getting right into it!

Yeah! That gave me such a stab in the heart. I wasn’t prepared for this kind of encounter. Because my accent didn’t sound like Arnold Schwarzenegger, I used to try to get away with avoiding saying that I was from Austria. But Gil and other Jewish friends eventually taught me that it was okay to say where I was from. And to be honest about it. Lots of Germans and Austrians always say that their grandfathers were in the Resistance or something, but I don’t do that even though the reactions I get are not always pleasant.

That kind of honesty is refreshing to hear. Of course, I must say that seeing you take your grandfather’s Nazi uniform come out of that trunk, it is still kind of shocking. We’re used to seeing those things in pictures or museums, but it really brings it home. Do you think making this film brought you to a new place with accepting your family history?

Oh yes, this was definitely a very expensive therapy session for all of us! (Laughs.) It definitely helped me deal with my sense of guilt, even though this guy died long before I was born.

Gil: And things are different now than they were for our parents who never wanted to ask their parents any questions. We finally have to emotional space to do so. My mom never wanted to ask her mother about the war because she didn’t want to hurt her, and my grandma didn’t want to burden anyone with her painful story, but then comes the third generation and they start asking questions. There’s also this amazing bond you often see between grandparents and grandchildren that helps a lot.

Kat: I remember Dan talking about how no matter how close he was to his grandmother, he felt that he only knew her about 80% until they started speaking German together and she came to Vienna. It was like he finally was able to see this puzzle piece that was missing. He felt much closer to her afterwards.

What have the discussions after the screening been like? Did you get a different reaction in Israel and Europe versus here?

Kat: We’ve been so lucky to have a theatrical release in Austria and Germany, and the film has screened all over Israel and many other cities in Europe. It’s been very interesting. I’ve had a lot of third generation Austrians and Germans come up to me afterwards and quietly tell me that they’ve found a uniform, too, and they don’t know how to deal with it. A lot of them want to research what their grandfathers did and they know that their families still have to deal with this history.

Gil: It’s also been amazing to hear the reaction of people who are not connected to this history at all but still relate to the dynamic presented in the film between the generations: people from Armenia, Turkey, Palestine, and so on, who are bringing their grandparents to see it as a way to start discussing their own family traumas. That was always our goal, too, to reach beyond our core audience. That’s been very rewarding.

And here in the States?

It’s been interesting. We screened the film in Washington, at the Jewish Film Festival, and there was this Jewish woman who stood up afterwards and asked a question. Kat answered her and she said thank you and sat down. Later on, Kat went out into the audience to see some friends who were at the screening, and she saw that woman standing there. She thanked her for her question and held out her hand. The woman just looked at her and said, “Shake the hand of an Austrian? No thank you.”

Wow!

Kat: She had such a look of disgust on her face.

We really have a lot more work to do, especially in this country! I hope your film will help with that work.

Gil and Kat: Thank you.

youtube

Back to the Fatherland opens today in Los Angeles and will be coming to other cities.

#Austria #Back to the Fatherland #Documentary #Germany #Gil Levanon #Holocaust #Israel #Kat Rohrer #Interviews #What's Hot

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