This book traces the life of Maria Mia Truskier, who fled the Nazis as a young Polish Jew in early 1940 and once safely resettled in the United States, became an activist for other refugees, earning renown in the Bay Area as “the oldest refugee” of the East Bay Sanctuary Covenant. Mia worked for decades assisting those fleeing from war, violence and hardship, mainly from Central America and Haiti. Based on extensive interviews with Truskier before she passed away, as well as memorabilia from her own lifetime, including coded letters, newspaper clippings, and old photographs, this book results in a complex and multi-layered oral history. As Mia drew on memories of her life in Europe and World War II, she was situating and constructing those memories while re-reading and discovering these artifacts alongside the author of this book, and ultimately relating the ways that she and her family years later sought to make a difference for other refugees, drawing a connection between two major eras of human displacement: the end of World War II and today.
Erscheinungsdatum: 27.11.2021

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Meade, Teresa A.

Springer Nature Switzerland AG

Palgrave Studies in Oral History, 1st ed. 2021, Cham, Cham, 2021

Palgrave studies in oral history, Cham, Switzerland, 2021

Palgrave studies in oral history, Basingstoke, 2021

Springer Nature, Basingstoke, 2021

Switzerland, Switzerland

1st ed, S.l, 2021

1, 20211126

producers:
Adobe PDF Library 10.0.1

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Acknowledgments 7
Notes on Interviews, Sources, and Formatting 10
Contents 14
About the Author 18
List of Figures 19
Chapter 1: Mia Truskier: The “Oldest Refugee” 22
From Survival to Activism 23
Who Was Mia Truskier? 26
Meeting Mia 28
From Memory to Storyworld 32
A World of Refugees 34
The Work of Rescue and Asylum 37
Polishness and Jewishness 38
The Memories and Identities of Mia’s Storyworld 39
Postwar Poland in the Shadow of the Holocaust 42
Looking Beyond a Moment to the Full History of a People 44
Remembering the Jews of Poland 45
The Memories War Creates 47
Life as an Immigrant in America 49
The Scope and Sequence of Events in this Book 51
Chapter 2: The Making of Mia’s World: Warsaw and Zurich, 1890–1939 57
Mia’s Father: The Tłusty Family Line 59
A Jewish Country Squire 60
Polish Patriotism 61
Mia’s Mother: The Szurek Family Line 62
An Unfaithful and Domineering Grandfather Władzio 64
Babcia Anja Szurek 66
The Carefree Life of a Teenager 69
High School and Preparing for a Career 72
Zionism and Judaism 74
Anti-Semitism 76
Switzerland and the Federal Institute of Technology 79
Meeting Jan Truskier 82
The Truskier Family 83
Summer of 1938 and the End of Innocence 85
Chapter 3: Fleeing Poland, 1939–1940 88
Summer 1939: Europe on the Brink of War 90
Warsaw: The First Months of Bombing and Occupation 94
Deciding to Leave Poland: The Swiss Option 97
An “Emergency Conversion” 99
Leaving Poland on a “No Good” Bulgarian Visa 100
A Chance Encounter on the Train 103
Italy: An “Informational Pandemonium” 105
A Vatican Visa for Brazil 108
“Stuck in Italy” 111
Chapter 4: Hiding in Plain Sight: Italy, 1940–1945 115
Building a Life in Rome 115
In Search of Residency Permits 117
Anti-Semitism and Italian Fascism 120
Christmas Crèches and Paper Creations 122
Art and Diplomacy in the Vatican 126
Operating Undercover in Vatican City 129
The Movies and Work at Cinecittá 132
The Ritmica Integrale Teaching Method 134
The End of Mussolini and Start of the German Occupation 135
Caring for a Baby in Wartime 137
The Incident in Via Rasella 139
Chapter 5: The War Years in Warsaw and the Soviet Union, 1939–1945 145
The War’s Toll on Poland 146
Poland Under Occupation 148
Tadeusz and Zygmunt in the East 149
From Lwów to a Work Camp in the USSR, 1940 151
Wartime Communications from Warsaw to Milan to Rome and Back 153
News from the Soviet Work Camp 156
“The sadness here is without color” 160
Felling Trees, Enduring Cold, Fighting Lice, Surviving Boredom 166
Operation Barbarossa: Germany Invades the Soviet Union, 1941 167
Chapter 6: Poland: In the Warsaw Ghetto and on the Aryan Side, 1939–1945 173
Meeting the Albany, NY Truskier Families 174
Gabriela Truskier Sherer 174
The Lacheta Family 177
Paulina and Feliks on the Aryan Side 179
A World of Informers, Bribery, and Corruption 180
Paulina and Feliks: Taking Chances in the Underground 184
Eugenia Truskier’s Testimony 187
The Ghetto Post Office: Judyta Truskier 188
The Judenrat and Jewish Police 189
The Last Days of the Ghetto 192
Chapter 7: The Aftermath of War in Europe, 1945–1949 195
Poland 197
Abraham Lacheta 198
Mia and Jan in Postwar Rome 200
Finding a Place to Live in Rome 202
Ryszard Landau and Mya Tannenebaum in Postwar Europe 204
Separation, Relocation, and “Survivor’s Guilt” 208
Leaving Italy and the Beloved Italians 211
Chapter 8: Mia’s American World: From Nebraska Immigrant to California Activist, 1949–1970 214
It Was Like Starting a New Life 217
Becoming Citizens 228
Southern California 230
The Unitarian Church and Political Activism 236
Chapter 9: “Don’t Give In, Don’t Give Up!” Refugees and the East Bay Sanctuary Covenant, 1968–2014 243
The Memorial Service 244
Encountering the Sanctuary Movement 246
EBSC Resident Artist 249
Pierre LaBossiere 251
Day-to-Day Advocacy for Refugees 254
Revisiting the Sixties Era: Personal and Political Impacts 257
Andor Skotnes 257
The War in Vietnam on the Home Front 258
Ánh Tran 258
Andy Truskier and International Solidarity 263
A Mother Remembers 266
Final Thoughts 268
Index 273

"A riveting biography of an unstoppable woman that takes us from Warsaw through Italy to settle in California, where she was a Sanctuary activist until her death at 93." --Linda Gordon, Florence Kelley Professor of History, New York University, USA "Meade vividly weaves together the personal and the political, and memory and history, in this gripping page-turner about Mia Truskier's remarkable life and the global twentieth century." --Aviva Chomsky, Salem State University, USA "One of the joys of first-person testimony is the uncovering of the many layers of history and the historical narrative. Meade's conversations with Mia Truskier reveal the complexity of individual identity within a larger group. This is a life story drawn from testimony and the voice of the past -- thoughtful and imaginative." --Ronald J. Grele, Former Director, Columbia University Oral History Research Office, US This book traces the life of Maria Mia Truskier, who fled the Nazis as a young Polish Jew in early 1940 and once safely resettled in the United States, became an activist for other refugees, earning renown in the Bay Area as "the oldest refugee" of the East Bay Sanctuary Covenant. Mia worked for decades assisting those fleeing from war, violence and hardship, mainly from Central America and Haiti. Based on extensive interviews with Truskier before she passed away, as well as memorabilia from her own lifetime, including coded letters, newspaper clippings, and old photographs, this book results in a complex and multi-layered oral history. As Mia drew on memories of her life in Europe and World War II, she was situating and constructing those memories while re-reading and discovering these artifacts alongside the author of this book, and ultimately relating the ways that she and her family years later sought to make a difference for other refugees, drawing a connection between two major eras of human displacement: the end of World War II and today. Teresa Meade is the Florence B. Sherwood Professor of History and Culture at Union College in Schenectady, NY, USA

2022-01-03